The Worlds of Edgar Rice Burroughs

The worst thing that movies did to Tarzan was to make him sound stupid. Burroughs' Tarzan was quick to learn civilized languages as soon as the opportunity was afforded to him. He learned French first, from a man named Paul D'Arnot, who appears in more than one of the Tarzan books. Then he learned English, and I believe other languages.

Tarzan thus conforms to the style of Burroughs heroes who DIDN'T grow up in a jungle. Almost all Burroughs heroes are educated, literate, and refined in speech. Reading those novels as a boy probably contributed to my own ability to speak like an educated person. When I read "Lord of the Rings" for the first time ever, the character of Faramir made me think of Burroughs heroes because of the dignified way he talked.

To illustrate, here is a speech made by John Carter in "A Princess of Mars," addressing Martian barbarians who needed to be taught manners:

"I understand that you belittle all sentiments of generosity and kindness; but I do not, and I can convince your most doughty warrior that these qualities are not incompatible with an ability to fight." (And he did convince them, both with his sword and with his fists.)
 
Wow, epic, awesome!! I had no idea that anyone was doing a movie of the Mars/Barsoom series!! As for faithfulness to the books, what I saw in this trailer at least COULD be indicating a close adherence to the books. The only exception, in what can be seen, is the tediously predictable, politically correct Xena-fication of the heroine Dejah Thoris. Though it was not unheard of in Burroughs stories for women to have combat skills, he made it VERY clear that Dejah Thoris was NOT a fighter.
 
Copperfox said:
Wow, epic, awesome!! I had no idea that anyone was doing a movie of the Mars/Barsoom series!! As for faithfulness to the books, what I saw in this trailer at least COULD be indicating a close adherence to the books. The only exception, in what can be seen, is the tediously predictable, politically correct Xena-fication of the heroine Dejah Thoris. Though it was not unheard of in Burroughs stories for women to have combat skills, he made it VERY clear that Dejah Thoris was NOT a fighter.
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Disney finally made it after first having the rights in the 80s and then loosing it to Paramount (who had it in Development Hell for the rest of the 90s) , before it was picked up again by the Mouse. Interesting enough, Bob Clampett (a well know WB cartoon Director), actually was developing it as a Feature length animated film in 1933, before MGM pulled the plug:
http://jimhillmedia.com/alumni1/b/jim_korkis/archive/2003/06/03/1093.aspx
And here is the actual test footage:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1H2ZdSbyHhQ
 
I remember Bob Clampett, all right. He capped his career by giving us the very clever "Cecil the Seasick Seaserpent" cartoons on television.
 
Looking at Soldier's links led me to find other YouTube videos, appearing to prove that ANOTHER film adaptation of Barsoom had been made, with B-movie beauty Traci Lords cast as heroine Dejah Thoris!
 
Copperfox said:
Looking at Soldier's links led me to find other YouTube videos, appearing to prove that ANOTHER film adaptation of Barsoom had been made, with B-movie beauty Traci Lords cast as heroine Dejah Thoris!
Click to expand...
How interesting! I never thought another was attempted. I'll have to look at it in the morning!
 
John Carter as a veteran of the War on Terror? It has a certain appeal, albeit not what I would have expected. Also, I note that this "lesser" film definitely shows the Atmosphere Plant of Barsoom being restored to function. The first Barsoom novel ended with John Carter uncertain of whether he had succeeded in saving Barsoomian life or not. I am hoping that the newer movie WON'T "reconcile" the currently-known facts about Mars by saying that John Carter fails and everyone on Barsoom dies. I'm for the parallel-dimension approach.
 
Whether or not they go with that remains to be seen. For a lot of Mr. Burrough's work, I can see them using the parallel dimension or other world idea to explain the existence of such a place. People nowadays don't believe there's a world underground, or that life exists on Venus or Mars.
 
Moving to another aspect of Mr. Burroughs' work:

Though Burroughs was not much interested in real-world politics, his Amtor/Venus novels did feature political satire, sending up both communism and fascism. On the fascist side, he even had Venusian villains called "ZANIS." (Think about that, it'll come to you.)
 
Now the question with the John Carter of Mars movie is will they do a direct adaptation of the book ( and then go into 11 sequels) or take the superhero movie approach and select the best bits of the each of the books to make the film. In many was John Carter was an early predecessor for the comic book Superhero ( and was an inspiration to Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster in the creation of Superman.) so going the comic book movie route would have it's merits.
 
Besides not liking children in stories, Mr. Burroughs also did not like making language issues a very large part of plotlines. Both Mars (Barsoom) and Venus (Amtor) were depicted as having only ONE spoken language used all over the planet.

Oh, and speaking of political satire, Burroughs took a shot at the eugenics movement which was current in his lifetime, and which was boosted by abortionist "heroine" Margaret Sanger. On Burroughs' Venus, there was a nation called Havatoo where the people had been practicing a eugenics policy for many generations. It had benefits; the Earthman hero Carson Napier discovered that even the lowliest scrubwomen in Havatoo were beautiful, healthy, educated and creative. But the dark side was that anyone whom the rulers DIDN'T consider good enough--including Carson Napier!--was subject to being terminated.
 
Wanderer, thank you for unearthing this topic. Now I can repeat for all the world: THE JOHN CARTER MOVIE STINKS!!!!!!!!! They almost outdid Andrew Adamson at PURPOSELY RUINING the author's intent!
 
If it's not any trouble could you explain how they did that? I've read the book and I've seen the movie and I understand the plot was different, but how did the movie ruin the intent of the book?
 
In the BOOKS, John Carter was bold and self-confident. The FAKE John Carter in the movie whined and complained like a soap-opera character.

In the BOOKS, Tars Tarkas was the greatest warrior among the greenskins. The FAKE Tars Tarkas in the movie lost a fight to the dweeby villain Tal Hajus.

In the BOOKS, the conflict between good and evil was full of equal give-and-take fighting. For the FAKE John Carter movie, they made up super-duper we-can-do-anything-no-matter-what aliens who belonged in the final season of "The X-Files." Fake John Carter had to SNEAK UP ON one of them to kill him.
 
Hmmm, well maybe they were trying to make John Carter a little more relatable for people. We also don't know how the battle between Tars Tarkas and Tal Hajus went. For all we know Tal could've cheated by doing something like throwing sand into Tars eyes.

I do have another question about Edgar Rice Burroughs works: did he like to portray people as returning to a more primitive lifestyle? That's how it seems to me based on what I've read.
 
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