The Spy Who Dumped Me

[Ron Donohue]

I must be the odd man out.  I have all of the John Carter Warlord of Mars books by Edgar Rice Burroughs, and never saw the movie.  The books were not great, nor supreme accomplishments of using fiction to teach science, but they were good old fashioned escapist stories.  I am biased, but my gut is that the people who saw the movie and never read the books got the short end of the stick, as is often the case when stories travel from pages to the screen. Of course, I am an old stick in the mud that seldom watches movies.

[CUJO]

I must be the odd man out.  I have all of the John Carter Warlord of Mars books by Edgar Rice Burroughs, and never saw the movie.  The books were not great, nor supreme accomplishments of using fiction to teach science, but they were good old fashioned escapist stories.  I am biased, but my gut is that the people who saw the movie and never read the books got the short end of the stick, as is often the case when stories travel from pages to the screen. Of course, I am an old stick in the mud that seldom watches movies.

Whaaat?? John Carter was a book first? LOL

[Miracleman]

I liked John Carter, its good for Pizza Night.
 

[SpineyNorman]

I cut my nerd teeth on the Barsoom books and when you replace the racism and misogyny of the time what you get is a problematic but ripping adventure story (I believe the technical term is planetary romance) destroyed by Phantom Menace layers of overly complicated bullshit. Traveling Cities my ass...bah, acres of henna tattoos...bah again. Replacing the correct title "A Princess of Mars" with the meaningless John Carter was marketing idiocy at best so you get a shitty movie with a title no one who hadn't read the books understood.

Bad choices all around led to a film that became a dumpster fire of epic proportions . Confusing nonsense to those unfamiliar with the source material and a bitter disappointment to those that are.

John Carter sux bawls...


I have spoken.

[Niloc]

There also isn't a Matrix, Time Travel isn't real, there are no space wizards, There's no buried pirate ships is Astoria, etc. etc.

I'll suspend disbelief if the story is good. The only time I get pissy about realism is if the movie presents itself as serious/realistic like Ad Astra otherwise if you want Time Traveling Cyborgs or whatever.. i'm down as long as it's fun.

But I agree most people probably aren't aware of something like John Carter of Mars because people today only know toys and video game mascots. What can you do.

What I'm saying is, if it takes place in a setting that people are already familiar with, but things are different than they know them to be, that requires at least a minimal amount of explanation. On the other hand, if the story takes place in a wholly-invented fantasy world, then little to no explanation is needed.

The Land of Oz - why are things like that? They just are, it's a place you've never heard of before the story and that's what it's like.

Star Wars - same thing, they specify right at the start "A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away..."

But if you're gonna set the story in "the real world" that people know, but things are very different, you need a reason. It's the future. Aliens opened a dimensional gateway. Someone invented a time machine and now everything is all screwy. Whatever it may be, but it requires at least a basic story explanation.

The big difference is that when the John Carter stories were originally written, Mars was totally fair game for whatever. We knew it existed, it was a planet, and... that's about it. Some basic telescope photos but all pretty blurry, and not much else. It could be ANYTHING on that planet, so go nuts with the story.

When the John Carter movie came out we're already well into the Mars Rover program. The general public knows it's NOT like what is depicted in the movie and the vast majority of people have never heard of John Carter of Mars before, don't know it's based on books published quite a long time ago, and so on. They don't try to explain away the disconnect, and that's a problem.

There are other problems too; he can jump really far because of his Earth-strength... higher gravity, fair enough, but that doesn't seem to translate into any other form of strength or power for some reason...

[Niloc]

if you say john carter was based on a crappy book , and the author knew nothing about mars... then i will move my rating for john carter up one notch .

No one knew anything about Mars when the books were written. Just that it was another planet.

Problem is that when the movie came out we knew a lot more about Mars, and the John Carter books were mostly forgotten.

[number six]

What I'm saying is, if it takes place in a setting that people are already familiar with, but things are different than they know them to be, that requires at least a minimal amount of explanation. On the other hand, if the story takes place in a wholly-invented fantasy world, then little to no explanation is needed.

The Land of Oz - why are things like that? They just are, it's a place you've never heard of before the story and that's what it's like.

Star Wars - same thing, they specify right at the start "A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away..."

But if you're gonna set the story in "the real world" that people know, but things are very different, you need a reason. It's the future. Aliens opened a dimensional gateway. Someone invented a time machine and now everything is all screwy. Whatever it may be, but it requires at least a basic story explanation.

The big difference is that when the John Carter stories were originally written, Mars was totally fair game for whatever. We knew it existed, it was a planet, and... that's about it. Some basic telescope photos but all pretty blurry, and not much else. It could be ANYTHING on that planet, so go nuts with the story.

When the John Carter movie came out we're already well into the Mars Rover program. The general public knows it's NOT like what is depicted in the movie and the vast majority of people have never heard of John Carter of Mars before, don't know it's based on books published quite a long time ago, and so on. They don't try to explain away the disconnect, and that's a problem.

There are other problems too; he can jump really far because of his Earth-strength... higher gravity, fair enough, but that doesn't seem to translate into any other form of strength or power for some reason...

I guess we're just different on that.

I really don't care what a straight-up Fantasy movie does with it's plot as long as it's good. I have this one rule with movies.. You have to give a film it's premise. If you can't then don't even bother because you probably won't like it.

Sometimes that does involve "going" with a silly premise but once again the ends justify the means (or don't, but thats a different problem rather than the premise usually)

[number six]

No one knew anything about Mars when the books were written. Just that it was another planet.

Problem is that when the movie came out we knew a lot more about Mars, and the John Carter books were mostly forgotten.

Most Fantasy books before Tolkien are pretty much forgotten.

I'd imagine most kids only know Conan through the video games.. if they know who it is at all.

[HammysHangout ( Hammy )]

What are these "books" you speak of? is that like some kind of door stop? or paper weight of sorts?

[Marshall]

What are these "books" you speak of? is that like some kind of door stop? or paper weight of sorts?

Well... "Good engineers keep thick authoritative books on their shelf. Not for their own reference, but to throw at people who ask stupid questions.”