John Carter (2012) | Sci-Fi Saturdays

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You’ve never seen Mars looking like this!

John Carter adapts a one-hundred year old pulp story, utilizing all the modern visual effects tools available. The film is part Western, part sci-fi, and part action-adventure that revisits many classic tropes from stories past. It’s definitely worth revisiting if only as an example of the difficulty inherent in adapting beloved tales from different eras.

First Impressions

In the 1800s, an officious man informs a younger man that he has some sad news. Another man awakens, alone, in the desert. But not a desert of Earth. The man wearing a loin cloth and a scantily clad woman wield swords and direct energy beams across a dark cave. Flying ships and aliens are interspersed with titles that urge viewers to “find your destiny,” as a mix of alien and western imagery play out. Just who is John Carter?

Presented below is the trailer for the film.

The Fiction of The Film

A small prologue features a voice-over explaining that what we call Mars is really named Barsoom. It is being drained by the walking predator city of Zodanga, which is locked in a thousand-year war with the city of Helium. Three pale bald men, called Therns, provide Sab Than (Dominic West), the Jeddak (leader) of Zodanga, the ultimate weapon from the goddess Issus. This blue energy allows Sab to conquer enemies with ease. On Earth, in 1881 New York City, young Edgar Rice Burroughs (Daryl Sabara), called Ned by his uncle John Carter (Taylor Kitsch), arrives to find his uncle dead and a provided journal detailing his life. The journal opens in 1868 with Carter prospecting in the Arizona Territory.

Carter is recaptured by Colonel Powell (Bryan Cranston) for going AWOL from the US Cavalry. He escapes again and is pursued by Powell when they run into a tribe of Apache. Carter saves Powell, then takes refuge in a cave, where he finds a vein of gold near a spider emblem he has been seeking. They are attacked by a pale, bald man whom Carter kills. The man’s dying words activate a medallion which Carter touches, and while repeating the final word “Barsoom,” Carter is transported to another planet. He immediately has difficulty walking as his muscles and bones provide him increased strength and power on the lighter gravity of Mars. Carter is soon captured by a group of green, four-armed Martians called Tharks, led by Tars Tarkas (Willem Dafoe).

In the Red Martian city of Helium, Princess Dejah Thoris (Lynn Collins) explains a scientific discovery to her father, and Jeddak, Tardos Mors (Ciarán Hinds). The power of the blue energy in the Ninth Ray can help them defeat Zodanga. The device suddenly explodes (revealed to have been sabotaged by a Thern), and Tardos says the only way to make peace is for Dejah to marry Sab Than. At the Thark village, Tars is impressed by the tough spirit of Carter and makes him his right-hand man, named Dotar Sojat. When a battle between the Red Martians breaks out above the Thark village, Carter rescues Dejah and sends Sab packing. It is revealed that Sab is in league with the lead Thern, named Metai Shang (Mark Strong), who wishes to guide Zodanga in controlling the planet.

Carter, Dejah, and a female Thark named Sola (Samantha Morton) escape the village before another Green Martian, Tal Hajus (Thomas Haden Church), takes control. They sail down the River Iss to a spot where they discover a chamber powered by the Ninth Ray, which also controls Carter’s medallion. Dejah understands all that he has told her to be true (being from Earth and his mysterious arrival), but in order to make sense of it and help him return home, they must return to Helium. Outside, the group is attacked by the warrior race of Warhoon, led by Metai Shang. A ship captained by Kantos Kan (James Purefoy) of Helium rescues them, and Dejah is surprised to see Sab Than on board. He offers his life to Dejah in marriage.

Back in Helium, Carter finds the mystical phrase to return home, but rather than completing the journey, he decides to stay and help Kantos and the rest of Helium fight back. Carter is captured by Shang, who reveals the Thern’s eternal plan to set the course of history. Carter escapes from Shang, now understanding there is more at stake as the Therns will soon be coming for Earth. Returning to the Thark village, Carter is taken prisoner by Tal and sentenced to death in the arena, along with Sola, against giant White Apes. After defeating the Apes, killing Tal, and freeing a wounded Tars, Carter claims the role of Jeddak and commands the Green Martians to mobilize to fight for the city of Helium.

