Pixar moves forward with "John Carter" concept art, casting

SciFi Wire announced a short while ago that Andrew Stanton is hard at work on a second draft of his script for "John Carter of Mars", which the studio plans to release in 2012.

"John Carter of Mars" is based on Edgar Rice Burroughs' classic pulp adventure story A Princess of Mars (which you can download for free).

Over the past year, Stanton has indicated that he wants to move the John Carter character away from the Frank Frazetta characterization that has become so familiar to ERB fans over the past few decades. While this decision may unsettle hard-core ERB fans, I think Pixar has shown a clear ability to bring an interesting fresh perspective to the stories it develops. I'm willing to cut them some slack.

Edgar Rice Burroughs wrote A Princess of Mars as a four-part serial in 1912 and it was subsequently published in book form in 1917. Burroughs published 9 more John Carter of Mars books and his son John Colman Burroughs published an 11th book after ERB died in 1950 (JCB wrote the first story in the book, "The Giant of Mars").

Edgar Rice Burroughs planted clues in many of his books that helped tie his various 20th century heroes together. Hence, Tarzan went to Pellucidar, Carson Napier of Venus actually tried to reach Carter's Barsoom (Mars), as did Julian of "The Moon Men".

Philip Jose Farmer later drew upon ERB's heroic universe when he created the Wold Newton Universe (so named by Win Scott Eckert, who wrote the introductory essay on that site).

Andrew Stanton's plans for John Carter may alienate long-time fans of Edgar Rice Burroughs (many of whom closely associate the Frank Frazetta art style with ERB's fiction). ERB's heroes are often placed in a class with Robert E. Howard's classic pulp heroes like Cormac Mac Art, Kull the Conqueror, and Conan the Barbarian. Howard purists hate revisionistic changes to Howard's characters and they did not support the Kevin Sorbo film adaptation of "Kull the Conqueror" (actually, they weren't big fans of Dino de Lauentis' adaptations of the Conan character).

Kevin Sorbo fans weren't happy with "Kull", either, so the movie flopped. But purists don't always decide whether a movie franchise will be successful. While Harry Potter purists have been divided over the quality of the first three movies they seem to have fallen silent in the wake of the film franchise's success.

And I don't think many people remember just how much Tolkien purist opposition there was to the Peter Jackson interpretation of Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings (which has been extensively criticized for departing from the book in many ways).

If you want to know what Burroughs' John Carter was like, you should definitely read the books. The first few are available as free downloads from Project Gutenberg (see the link above). I feel that the fourth book in the series, The Chessmen of Mars was the best. The story follows the adventures of Carter's daughter, Tara of Helium, and the man who wants to become her husband.

Follow the "John Carter of Mars" movie discussions in our Pulp Authors Forum at SF-Fandom.


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