Dual Review: John Carter / A Princess of Mars, by Edgar Rice Burroughs/John Carter (the movie)

I should be finishing the last touches of my thesis draft, but I'll put that off to the very last second and publish this review real quick.  The book/movie review that follows is something of an experiment, partially suggested by my wife.  That is, I give her full credit for the idea of reviewing the book and the movie it is (loosely) based on together at the same time, and any flaws in the outcome I'll take responsibility for myself.  Thanks hunie!

Dual Review: A Princess of Mars / John Carter (the movie)

Source: Amazon.com

Part One: A Princess of Mars by Edgar Rice Burroughs 

For something science fiction-related that was written in the early twentieth century, I’d have to say that A Princess of Mars was pretty good. The main character, Mr. John Carter, was interesting, though far too heroic for my tastes. After all, I grew up in a more cynical age when heroes shouldn’t be flawless, or at least in an age when heroes stopped being cardboard cutouts - ala Sylvester Stallone and Arnold Schwarzenegger and what-have-you. You know what I mean? Who doesn’t remember some cheesy 80s movies where the hero does everything right and kills all the bad guys and saves the girl? And the chief bad guy is really sinister and cool? At least that was the day I lived in, as opposed to the muddled early 1970s, when movies were all about complex stuff.  Thank heavens for Star Wars, huh?

Ok, I’m almost getting off track here. Speaking of Star Wars, A Princess of Mars, and its lead character John Carter, have some attachment there, though not anything that I could say was directly lifted by old George Lucas. For instance, Carter does many Jedi-like tricks simply because he is from Earth and his body can do things on Mars that can’t be duplicated here, based on gravity there and so forth. Oh, and on the subject of our hero, Carter is a former Civil War veteran of the Army of Virginia, and a true genteel southern gentleman/soldier. There is a certain charm to that, and it came over well to me. It didn't hurt that the guy doing the audiobook reading did the accent fairly convincingly.


I found Burroughs understanding and use of some scientific concepts, such as the speed at which Mars turns and some other facts that were known at the time, to be in humorous contrast to some of the “wishful thinking” ideas that he uses. For instance, he describes Earth to be floating as a green jewel in the heavens. I recently had Mars pointed out to me in the night sky, and I can barely see it. The way Burroughs describes it, it sounds as though Carter can see Earth more closely than is actually possible.

Plus, the concept of "rays" that propel ships and allow mind reading and such are fun but far-fetched.  They are whimsical ideas, especially the flight on unknown rays, coming from a time when manned flight was in its infancy. And the concept that Mars is kept breathable by means of machinery. I’ve seen that one used again afterward, like in that movie Total Recall (I haven’t read the short story that movie was based on, but wouldn’t be surprised if the idea springs from there as well).  The atmosphere of Mars, or Barsoom as Carter comes to know it, is a major plot point in the book that you almost miss due to the side-track-like nature of the discussion.  Trust me, it comes in very useful to end the book.  The air gets real thin by the end, and I think this was a novel way for Burroughs to conclude things on a “wanting more” footing.  But I won’t ruin it completely.  Go read it yourself if you want to know more.

A few things I flat out didn’t like. Burroughs goes on so in his explanations and his descriptions and… well just in general.  I think I’m overly verbose most of the time, but he really put me to shame. However, his writing did have a certain crispness, and I liked his portrayal of action. It really kept me in the book.  On the other hand, the whole "white man’s burden" thing was kinda stereotypical. Of course that was a product of his time, but you always find yourself wishing people could rise above their native preconceptions, so to speak.