Just before Dejah weds Sab, the Tharks attack, and a giant battle ensues between Sab’s forces and the Helium/Thark contingent. Sensing defeat, Sab is about to expose the Therns to Carter when Shang kills the Jeddak of Zodanga. Shang escapes, allowing Carter to propose and wed Dejah in the aftermath of the battle. Happy, Carter tosses his medallion away prematurely. Shang returns and sends him back to Earth, locking him away from returning. Ned’s reading of the journal contains a 10-year search for caves with the spider emblem, hoping to find a way for Carter to return to Mars. When Ned attempts to enter the locked crypt holding his uncle’s body, a mysterious man appears but is killed by Carter–who is very much alive. He needed to draw a Thern out of hiding so he could grab his medallion and return “home” to take up a cause.

“If you had the means to save others, would you not take any action possible to make it so?” – Dejah Thoris

History in the Making

The John Carter film, released by Disney, is a movie with a long history and a short reception. It was released on the centennial of the release of the original story on which it is based, Edgar Rice Burroughs’ A Princess of Mars. It also marked the first time in those 100 years that the characters of John Carter graced movie screens (though not the first adaptation. There was a 2009 direct-to-video film entitled Princess of Mars with Antonio Sabato Jr. as a modern-day Iraq vet, and Traci Lords as Dejah Thoris). Carter was the last of the major pulp heroes to get a television series or film version, even though many of the elements from the novels of his adventures have been co-opted by other science-fiction works. The Barsoom series presents the world of Mars in a way unseen in the history of sci-fi film. There are no flying saucers and little green aliens. Instead, they are large four-armed green aliens riding on the backs of beasts of burden, and only one of the races of Martians depicted (with even more left unseen).

When John Carter was released, it was seen as a large flop by Disney due to its costly budget and lackluster box office performance. In many ways, like the adaptation of Dune before it, Carter featured a lot of exposition and terminology for audiences to grasp, who may not already be familiar with the source material. The title alone was changed from the source material and revealed nothing about the final story. Unless something else is known, films with titles like Jackie Brown, Forrest Gump, or Barton Fink could be any genre and any type of story. John Carter fits the same mold, appearing several years after a sports film titled Coach Carter, which could have led to additional confusion. The choice of choosing to drop the “of Mars” portion of the title could also be seen as a flaw in the marketing of the film. With the movie being based on the first story in the eleven-book Barsoom series by Burroughs, named Princess of Mars, one might assume that this title should suffice. It’s intriguing and indicates the sci-fi pedigree even for those lacking familiarity with the original stories. Reportedly, that title was rejected due to “market research” that the core audience–young boys–would not see a film with the word “princess” in its title. Further marketing choices dropped “of Mars” to give it a broader appeal and recognize the fact that at the beginning of the film, Carter is not the hero he would become for the rest of the stories. Only the end titles provide the full title, John Carter of Mars, promising further adventures that would unfortunately never materialize.

Genre-fication

The fourth planet of our solar system has always fascinated humankind, both scientifically and in fiction. Depictions of the red planet in fiction date back to the late 19th Century with stories such as H.G. Wells’ The War of the Worlds and the early 20th Century works by Edgar Rice Burroughs. The first film to depict travel to Mars was the plaintively titled A Trip to Mars (1918), but it wasn’t until the 1950s with titles like Rocketship X-M (1950), Flight to Mars (1951), and The Angry Red Planet (1959) that audiences started traveling to Mars on a regular basis. These were rooted in the science of space travel, as humans set off to explore their surrounding universe. In this timeframe, there were also dozens of alien invasion films, like The War of the Worlds and Invaders from Mars (both 1953), featuring creatures from the fourth planet trying to take over our planet. Early 21st-century approaches to the planet include both Mission to Mars and Red Planet (2000), plus Ghost of Mars (2001), all with an increasingly scientific and science-related bent. John Carter railed against these depictions, choosing to fall back to the 19th-century setting of the Old West in a post-American Civil War timeframe. The Mars of the film is only technologically superior from the standpoint of the 1880s. There are flying ships, giant automated walking cities, and magical Ninth ray powered technology, but nothing that feels like modern science-fiction. It has a near-Steampunk feel to the designs, without embracing that style completely. John Carter has more in common with Cowboys and Aliens in this way than it does with recent off-world sci-fi films like Moon or Avatar.

