jcm

[reverancepavane]

Just saw John Carter in glorious 2D. [They put the 2D sessions on at the most inconvenient times (I believe that the closing credits are the only part of the film where you get any actual benefit from 3D - all the rest is CGI modified 2D).] Great film. Makes me want to ressurect my Martian D&D game (although that owes slightly more to Michael Moorcock's Mars trilogy than Edgar Rice Burroughs). It hewed relatively closely to the spirit of the books, produced, written, and directed by someone who plainly loved them and wanted the experience to be as authentic as possible. And the good news is that there is a new costume idea for all the Slave Leias, that being Wedding Dress Dejah. That only leaves the Carson of Venus series untapped.

Comments

[doushkasmum.livejournal.com]

I thought the film was very true to the spirit of the books 8-> I liked the fact that the film Deja has a brain and a good sword arm 8-> the pretty princess standing around being alternately kidnapped and rescued is much less interesting.

[reverancepavane.livejournal.com]

"Perhaps you had better stand behind me."

Well yes. That's what makes them interesting. It's why I'm addicted to heroines. <grin>

It's interesting to work out when women stopped being competent in the movies. I suspect it was the very early 1960s.

[reverancepavane.livejournal.com]

It also remind me of a PC princess in my old fantasy campaign who got kidnapped by orcs (their version is "rescued from assassins"), who ended up becoming the Queen of the Orcs. They just knew a good thing when they saw it. [She also might have had a few daddy issues - and it helps equalise the playing field if you are the leader of a barbarian horde when your father is the Golden Emperor.]

Ah. Nostalgia.

[angharad-gam.livejournal.com]

Andy is watching it right now, and not enjoying it to judge from his texts (yes, he has his phone on in the movies, naughty boy). But then I don't think he is familiar with the books...

[reverancepavane.livejournal.com]

I do admit that it all brought a tear to my eye.

Lightflyers. Radium rifles. Tharks. I like how they kept the fact that Carter was an ex-Confederate who got chased into a cave by the Apache, and that the books were written by his cousin. All good stuff and true.

There were bits that drew from other books beyond Princess of Mars, and some additions and changes, som of which could cause a lack of gruntlement, but overall it was a good film.

Who wouldn't want to go adventuring on Barsoom (especially given the advantages you face if you come from Jarsoom/Earth)?

Anyway, do please mention why Andy dislikes it as I'm interested in how it's getting this negative press.

[angharad-gam.livejournal.com]

I've only ever read one of them myself, and I think it was one of the later ones.

I think he found it a bit stereotypical (and I'm guessing if you don't know and love the background the fact that it's so old probably means it seems stereotypical now, where once it was groundbreaking), and maybe a bit slow/tame. He thought it would be okay for kids (and being a Disney movie suspected it may have been made with a slightly younger audience in mind).

Also he did not like the lead actor much.

[reverancepavane.livejournal.com]

I wouldn't say it was ever a ground-breaking work, but it was classic sword and sorcery. Even if the sorcery in this case is Science! And that genre is badly out of style.

You've made me think about how much my knowledge of the books aided my appreciation of the movie. Probably a lot. The bits I didn't like were the bits where the greatest liberty had been taken, whilst the bits I appreciated the most were the bits that were surprisingly faithful to the books.

[shadow-5tails.livejournal.com]

Sounds fun.

(Except for the having to fight to find a 2D session, which has pretty much turned into Yet Another Reason why we don't bother seeing things at cinemas.)

I'm glad to hear that it manages to capture the spirit of the books, and presumably to reflect the affection that its writer/director had for them. D'you think it assumes knowledge at all?

[reverancepavane.livejournal.com]

I suspect that is in fact why a lot of people didn't enjoy it. I could instantly identify the elements when they appear - John Carter, Barsoom, Tharks, Lightflyers, Dejah Thoris - and immediately place them in the proper context. On the other hand if you weren't familiar with the books/milieu you'd have to wait until the context was explained, and from memory it wasn't explained very well.

Doing that for Game of Thrones worked because it was a TV series and there were ready web supplements to allow you to identify the players. But people don't expect to have to work in a cinema (or rather don't get the option to do so).

The plot was simple and cliche in the extreme, but than it is over 100 years old and the fiction that helped create the Planetary Romance genre, so it is only to be expected. But then you aren't looking at the film to produce something new, you want a return to the old Republic serials in this genre, where embracing the plot is the important aspect.

It was a mistake trying to realise it in 3D. I suspect it actually took away audience.

[shadow-5tails.livejournal.com]

Interesting. I haven't read the books (and I had no idea they were that old! Wow...), but the cat-thing has - albeit long enough that he thinks he won't be at an advantage over me when we see the film. I guess there's one way to find out...

And yeah, the Google Things Up/Watch The Supplementary Material approaches tend to be frowned upon in a cinema. *snerk*

But don't you know? 3D is the Next Big Thing! *small rude noise*

[reverancepavane.livejournal.com]

Princess of Mars 1912.

Of course Disney has produced a new book, John Carter, with a 2012 copyright. Now if I were to do a Burroughs Mars with tharks and the like I bet Disney would say I am infringing on their John carter copyright. [The ERB Foundation is currently using misapplied trademark law to try and protect their legacy, citing that the use of these characters by a comics company is bringing their trademarks into disrepute (unlike copyright, trademarks only expire when they are no longer in use or no longer defended).

A friend produced a Planetary Romance based on Mars and immediately got a cease and desist order from the ERB Foundation, despite the fact that it was actually a quite common setting with lots of precedents, and there was nothing directly linking the work to Burroughs. His response was an inquiry as to how the ERBF lawyers had obtained the work, since he had records of who he had sold it to, and wished to find out how they had obtained an obviously pirated copy. Never heard from them again.

I do admit I liked it because it was a Planetary Romance (in the old term of Romance being adventure), with the added romancing a quite impressive princess (expert swordswoman and head of the Helium Academy of Sciences). As such it appeals to the people wanting to escape from society (or that just don't fit in). Someplace where one can be free to be a hero, and maybe even get the girl in the end. So the feeling of freedom involved in actually vicariously reaching Mars was quite profound.

I don't mind 3D if it is done properly (such as was the case with James Cameron's Avatar). Which means you use back-plane projection to add depth, rather than gimicks of trying to bring stuff into the front-plane. And you shoot it as 3D, rather than convert it from 2D in post-production. But cinemas see it as a method of getting people back into the cinema and being charged 1/5th of the price of Mass Effect for 1/100th of the entertainment time spent. The problem is their high prices are what is killing them.

If you do see it, tell me what you think.