But there’s no denying John Carter is a great-looking film. And perhaps in places the Martian landscape did resemble the Arizona desert a little too closely. Perhaps they didn’t get in a shot of Mons Olympus, but there was a canyon which could have been Valles Marineris.

Some of the long shots are breath-taking.

After 2009’s Avatar, we know such things are possible.Īs a result, the Barsoom in Andrew Stanton’s John Carter looks fantastic. Prosthetics and make-up are not going to produce convincing copies of that. Not just the landscapes of Mars, the vast canyon that is Valles Marineris, or the 21-kilometre high Mons Olympus but also the various races and fauna, the flying ships, the cities… The Tharks are 4.5 metres tall, with four arms. Harder, of course, to realise would be the world of Barsoom itself. Attitudes and sensibilities have changed – for the better, of course – and it’s no good pretending fidelity to the source material excuses sexism or racism (though Michael Bay has no such excuse for his Transformers films). Adapting them faithfully for the screen in the twenty-first century was always going to be problematical. Frequently.īut Edgar Rice Burroughs wrote his eleven Barsoomian novels between 19, and they were never more than pulp fiction. The Barsoomian cultures had all the trappings of decadent cultures, yet were still vigorous and thrusting and more than able to put up a good fight. Ancient cultures with flying ships and radium pistols, who still fought with swords from the backs of riding animals. It’s pure wish-fulfillment, of course – being magically transported to an alien world, becoming a fearsome warrior, falling in love with a beautiful princess… John Carter was always the manliest of men, and deeply honourable to boot, and so formed the sort of ur-hero it was easy for impressionable boys to worship and wish to emulate.Īnd, it has to be said, there something exciting in the mix of savagery and sophistication which pertained on Edgar Rice Burroughs’ Mars. There’s always been something more appealing about the idea of John Carter than about the books in which he features.

Barsoom races