More information on "John Carter of Mars" movie

Additional cast information has been provided about the "John Carter of Mars" movie, which is scheduled to start filming in Utah next month (November 2009).

You can stay on top of the latest developments at SF-Fandom's John Carter of Mars movie discussion, too.

Here is the latest cast rundown provided by IMDB:

• Lynn Collins ... Dejah Thoris


• Taylor Kitsch ... John Carter


• Willem Dafoe ... Tars Tarkas


• Mark Strong ... Matai Shang


• Dominic West ... Sab Than


• Thomas Haden Church ... Tal Hajus


• James Purefoy ... Kantos Kan


• Daryl Sabara ... Edgar Rice Burrows (Burroughs)


• Samantha Morton ... Sola


• Polly Walker ... Sarkoja

Several Web sites are reporting or speculating that Tal Hajus is a "would-be ruler" of the Green Men. In the book he IS the Jeddak of Thark, the tribe of Green Men who capture John Carter and Dejah Thoris. Tars Tarkus eventually kills Tal Hajus and succeeds him as Jeddak of Thark.

Those same sites also speculate that the first three books in the series may be compressed into one movie because of the inclusion of characters like Matai Shang. While that is certainly a possibility, word is that Stanton may actually produce two sequels, so we'll have to wait and see what happens.

It's almost guaranteed that some changes to the story and world of Barsoom will occur in the transition from book to big screen but so many people have been waiting for this project to happen I think that there is a lot of room for creative tolerance. I hope so.

And one more thing -- if you read anywhere that Taylor Kitsch has been doing cocaine on the set of this movie -- don't believe it. How could he be doing that if the movie hasn't started filming yet? Some people just like to start silly rumors and that is all it is.

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Willem Dafoe to play Tars Tarkus in John Carter movie

This is old news by the time you read it, but Willem Dafoe has accepted the role of Tars Tarkus in the upcoming "John Carter of Mars" movies. Some fans have expressed reservation over the use of Dafoe in this role, but I think he is exactly the kind of actor who can carry the character.

Either they'll redefine what the Green Men of Barsoom look like or they will use CGI technology to make the actors look like 12-foot-tall, four-armed humanoids from the books. Tars Tarkus has to be a strong, powerful character. The audience has to believe that a true leader of the Green Men becomes Carter's best friend on Mars. I think Willem Dafoe is a good choice to fulfill that role.

His work in the "Spider-man" movies also provides me with hope that there may be a franchise in the making. If the first movie is successful then there is surely room for more to follow -- and Dafoe having already participated in a fantasy movie franchise seems a good choice for another.

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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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MovieWeb shares sneak peek at Pixar's "Up"

Now we can see what Pixar has been working on:

Up Sneak Peek.

Looks sort of interesting but what is with the pseudo-LEGO structure of the characters? Is there an inside joke going on with this movie? Or are they just experimenting with new dimensions in computer animation?

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