John Carter: From Book to Screen

The 2012 movie John Carter was based on the Edgar Rice Burroughs novel A Princess of Mars, and is most notable for its disastrous box office performance rather than the actual quality of the film. and I think most can agree that the biggest stumbling block the movie had was that it was saddled with one of the worst marketing plans in film history.

Trailers and posters both seemed intent on hiding the fact that the planet Mars was involved at all, which is kind of a strange thing to do when your movie is based on a science fiction fantasy series based almost solely on Mars. But because the heads of Disney were still reeling from the failure of the film Mars Needs Moms, and somehow got it into their heads that it was the use of the word “Mars” in the title that caused that film to flop, they did their best to dance around the Mars aspect in their ads. The studio heads are not totally to blame for all this as Andrew Stanton’s trailers, which he insisted show little of the story, failed to hook audiences and most likely the biggest reason for its poor box office results.

A movie based on Edgar Rice Burroughs’ Barsoom series had been in the works in Hollywood for decades and would make a fascinating film all on its own. Bob Clampett, of Looney Tunes fame, back in 1931, wanted to adapt A Princess of Mars into an animated feature. Burroughs was excited with that notion as at the time animation would be about the only way one could do that book series justice. Sadly, the test footage shown to local exhibitors did not receive much positive feedback, and the project was shelved.

It wasn’t until 1980 that Disney acquired the rights to the book and approached John McTiernan, director of Die Hard, to direct and Tom Cruise to star as John Carter. Realizing that the current movie magic still wasn’t up to the task of bringing Barsoom to life, McTiernan exited the picture, and John Carter went into limbo again.

This could have been John Carter.

Next up at bat was Robert Rodiguez at Paramount with the plan to use the same digital backlot technology that they used for Sin City. Studio politics ended this teaming, which led to Jon Favreau’s involvement. Favreau wanted to remain faithful to the books, but he also wanted the first movie to contain A Princess of Mars, Gods of Mars and Warlord of Mars and to use mostly practical effects with as little CGI as possible. I love Favreau, but cramming three books into one movie is a bad idea.  He went on to make Iron Man, so I guess we can say that it all worked out for the best.

Disney Studios reacquired the rights, and Pixar director Andrew Stanton was tasked with bringing this Martian epic to life once again. Stanton was a professed Burroughs fan and had always wanted to see the Barsoom stories on the silver screen, so what went wrong?

The lame title for one.

To best understand we look back to 1912 when Edgar Rice Burroughs released his story Under the Moons of Mars; the first adventure was published in serial form under his pen name Norman Bean, this was to protect his reputation because Burroughs himself believed the book to be “Too outlandish,” much to his surprise his story of a Confederate soldier on Mars went over like gangbusters with the public, and later his publishing company decided to collect the stories in novel form and title it A Princess of Mars.

And here begins the first problem in adapting A Princess of Mars to film: the book is basically a travelogue of adventures with no main plot or story structure. John Carter arrives on Mars, has exciting adventures, falls in love, and that’s about it. A pretty simple format and as a monthly serial that works great, but as a two-hour movie, not so much.  So Andrew Stanton and the folks at Disney had their work cut out for them; how do you remain faithful to the source material but still make a structurally coherent movie out of it? It’s a balancing act that many have tried and more have failed.

Another difficulty in translating a story written back in the early Twentieth Century is that audience sensibilities change; things that were wildly acceptable in 1912 may not fly so well in 2012. The biggest change the movie John Carter made is that of the lovely Martian princess Dejah Thoris, who in the book is your standard damsel in distress, but in this movie, she is a kick-ass action hero and a scientist. I wholeheartedly agree with this change. Lynn Collins as Dejah Thoris was damn awesome, and she gave us a character I think worthy of starring in her own movie.

Dehah Thoris, Badass!

As much as I agree with that change, there were a few really questionable choices throughout the film, and the one that stands above them all, like a sliced Achilles, is that of the film’s opening — or should I say openings.

“Bad kitty!”

The book A Princess of Mars starts out with a foreword by Edgar Rice Burroughs stating that he has decided to publish this manuscript about his incredible Uncle John Carter and his adventures on Mars. He describes his Uncle as having been this most amazing man: a great horseman, an excellent swordsman, but still one of the most courtly men he knew. Upon hearing of his Uncle’s death, Burroughs arrives at his estate to find instructions about putting the untreated body of John Carter into a strange tomb that can only be opened from inside and that this manuscript would remain sealed and unread for eleven years and not divulge to anyone its contents for twenty-one years after his death. The forward is roughly three pages and is beautifully economical in its set-up.

