Edgar Rice Burroughs: John Carter of Mars

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An artist's conception of John Carter

As some my readers are sure to know, Edgar Rice Burrough's (ERB's) John Carter of Mars story has been made into a movie; we went to see it just a couple of days ago.

It was spectacular in many ways, though anyone who knows the least bit about science will be well aware that ERB wrote fantastical stories that had absolutely no basis in science, and the John Carter stories are no exception; in fact, they're more fantastic than almost any of the other ones.  (His stories about journeying to the center of the Earth may come a close second.)

The movie stars actors not familiar to me: Taylor Kitsch as John Carter, Lynn Collins as Dejah Thoris, Willem Dafoe as Tars Tarkas (a member of a Martian humaniod species which has four arms), and Samantha Morton as Sola, the daughter of Tars.

[To be slightly continued heh heh heh ...]

OK.

Movie conception of John Carter and Dejah Thoris

The story is of the "This diary has come into my possession, and the facts recounted therein are so fantastic as to defy belief ..." variety; in fact ERB is a master of the genre.  So, at any rate, brother John Carter, a Confederate soldier, finds himself magically --mysteriously, rather, because ERB believed that scientific forces existed that he did not understand, and which therefore could be invoked ad libitum-- transported to the planet Mars, which, in the story, is called Barsoom by the residents.  ERB must have sincerely believed that the Martian gravity was vastly less than that of Earth, and this is one of the chief conceits of the story: John Carter, having been born and raised on Earth, with its heavy gravity, was immeasurably stronger and had a denser body than the native Martians of most species.

A piece of sculpture representing Dejah Thoris

At the outset, Carter cannot understand the native speech of the Martians whom he meets almost immediately, but that is rectified by being fed some milk-like substance by his captors, specifically by Sola, a female of the race of Tars Tarkas, a green-skinned humanoid with four arms, and two legs.  Tars Tarkas, had encountered John Carter soon after the latter arrived on Mars, and somehow taken him into custody.  Sola's action (in giving Carter the means of understanding their language) complicates Tars Tarkas's plans for Carter, but they are each won over by the other's good points, and John Carter becomes essentially one of their fighters, albeit on probation.

Meanwhile, in another part of the planet, we find that there is a civilization of people who are almost human, a species essentially indistinguishable from Earth humans (except for their wild tattoos), and in the original novel, the conjecture is that they were actually descended from stock from Earth.  A being with super powers (called a Thern) is manipulating the rulers of two nations to make a marriage between the daughter of one ruler and the other ruler.  The girl, Princess Dejah Thoris, is vehemently opposed to the plan.  Dejah T. is not only a single-minded girl of action and a fair fighter, she is also a scientist.  She has just discovered a light frequency that has magical powers, but one of the Thern (who are shape-shifters) manages to sabotage her experiment.

Dejah Thoris before the Wedding

In Edgar Rice Burroughs's inimitable style, John Carter and Dejah Thoris meet, and after many amazing adventures, manage to --temporarily-- defeat the Thern who is trying to unite the two nations by the political marriage of Deja and the enemy ruler (whose name I forget).

The movie is worth watching, simply for the sake of the visual beauty of it.  John Carter and Dejah Thoris are certainly quite a handsome pair of protagonists, but the fauna of Mars has been represented graphically in beautiful detail.  There is a dog-like creature Woola, a pet of Sola, who is particularly cute.  Furthermore, there are aircraft that are powered by sunlight, which are amazingly graceful.  Unfortunately, I was not able to tell the aircraft of the good guys from those of the bad guys.

Woola

So there you have it: one thumb enthusiastically up.  Most times, we would like to see movies that are a little more scientifically plausible.  This one belongs squarely in the same category as X-Men and Incredible Hulk, and so forth.  In fact, exporting the scenes of incredulity to Mars seems almost unfair and unforgivable.  Why not invent an alternate universe where these things happen?  Unfortunately, Edgar R. Burroughs has the copyright, and we've got to stick with the script.

Dejah Thoris was portrayed in ERB's time (and in subsequent reprints of his fantasy novels) as a scantily-dressed young woman, sometimes more of an ornamental type, and sometimes as a forceful young woman who was no shrinking violet.  Rice Burroughs himself described her as not being heavily clothed; none of his protagonists were very much into modest dress.  Somehow, the movie designers have chosen, in my opinion, a reasonable style of costume for the story; the humans are all heavily tattooed, and dressed more for action (with the exception of the shawls and cloaks some of them wore) than for warmth.  The implication was that Mars is a hot place.  (The same was true of how ERB represented Africa in his Tarzan novels.)  The image that follows compares an artist's impression of Dejah Thoris, with the movie representation.  The movie costume is clearly a plausible one, combining the sort of body ornamentation that we would, at the present time, imagine in a savage society, without the gratuitous near-nudity that artists for book covers depicted as a means of selling their product.

[Added later:
It turns out that the entire book "A Princess of Mars" is available online, for free.  In the story, Rice Burroughs describes Dejah Thoris as wearing only body ornaments, and being otherwise absolutely naked.  Nowadays, of course, we are able to pack quite a lot of excitement into a movie without going to the extreme of complete nudity.  As a result of this eccentricity on the part of the author, I wouldn't be surprised if he lost a great many women readers who just did not have time for that sort of silliness, but might have been sympathetic to the character of Dejah Thoris as represented in the movie.  The movie is an immense improvement on the original in many details, though it does bring out some of the implausibility of the story in many ways.]


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