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.

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[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.