The movie John Carter starts with a prologue giving the viewer a crash course history of Martian or Barsoomian politics, of how only the city of Helium stood against the evil world-conquering forces of Zodanga and how for a thousand years they kept them at bay until one day the Therns, led by priest Matai Shang (Mark Strong) stepped in to offer the Zodangan’s villainous leader Sab Than (Dominic West) an ultimate weapon and a plan to marry the Princess of Helium (Lynn Collins) thus ending this destructive conflict.

Evil Therns.

The adventures of John Carter (Taylor Kitsch) are your basic fish-out-of-water story; the hero is the reader’s or viewer’s identification figure, and we learn and explore wondrous new lands with him. We do not need a six-minute prologue explaining the machinations of the people of Barsoom. We will find out about these things along with Carter. In Star Wars: A New Hope, our hero Luke is part of this expansive universe and knows much of what is going on. We get an opening crawl that gets us up to speed with what’s happening, but then we find out more while travelling with Luke. In the case of John Carter, he knows as much about Mars as we do, and so we should be finding information on this strange world at the same time as he does. Also, the opening crawl at the beginning of Star Wars: A New Hope was not six minutes long.

The movie then jumps to Earth, and we get the Forward that was in the book, with young Edgar Rice Burroughs (Daryl Sabara) inheriting his Uncle’s estate and receiving the manuscript of his adventures. This section incorporates elements from the book while introducing the idea that there are villains on Earth who are pursuing John Carter.

“Dear Diary.”

Chapter one of the book has John Carter, late of the Confederate Army, telling how, while working as a prospector, he discovered a mysterious cave while running from a group of Apaches that killed his partner. In the movie, we are presented with an overly long setup where he is arrested by the Union Army, which wants his expert skills to fight the local Indians. Carter just wants to find this mysterious “Spider Cave” and its rumoured gold and has no interest in fighting. He escapes and, while fleeing the army, runs into the Apaches and a nasty skirmish, which ends up with him hiding in the very same cave he had been looking for all along. Nothing says ‘well-written script’ more than starting off with a major coincidence, and it doesn’t stop there. In the movie, it just so happens that a Thern was using the cave transport system as Carter arrived. The Thern activates his transport medallion after being mortally wounded by Carter and accidentally sends John Carter to Mars. If that many contrived elements in so short a time are required to get your hero’s journey started, you’d best chuck the script and start over.

Space MacGuffin

In the book, there is no Thern in the cave. No MacGuffin transport device moves a person between planets. Carter enters the cave and is overcome by some sort of gas and is paralyzed. When he tries to force himself up off the cave floor he ends up yanking himself out of his own body.  This would freak anyone out.  A naked John Carter looks down at himself, wondering if he is dead, but he feels solid enough and so wanders out of the cave to look up at the stars. He notices Mars, the god of war, bright and mysterious in the heavens, and he reflects on how it has always fascinated him. Whoosh! Bang! He is whisked off to Mars. Why the movie thought we needed such a huge setup for getting our hero to Mars is beyond me. If your audience is already set to go along with your story about life on Mars, you really don’t need to spend that much time getting us there.

Able to leap tall plot devices in a single bound.

Now that we are finally on Mars/Barsoom, let us take a quick look at the differences in plot. The book, as I said earlier, is more of a travelogue of adventures rather than a plot-centric story. Almost immediately after his arrival, Carter is discovered by the Tharks, the green men of Mars, who think he is raiding their hatcheries (all the humanoid races on Mars lay eggs). However, upon realizing a naked, unarmed individual isn’t much of a threat, they bring him to a nearby dead city. His ability to leap great distances due to the planet’s lesser gravity, as well as his great fighting skill, earns him great respect and titles among the Tharks. It’s when the Tharks shoot down a Helium science vessel and capture the Helium princess Dejah Thoris that things for Carter get complicated. The Tharks hate the people of Helium, the red men of Mars, and when Carter finds out that they plan to take her to the Jeddak of the Tharks, where she will most likely be tortured to death. This is something he will not allow to happen so he decides to rescue her. That is the plot in a nutshell. Everything that follows is basically a serial adventure of Carter trying to escape with the Princess and getting her home to her people. Many misadventures befall them along the way, but that’s the gist of it.

“Come with me if you want to live.”

The movie has John Carter encounter the Tharks in roughly the same way, though they take his jumping ability as some kind of indicator that he is a “prophesied one” who will lead the Tharks in battle; how Carter encounters Dejah Thoris is vastly different here. In the movie, it is a Zodanga craft that attacks Dejah Thoris’s ship, not the Tharks, and it is John Carter who saves her from the clutches of Sab Than, the evil ruler of Helium’s mortal enemies. The movie’s plot is basically Carter escaping the Tharks with Dejah Thoris and then eventually helping defeat Sab Than and the evil Therns. And when I say “eventually” I mean it takes forever for him to step up as a hero. So now let’s take a look at the characters and how they differ from book to movie.