From a genre perspective, a lot of the things that John Carter gets dinged for in terms of sci-fi tropes are things that John Carter of Mars and his related stories innovated in the early 20th Century. For modern viewers of the film who may lack a historical context, the film really does seem to be borrowing from a lot of other stories and films. And in the context of a movie from 2012, that’s certainly true. For starters, the frame story of John’s nephew Ned arriving in New York to find his Uncle deceased and being presented with a journal of John’s exploits on Mars, concluding with him discovering that Carter is not dead, owes a lot to the frame story from George Pal’s The Time Machine. Both films tell the main narrative as a flashback being read by a second party: Filby in The Time Machine, and young Ned in this film. The conceit (of both the film and the original books) is that stories of Carter’s adventures are true, and imparted to the real world as science-fiction stories by his nephew, revealed to be Edgar Rice Burroughs. The Time Machine, as well as Time After Time, both feature fictional versions of Herbert George Wells, who invents a time machine, using his adventures as a fictional narrative for his real-world books. But by far, the film series that is referenced the most appears to be the Star Wars films. Aliens, magical weaponry, princesses fighting evil Empires, and a lone hero who is unready to be a hero all factor in both. Viewers may see other immediate similarities, from the apparent speeder bike chase (Return of the Jedi) of Carter escaping the city of Helium, to the desert arena battle against large monsters (Attack of the Clones) in the village of the Tharks. Throw in aspects from Flash Gordon and Dune, and audiences may feel that John Carter is too derivative of other works. The truth, of course, is that John Carter (the book series) established a lot of these tropes decades prior to these other works, which makes for a fun and circular connection between these story elements.

Societal Commentary

John Carter also gets unfairly criticized for presenting the white savior trope, the plot of a story that is 100 years old. This type of story includes a white protagonist helping or rescuing non-white characters from dangerous situations, eventually being welcomed into the non-white community. Historically, this has included films like Lawrence of Arabia, Dances With Wolves, and Amistad, but also includes genre films like Dune, Avatar, and The Matrix. This is obviously a conscious choice by the filmmakers, but also one that, if altered, would change the nature of the original John Carter stories. They were created at a different time, when stories were written by mostly white men that portrayed different races in something that was less than polite. The film does play down a lot of the elements that might be in the books, even making a case for a strong female protagonist–within the bounds of the story. Dejah Thoris is introduced when Carter saves her, but she ends up saving him right back. Her strength is on display as a leading scientist in the Red Martian community, and her willingness to speak out against the evils of Zodanga. Yet her character still falls prey to the trappings of being a damsel in distress, forced to marry a man she doesn’t love (and the villain of the film), and still falling in love with the stranger from a strange world. It’s a modern film attempting to present antiquated, romantic views of swashbucklers and saviors.

But on a more positive side, John Carter is about rekindling the will to live and finding something positive to believe in. As the story progresses, the audience learns of the deaths of Carter’s wife and daughter. His alienation and rebellion towards the Cavalry are directly related to the guilt he feels for leaving his family, which allowed them to be massacred. He is a man who has lost all he cares about and, in response, has lost his will to live. Like the character of Charlie in last week’s review of Real Steel, who started a downward spiral after being unable to box, Carter starts a descent into reckless living after his wife and daughter are killed, not caring if he lives or dies. The fantastical transport of him to Barsoom provides him with a distraction from that pain and presents a cause that he can truly rally behind. He is a man who, deep down, cares about the plight of the less fortunate and downtrodden. Being on Mars allows him to take his antiauthoritarian behavior and direct it towards the Therns, who choose to rule society arbitrarily. All the better for him, since if he had stayed on Earth, he may have ended up killing someone in the Army and further destroying his life.

