There are several scenes where hideous alien monsters battle the protagonists in sporting arenas. An average, rugged American bashing around the country and getting zapped into outer space may sound fairly innocuous, but when he lands on another planet and discovers that he has superhuman strength and agility there and he decides to fight for what is good and unite the world’s peoples and ultimately save it you get Superman! But Siegel and Shuster didn’t come up with Superman until 1932. In fact, for however pulpy and ludicrous a scribbler Edgar Rice Burroughs was, his work really changed the way America sees its heroes. One of the biggest problems with the movie John Carter is that so many of its elements seem derivative of things like Star Wars, Superman, and so much more. John Carter totally had an impact on American culture. John Carter may not have had the impact of Tarzan, but he’s still a great character. Tarzan is still his most well-known character. Burroughs would take perfectly masculine heroes to the darkest jungles, to the wild west, to Mars, to Venus, to the center of the earth, to dinosaur times, ad nausea. although I’m still rather partial to the hokey Johnny Weissmuller ones from the 1930s. Tarzan (also a product of 1912) has been adapted so many times with so many different visions, but all fall short. This may be the closest Burroughs adaptation ever made. Amidst the wash of fond memories of the smells of the attic of my boyhood and sitting in the old chair reading these Martian books, I was struck to my core. I was surprised by how much of the story remained intact. Frazetta is to Burroughs what Sir John Tenniel is to Lewis Carroll. Some images even bore the watermarks of the gnarly Frank Frazetta illustrations. A thousand past imagined battles and characters were alive and moving across the vast screen before me. As the images kept coming I was reminded of exciting passages ripped straight out of Princess of Mars (originally written in 1912). It felt like reading the old pulpy Burroughs’ books again. John Carter has been receiving mixed reviews at best and I think I can see why, but can I tell you something super dooper secret? I kinda really liked it. I must confess I was pleasantly surprised. All this to say I was fully prepared to see a cherished childhood memory tarnished. Douglas Adams and Edgar Rice Burroughs were the science fiction guys in my house growing up. I went into the theater expecting to be sadly disappointed as I had been when I saw The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (2005)-which I also saw opening day. I went to go see a mainstream movie on its opening night. So I did something which they tell me is rather unique for me.
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