Edgar Rice Burroughs / John Carter movie

I just re-read the first five books in ERB's Martian series. I hear the movie will be based on the first one, "A Princess of Mars," with elements from the next two books. The trailer and the production stills look great, but some of the changes worry me. The "Red Martians," as an example, won't really be red (copper-skinned, to be more precise). They will be nice young white actors with red body tattoos, which is quite beside the point. ERB's Red Martians were descendants of the three original groups of Martian humanoids, the black, white and yellow people. When Barsoom (Mars, if you don't know the books) lost its oceans and became a harsh, dying world, the three groups mostly laid aside their differences and intermarried, so that their children would have a better chance of survival. (They would carry a greater variety of genes than "pure-bred" Martians of the original groups.) Now that "redness" is just a fashion statement, it's meaningless.

Yes, I know there are Green Martians, but their origin is more complicated.

There are also some other things, but that's the big one. Is anyone else planning to see "John Carter"? Oh, and some moron of a studio exec changed the title from "John Carter of Mars" because girls won't go see movies with Mars in the title.

Bicicletta wrote:There are also some other things, but that's the big one. Is anyone else planning to see "John Carter"? Oh, and some moron of a studio exec changed the title from "John Carter of Mars" because girls won't go see movies with Mars in the title.

Heard about that. What a TSTL thing to say. :/

I don't really have that movie on my viewing list, maybe later on DVD, because I didn't like Burroughs' Venus novels that much and never read the Mars series.