Jan and I had a lovely drive up the coast to Portland, Maine.
We arrived there in time for, sadly, an indifferent sea food dinner, and as we found no live theater to our taste, to take in a movie.
Jan indulged my childhood inspired desire to see John Carter, despite the fact it had already bombed at the box office and it was a small miracle it was showing at a first run theater.
In my youth I read all the Barsoom novels, indeed pretty much everything Edgar Rice Burroughs had written, save most of the Tarzan novels, which I didn’t particularly care for, even though I liked the movies. I always thought when the technology advanced enough the Mars series could make wonderful movies.
And I was right. This is a good movie. Yes, given the limitations of the genre, and it certainly doesn’t rise above those, it is a good movie.
I have no idea why it failed. They did a workman like adaptation, closing some of the larger gaps in the plot line, like how Carter managed to get from that cave to Barsoom, etc. etc.. I was surprised to notice that one of the great contemporary novelists Michael Chabon was given writing credit, along with others. Sort of like seeing F. Scott Fitzgerald, as one might, in a movie credit…
I understand it played well out of the US, but this is the market they make all the noise about, and so I suspect like that other good movie, The Golden Compass (actually much richer in context and plot than this) will never ever have sequels…
John Carter is a lovely boy flick, a good adventure, lots of action, and with just the right amount of romance with a sword wielding princess, what’s not to love?
But I gather only middle aged (and, ahem, older) people in this country went to see it, and even though I thought boomers were supposed to be a critical demographic, apparently not critical enough for this one…
Oh well.
Glad I got to see Burroughs on the big screen, if only once…
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