I like the dialogue, for the most part. I like "old style" speech personally. I find it interesting and appealing. People speak so colloquially these days, and it gets tough to understand what things mean, especially with the advent of “text-speech.” Granted, I talk pretty sloppily when I’m excited or otherwise find myself being overly obtuse, but I take pleasure in finer speech, which is what they used more often back then. At least in the writings from the period to which I have subjected myself, that is.  Having read some Jane Austin since I first typed this last sentence, I can say that Victorian era English is a bit convoluted for my tastes.  I suppose I should say that I like old-style speech if I can understand it clearly without having to think over the sentences repeatedly. 
Back to A Princess of Mars.  The inhabitants of Mars/Barsoom were imaginative.  The Green Men and the Red Men were well described. I just had to laugh at the "carnal lusts" of the Green men’s big bad boss guy. All the others are having kids through egg laying and sterile relations, and here is this big bad corpulent boss guy who can ravish with the best of them. Good thing Carter comes along and saves the day. Of course, from what I understand, Borroughs did a lot of that last minute save the girl thing, with cliffhangers and such. In fact, A Princess of Mars reminded me of Conan the Barbarian (the book). The style was kinda reminiscent.
I liked John Carter’s characterization as well, and his gentility and fighting spirit was enjoyable. As I said, I wished for a slightly more flawed character, but a through and through hero is not such a bad thing every now and then. In limited doses, mind you.  But the princess... I found her to be a bit too much of a woman of Burrough’s personal imagination. Not enough spunk. From what I’ve seen of the movie previews, it looks like they may have “de-damsel in distressed” her a bit, and that might help. Not too "self-made woman," but not such a "go save the princess" type. That’s for old skool Nintendo games and cheesy dollar paperback thrillas, ya know what I be saying? Ok, so I can throw out cheese and poor grammar with the best of them. Guilty as charged.

As a last comment on the book, I really liked the dog character, Woola.  Having watched the movie after reading the book, I was disappointed that they did such a good job doing the visuals of the creature, and such a poor job rendering its personality.  But… well after re-reading my review of the book for editing purposes prior to posting the entire review on the blog (I wrote the book review before seeing the movie, as I finished said book before seeing the film), I think I was a bit too harsh in places upon poor Edgar Rice Burrough’s work.  The movie convinced me that he really did a pretty good job.  I’ll get to that more in just a minute.

I understand that there are at least five more books in the John Carter book series after A Princess of Mars, and that they all follow a very similar plot line, so I won’t be bothering to read the rest. It isn’t that I’m not a little interested in following Carter’s adventures, after reading A Princess of Mars. I liked it well enough that I’d honestly read more.  But I simply don’t have time, when I look at my growing stack of books on my list to read for pleasure. And that doesn’t count all the other work that I should be doing too. If only time was a luxury, instead of a harsh task master.

Learn more about A Princess of Mars by Edgar Rice Burroughs, on Amazon.com


Part Two: John Carter

I’ll attempt here do a fairly quick review of the film with an eye toward personal interpretation and how faithful (or not) they were to the source material. The bottom line I should get out of the way right off is, was John Carter worth the price of admission? Yes, but not if you are going in with the expectation of seeing Burroughs fiction translated to the silver screen. And probably not full admission price.  Movies are so expensive these days, especially if they don’t deliver the goods, so to speak.  What I’m really saying here is: if you are going in with the expectation of seeing a Hollywood movie which, for all its glitz and excitement, falls short of the true essence of the original author’s vision, you won’t be disappointed.

Was the book better than the movie? Another relevant question, I should think. Yes, in my opinion, it was certainly better. After having spoken about many of my admittedly slim complaints about the book itself, you’d think I wouldn’t say that.  No, quite the contrary, I was sad that the Disney studio didn’t take a risk and give us more of Edgar Rice Burrough’s classic version, rather than an overly modernized take on the idea.
Ok, here’s the spoiler alert disclaimer. If you don’t want the movie plot ruined for you, skip to the bottom of the review.

