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But is it going to be a movie you'll want to see?

http://cosmic-cinema.blogspot.com/2009/06/john-carter-of-mars-is-go.html (http://cosmic-cinema.blogspot.com/2009/06/john-carter-of-mars-is-go.html)

I have my doubts.

Anything coming out of Hollywood is cause to doubt.

With something like this, it's all aliens and sword fights, so it could be just a fun action film even if they don't dwell on the original novels that much.  I've given up hoping for faithful adaptations of anything, but if they can entertain me without cheating in the storytelling, I can live with it. 

I love the stories, so I'm interested in the film, but they need to make it like the stories.  John Carter is good because he is a hero.  Deja Thoris is beautiful, royal, and falls in love with Carter because he is so heroic.  Tars Tarkas is a noble warrior of his race.  Just give me a simple heroic story.

Lynn Collins is someone I haven't really known of.  Hopefully she can be Deja Thoris.  The princess of Mars is royal beauty personified.

I started to write a reply for a comment on my blog and on another forum about this that's taken on a life of it's own.  I hope* to the have the article, tentatively titled Reflections on Barsoom, finished and posted sometime next week.  In it I enumerate not just on the obstacles a faithful adaptation of this would face- the nudity being one of the most obvious problems- but the whole targeting this at a 'tween demographic thing.

Then there's so much about this that doesn't make sense to me.  Beginning with why DISNEY bought the property.  These are corporate purveyors of family oriented mediocrity, what are they doing buying the rights to a novel series in which people are naked 99% of the time and un-PC ideas like eugenics are touched upon?  Remember these were the same folks who had the scens of topless centaurettes removed from Fantasia!  Yet they're going to make a Barsoom movie?

This just baffles me.

(*) I stress "hope" because it's a struggle to keep it from turning into a total rant.

A possibility is that Disney turns the production over to Miramax one of their subsideraries. Thats the name they used when they want to push more racier content. But the director's shooting for a pg-13 rating so who knows..

Considering how many times a Barsoom related movie project has been announced and fizzled over the years I'm wondering if Disney isn't hoping to get thier bastardization into theaters before the fans have time to complain much.  Since that initial annoncement there's be very little real news about the movie.  Or maybe it's that the Barsoom fanbase has dwindled over time?  Either way the PG-13 rating is the rubberstamp of drek.  OUTLAW OF GOR was PG-13.  You remember OUTLAW OF GOR?  It was one of those fantasy novel adaptation movies lampooned on MST3K.

I can't really blame them.  If there is one thing we've learned over the years, it's that R rated and particularly dark fantasies almost always fail.  Even PG-13 dark fantasies don't do to well, like Dragonslayer.

I really need to read these books. 

Yes. You do.

Not to advertise, but Barnes & Noble has the first six in two volumes for only 10 bucks.  As soon as I get my book about U.S. History and the one about the Barbary Pirates finished, I may buy the first one.  It's been years since I read the John Carter books.