The Science in The Fiction

Burroughs’ Mars is a planet fully formed with multiple societies, cultures, religions, and fantastic (yet alien) technology. From the non-human Tharks, who live like noble savages in the wilderness using spears and arrows, to the humanoid ruling class of Red Martians in the cities of Helium and Zodanga, who utilize technology bridging on magic, a complex world is built as the backdrop to this epic tale. In some ways, it may be overly complex, relying on dozens of words to describe the alien planet, its social hierarchy, and its cultures. To the uninitiated, this becomes a burden and a roadblock in the way to understanding and appreciating the larger story. While it’s a lot to take in, these elements are all part of Burroughs’ story of a man whisked away to battle that he has no initial stake in. Carter enters into the fray with superhuman powers, which all sides would like to exploit or terminate for their gain. As a man born and raised on Earth, his muscles are more attuned to the higher gravity of that planet. On Barsoom, he is able to leap extraordinary heights and lengths with ease, making it look like flying in some instances, and has increased strength in order to battle some of the ferocious beasts. It’s an interesting scientific premise in a film that is replete with more fantasy elements than actual science-fiction.

John Carter also tries to explain some other fantastical science, but only in the way that a man from the late 19th Century may understand it. Carter is transported to Mars using the Thern technology. How it occurs is a bit of a mystery, but based on the deciphering of Thern glyphs that Dejah reads, he is a copy of his self from Earth. He refers to it as being telegraphed to the planet. However it occurs, Carter’s body remains on Earth, apparently dead, while another body is created on Barsoom and his consciousness is transferred into it. It’s like the transporter problem, where instead of an object being scanned and destroyed on a transporter pad to be rebuilt in another location, the original is never destroyed, and a clone of the object is created. Not only is his transport a metaphor for his death on an Earthly plane, but it becomes the creation of his new life in a new world.

The Final Frontier

Disney seemingly tried to do everything in order to get John Carter to appeal to the widest audience. They put something in for everyone, from scantily clad women, shirtless men, action and adventure, a comedic sidekick (both to an extent with Tars but definitely with Woola–the Martian ‘dog’). It’s unfortunate that sometimes the film feels like it’s ticking off boxes of things that should be included instead of finding the necessary story beats to drive the film forward. The element that still tickles my side is the ongoing joke of Tars continually refers to Carter as Virginia (Voor-geen-ya, as he pronounces it). This comes from John introducing himself as John Carter of Virginia, and being misunderstood by the Green Martian. To hear Willem Dafoe say the line is just so funny!

This was the first, and only, live action film to date for director Andrew Stanton. He is still primarily known for his work on multiple Pixar animated films, including the writer on Toy Story and A Bug’s Life and the director for Finding Nemo and WALL-E. This was also the only film in a John Carter franchise, which is disappointing. The Burroughs novels, while dated, contain a lot of fun action and adventure moments that could rival many of the other pulp heroes that have had multiple adaptations into film. Characters like Buck Rogers, Flash Gordon, The Shadow, Tarzan, The Lone Ranger, and Doc Savage all stem from the early 20th Century and the pulp magazine explosion, and have had multiple attempts to translate them into moving pictures. While films or television series have been made with all these characters, their adaptations into modern entertainment does prove tricky. As explained with elements of John Carter, many of these stories originated close to a century ago and are made up ideas and cultural portrayals that no longer match society’s norms. It takes some effort to alter them accordingly while still keeping the appropriate flavor that caused fans to enjoy them in the first place. There could still be a place in modern film for the hero of John Carter, it just takes some patience to discover the best way to achieve it.

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