Still with me? Ok, first off, the Tharks are not quite what I imagined. They seem too skinny and too short. I saw them in my mind as being much bigger. This is just the start of my gripes, and it gets worse. Much worse. The white apes of Mars, for instance, are huge! Not the 8 to 10 foot monsters of the book, but twenty or thirty feet at least. The encounter between Carter and the white apes in the book was good enough, in my opinion.  The scene that we get in the movies has them in the arena, which is not correct to my recall.  Maybe they were there, but the focus of the scene Burrough’s provides in the book is on Carter’s survival and his relationship with Kantos Kan, who we just met and who seems like a decent fellow.  In my opinion, the scene from Burrough’s story would have been fine. It is a kind of gladiator-like scene in which our hero battles to survive and get away.  You see, only the winner of the arena gets his life and freedom as a prize.  Disney’s version is a hacked take on the Attack of the Clones scene in which Anakin Skywalker, Padme and Obi Wan Kenobi are in the arena on Geonosis. That is what came to my mind, and I wasn’t thrilled.

What else? As mentioned briefly in my book review, Woola, the dog creature, is too friendly from the start. He is defensive and protective in the book, and only comes to love Carter after Carter has him spared after failing his task of guard “dog.”  This is a common theme in the movie.  Characters are very two dimensional for the most part.  And those who have more to them are incorrectly portrayed, such as Carter himself to some extent, and also the book’s titular princess of Mars, Dejah Thoris.  But I’ll get to them in a moment.

Let’s see. What else? The characters in general are too human. Burroughs does an excellent job of making you feel like you’re on a different world, even though it is admittedly a world based in some Earth stereotypes, such as the American West and Africa/The Middle East.  For instance, the Tharks (our Green Men of Mars) could have been so much more kick butt, but they come off like stereotypical neo-aliens. Far too relatable. In the book, they were truly alien, especially when taken in the context of how Burroughs viewed them (which would probably have seemed much more relatable to people from his time period) vs. how the book reads today.  With nearly a hundred years since A Princess of Mars was first published, there are things that seem even more alien to us because our culture has changed so much in the intervening years.  Also, and this is a fairly minor gripe but is applicable, the Tharks were dead-on shots in the book, but the movie has them missing their targets like any Hollywood-trained marksman.

What else? The "Red men of Mars" are only tattooed red. They are quite tanned, mind you, but their white-based skin color annoyed me. And they were too pretty.  The princess Dejah Thoris was too much of a “looker,” though I’d concede that she fit the ideal the Burroughs set out for. Her part as a scientist was also incorrect, though I can see the idea they were trying to weave together here.  Thoris is an intelligent and strong woman in the movie, whereas she was a diminutive in many ways in the book.  Not a complete wilting lily in Burrough’s book, but not a modern American woman by any means.  I complained about that in my book review a bit, but in point of fact, I found the modernization of the character to be more annoying than I’d have anticipated. It goes back to what I said about how Burrough’s writing seems more alien to us now since times have changed so much.  A more submissive Thoris would have been odder, and different was what I went in hoping for, I guess.  I’ll explain more in a moment. 

Oh, yes, and the vaunted “ninth ray” in the movie was common to all the races in the book. Dejah Thoris did not discover it. And back on that subject, as I have said, Thoris was not the damsel in distress that Burroughs wrote about so convincingly. I realize that modern audiences probably would have had a tough time relating to a nineteenth century Princess, but this twenty-first century woman was too modern in my opinion.  Ditto with Carter, who has been changed around by having an added hangup given him that he had a family on Earth that died during the Civil War.  Carter is portrayed as being more hung up on his cave of gold on Earth, and won't fight for what he knows is right on Barsoom.  No!  Carter, as I previously mentioned, is a true southern gentleman.  A hero of the aforementioned old-skool.  Heck, our book version of Carter doesn't even kill an enemy when he can, because he doesn't want to deprive Tars Tarkus of the opportunity since it is his place.  Read the book for the details.

Where else to point out the issues?  Well, the bad guys were stereotypical. The blue weapon that the Zadongan tribe of the Red Men get from the Therns was junk. I only read one book, but I don’t believe from what my wife said, who read a further four or five of them, that any such weapon existed. The Therns, a god-like race of aliens figures who are white and can go anywhere and be anybody were totally non-existent in the first book. They got tossed in haphazardly. Their part of the plot was clumsy in my opinion. Too Deus Ex Machina.  “We need big bad guys to make this story work,” some Disney exec said.  Thus, the Therns.