John Carter: In the book, John Carter is somewhat of an enigma; he claims to have no memory before the age of thirty and has always appeared the same, without ever aging. When we later learn that the humanoid races on Barsoom are basically immortal, we start to wonder just where John Carter originally came from. That he and Dejah Thoris are able to have a child together is another clue. As to John Carter’s character in the book, he is the standard stalwart hero who cannot stand by when he sees an injustice; he will fight against incredible odds if he believes someone is being wrongfully treated. His superior strength and fighting skills keep him and his friends alive on more than one occasion.

Taylor Kitsch is John Carter.

Movie John Carter is a slightly different animal, gone is any hint of a mysterious origin, and it’s sadly replaced by a tragic past where we learn that his family was killed during the Civil War, and so he decided to no longer fight for anything. Your character is going to lose points right off the bat when you introduce him as an ex-Confederate soldier and then add on the “Reluctant Hero” trope. This was a mistake. John Carter is Superman on Mars; we don’t need him to be a brooding hero with tons of emotional baggage. When Dejah Thoris tells Carter that she is being forced to marry the evil Sab Than, he refuses to help her because it’s not his problem; he’s done fighting. That’s not a reluctant hero, that’s a dick.

Dejah Thoris: As mentioned earlier, this is one great improvement Disney makes over the book, for in the book, she is ther standard damsel in distress; her beauty and unbridled love for John Carter being her only real character traits. In the movie, she is portrayed as both an incredible fighter and a scientist, a rare combination in science fiction heroines. Movie Dejah Thoris is being forced into marriage with Sab Than by her father, and she tries everything to get out of it, while book Dejah Thoris agrees to marry Sab Than to end the war, even though her people would rather die than see their beloved princess marry for any reason other than love. I kind of like the book better here as it gives her a nice, noble aspect in what was mostly a generic heroin role, but overall, action movie Dejah Thoris is the fuller, richer character in the end.

Lynne Collins is Dejah Thoris.

Tars Tarkas: In the book, the Tharks are green four-armed humanoids that stand fifteen feet tall and sport nasty tusks. Movie Tharks are only a bit taller than humans, but everything else is the same; one can only say that cinematically, a fifteen-foot dude talking to a six-foot human would be hard to film. So that comparison is a wash as they work for each medium. As for the great and noble Tars Tarkas himself, well, Willem Dafoe gives a very nice performance, but sadly, because of the added Zodanga plot,ter in the movie isn’t given much backstory. In the book, Tars Tarkas is notable for being one of the few Tharks who has the rare ability to feel compassion, form friendships, and love towards others. He had a forbidden love affair that resulted in a child, which was incubated in secret (Like in the movie, Thark’s children are not raised by parents, as out of the hatchery, no one knows whose kid is whose), while off on a campaign, his lover was exposed and killed for the crime of unauthorized childbearing.  Even under torture, she never reveals who her lover was, and she was able to hide the child among the other newborns before she was executed. In the movie, Tars Tarkas is the Jeddak (head chief) of the Tharks, whereas in the book, he was a low-level chieftain, but he becomes Jeddak with the aid of John Carter.

Sadly, the movie Tars Tarkas is given no backstory. He does have a daughter, but he has kept his parentage a secret from his people, as well as from the girl herself. However, because the movie spends very little time explaining how Thark society works, it doesn’t come across as a significant deal. In the book, Tars Tarkas eventually challenges the Jeddak who murdered his true love, and when he defeats him, Tars Tarkas becomes Jeddak of the Tharks.  In the movie, John Carter kills the evil Jeddak who usurped Tars Tarkas, thereby restoring his friend to his throne. So basically, we get another “White man is better at everything” moment.

Willem DeFoe is Tars Tarkas.

Sab Than: In the book, Sab Than is just a minor obstacle on the way to true love, while in the movie, he is one of the chief villains that John Carter must defeat. In both the book and movie, Zodanga has been warring with Helium for ages. However, in the book, things didn’t go south due to any interference from magical Therns; instead, it was when the Helium navy went out to look for their lost princess and left the city vulnerable to a siege. Sab Than is barely a presence in the book; he is just the dude she agrees to marry to end the war. This occurs during the last third of the book, when Dejah Thoris believes Carter is dead, she marries Sab Than, and then John Carter turns out not to be dead, making things complicated. Carter immediately plans to murder Sab Than for the crime of marrying his beloved, but Barsoomian culture will not allow Dejah Thoris to marry a man who murders her husband so that plan is out. John Carter goes with the easy workaround by having his friend Tars Tarkas kill Sab Than in battle.

Dominic West is Sab Than.

