Check out the latest update on the upcoming John Carter of Mars movie.
Man, I’d really like to see them do this right; but I’m a bit worried that the guy who’s going to write and direct it has so far been involved only with animated films (albeit really good ones) aimed primarily (though of course not solely) at fairly young audiences. Still, he seems to be saying the right things. Keeping my fingers crossed – all twenty of them ….
Addendum:
Okay, I just read this related story and now I’m more worried. The Frazetta approach is “stale”? Grrr ….
Addendum to the addendum: to me (and I suspect to many, perhaps most, ERB fans) the Burroughs world and the Frazetta look are inextricably intertwined. If the new movie looks radically different from that, then although it may be great, it won’t be the movie I’ve been waiting since age 11 to see — I’ll still be waiting.
The remark that the writer is “going to do what I remember [from the books] more than what they exactly do” is also less than encouraging.
The comments from those posts seemed to indicate thoughts similar to my own. I suspect that all it means it that there will be less nudity then a Frazetta piece.
The mix of CGI and live-action will probably look like Beowulf.
And doing what they can from memory is just a technique to cut down on script size, and ultimately movie run time. I’m sure they’ll revisit the text as the production chugs along.
The books actually have more nudity than the paintings; nearly all the characters in the books — both male and female, both human and alien — are naked nearly all of the time. But that’s not a feature of the books that I was expecting (or wanting) the movie to reproduce.
If they go the Beowulf route, I hope they do a better job of capturing realism in facial expressions.
Must be warm on that planet.
I’ll have to get around to reading some of those books one day.