Speaking of the Zadongans, the Heliums weren’t as hostile toward them, as is the case with the movie characters. They are sworn enemies in the movie, but in the book Dejah Thoris actually gets along alright with the man she is stuck marrying for alliance purposes.  The big deal is that she doesn’t want to marry the guy; she wants John Carter.  And she is mad because he doesn’t understand Barsoom culture and customs enough to claim her, after having said she was his.  The book may have been old-fashioned, but the movie throws all this out in favor of simplification.  I won’t even bother to comment on the mysterious and quasi-hallucinogenic “Voice of Barsoom,” which when drunk, makes Carter able to understand what all these aliens are saying.  How convenient.

Ok, what did I like about the movie?  I’ve dumped on Disney pretty hard here, and I’d bet those who are still with me (and read the book) are agreeing.  What was good?  Well, the visuals were impressive.  This is two-edged though.  I saw the movie in 3D, which I think was appropriate for the material, though I actually preferred to see it in regular 2D.  That showing was earlier than we could manage.  So we saw it in 3D, and the experience did help, somewhat.  The flying ships really benefitted from the technology.

The problem with pretty computer-generated visuals, and I’ve said this before in other forums, is that they are a dime a dozen these days.  I like them well enough, but it seems somewhat cliché now.  You can make people believe they are seeing almost anything visually, but my gripe is that movie-makers have become lazy and left the “feel” of things out of the equation.  Hence my gripe that they over-modernized John Carter and failed to capture the spirit of Burrough’s work.  We see a different world, but it comes off gimmicky.  It didn’t have to be that way. 

I mentioned Star Wars in my book portion of this review.  Star Wars was a risk for Lucas and for Twentieth Century Fox.  The actors complained that the dialogue was nearly unspeakable.  The ideas were old, but they were done in such a way that nobody had really attempted before.  And the risk paid off big time.  My thought is that with John Carter, they filmmakers could have taken a risk that people were ready to see things in a non-typical way.  Typical, in that they changed the book so much to fit what we expect to see when we westerners go to the movies these days.  They had a story that was out-of-place, and they shoe-horned stuff into it that made it fit with expectations, to make money.  If it was too weird, they might lose money.  Strangely enough, I heard there was disappointment on that score, since the opening weekend brought in less millions than expected.  Might I pontificate further by saying that the movie might have been a real draw if they’d been able to make it something truly “new?”  Yes, I think I can safely say that.  Instead, we get something that people who have read John Carter books will feel is a cute cut-out, or at worst an insult, and the rest of the movie-going public will say is just another treadmill film in a long list of the type.  It does nothing new, and it suffers because of it.

Ok, enough on the movie.  I liked it well enough for what it was, to be honest.  But if you are doing a comparison, as I have been doing for this review… well, the movie falls terribly short.  It is a case once more of the book being better than the movie.  Too bad, as it had so much potential, and as my wife pointed out to me before I read the book, really had to wait for the advent of modern CGI technology in the film industry to portray some of its more fanciful aspects.  Too bad they didn’t hire as many story guys as they did computer guys to work on the thing.  Chalk one more up for Hollywood oversight.

Well, I've gone on long enough, and now I really need to finish the last touches on my Thesis and get on with the day.  Here is the parting comment:

Source: Jim Davis/Universal Press Syndicate via LOL Snaps.com

I loved Garfield when I was a kid.  As an adult, not as much (I understandably switched to Calvin and Hobbes).  But this one is pretty funny to me.  And it'd fit my reaction as well.  "Does he have a spear?!"  Hilarious.

P.S. I rather enjoyed this Dual Review thing, though it did take more effort than a regular review.  I might do more like thins in the future, if no one strenuously objects.  Comments to that effect are welcome.  Oh, and sorry for the formatting issues in this review.  Had some trouble with the paste-over from Microsoft Word, and don't have time to fiddle with them further.  Maybe I'll figure this stuff out, one of these days.