Movie Sab Than is almost cartoonishly evil. When the Therns show up to rescue him in the middle of a battle he is losing, he shows them gratitude by turning the superweapon on the Therns themselves. That’s a dick move, dude, also very stupid.  It, of course, doesn’t work on the Therns, and he agrees to their aid in conquering Barsoom. Their plan involves him marrying Dejah Thoris and then murdering her on their wedding night. I think someone may have watched The Princess Bride. It’s hard to compare these two Sab Thans because the book version has almost no character at all, but as he is only a small part of the book he didn’t need much of one, while the movie Sab Than is your typical two-dimensional villain that we see all the time, but as he is one of the main antagonists in the movie he needed to be better written.

Matai Shang: The character of Matai Shang, as portrayed in the movie, represents the greatest departure from the books. In the film, the Therns are a mysterious, bald race of manipulators that move from planet to planet, controlling things from behind the scenes. They had discovered the Ninth Ray, which powers their weapons and teleportation devices. It was Dejah Thoris’s discovery of the Ninth Ray that had the Therns so eager to see her dead. This is not at all how the Therns operate in the book, and the Ninth Ray isn’t a weapon but rather the very thing that operates the Atmosphere Factory, which keeps Barsoom alive.

Mark Strong is Matai Shang.

The Therns do not appear until the second book in the series, The Gods of Mars, although A Princess of Mars makes references to aspects of the religion that the Therns are the head of. They are not the pale,ifters that we see in the movie. Now the Therns are bald, actually completely hairless, but they wear blonde wigs to hide this fact. Also, they are not pale, as in the movie, but Caucasian, like an Earthman. However, their appearance is a minor quibble compared to what the movie changes or leaves completely out. This leads us to one of the most intriguing elements of Edgar Rice Burroughs’s Barsoomian books, and that would be its very anti-religion slant.

White Apes in the Garden of Eden.

The Holy Therns and their churches promote that down the River Issus is the Barsoomian equivalent of Heaven. When one has reached 1,000 years of age or has just tired of living, they take a pilgrimage down the River Issus to the Valley of Dor where they would spend the rest of eternity in a land of plenty. A nice step up from the arid landscapes of Barsoom. A little wrinkle in this is that it’s all total bullshit as the Valley of Dor is no paradise but is, in fact, inhabited by ferocious white apes, and plant men that devour you immediately upon your arrival.  The Therns enslave those who survive these terrifying creatures.

Fighting the plant men in the Valley of Dor.

John Carter has a hard time exposing this evil society because to say anything against it is blasphemy and punishable by death, and if one were to escape the Valley of Dor and return home, that would also be considered a blasphemous act and one would be put to death. Even stranger is that Carter discovers the Therns themselves worship the Goddess Issus, who turns out to be a living, ancient Black Martian who rules over “The First Born,” a race most notable for being one of the oldest humanoid races on Barsoom. This race of black-skinned Barsoomians survives by executing pirate raids against the Holy Thern, taking their brightest and most beautiful subjects to be their slaves. So basically, religion on Barsoom is a giant pyramid scam and gives us quite the insight into how Burroughs himself thought of religion.

This certainly would have made a better movie. Sure, a plot about generic evil guys wanting to remove smarty pants princess so they can continue to play puppet masters with a bunch of one-note villains isn’t terrible. Still, wouldn’t an adventure where the hero exposes the world’s religion as a giant fraud be vastly more interesting?  Or maybe that’s just me.

I liked John Carter; it pays better homage to Burroughs than Lucas did in his Star Wars prequels, and it certainly didn’t deserve the box office drubbing it got, but if they had just trimmed up that terrible opening, and maybe gotten a little ballsier with the script, we could have ended up with a great franchise.  As for the cast I liked pretty much every actor in their perspective roles with the possible exception of Taylor Kitsch as John Carter, he wasn’t terrible but he just seemed a little too young for the part, and when standing next to James Purefoy who played the Helium soldier Kantos Kan I couldn’t help but think that Purefoy would have been the better choice to play Carter.  I’m sure the writing of the characters had something to do with it, but it seems to me that Purefoy was having a lot of fun with his role while Taylor, as John Carter, was not.

Woola, man’s best friend.

Special shout-out to Woola the Barsoomian dog, who befriends John Carter. In the book, he is an awesome beast that is loyal and fierce beyond compare, and generally just a kick-ass companion. While in the movie, he is the same thing. Every moment with this lovable hound in the movie was a joy to watch, and it’s a shame that the truncated version of Tharks in this movie doesn’t give us a sense of why Woola loves John Carter so much. Still, Woola is amazing in either version.

There you have it, my rather long-winded diatribe on John Carter and A Princess of Mars, I hope you found it, if not educational, at least a little entertaining.