Colin O'Boyle of Earth

In 1912, Edgar Rice Burroughs--of Tarzan fame--published the first in a serialized story that would eventually be come to known as A Princess of Mars. One hundred years later, in 2012, Disney released a movie version of this story, calling it John Carter. Recently, I saw that film and after watching it I decided to read the books. They are in the public domain, after all.

As far as the movie is concerned, I went into it with low expectations. I knew that it was one of the biggest financial flops in history, losing Disney hundreds of millions of dollars (I'm not sure on the exact figure), so I didn't expect it to be great. From what I'd read, it had a lot of neat special effects, but that was about it. And yet, the only disappointment I had after watching the movie is that there won't be any other ones.

The special effects were gorgeous, as expected, but there were little things that drew me in as well. in One scene, for example, John Carter's captor, Tars Tarkas--a four-armed green martian, or Thark--asks him to jump. (Since he's from Earth, Carter is able to jump much higher than the martians.) Tars holds his lower arms out, palms up, and mimes with his upper hand the word "jump," since he and Carter don't share the same language yet. The simple fluidity of that motion, of using his four arms in a natural way to demonstrate his point made me accept that there are four-armed creatures on this planet, and that's normal for them.

Then there are the little humorous moments, like when Carter leads the Thark army all the way to one city to rescue his lady love, only to find out that their foes are at another city. There's a moment of silence as Carter digests this fact, trying to think of what to do next, and then Tars Tarkas takes one of his four arms and smacks him right on the back of the head. Hilarious.

It's even quotable, like the line, "Leave a Thark his head and one hand, and he may yet conquer." I had to write that down when I heard it, it sounded so cool.

So, I liked the movie, but what about the source material? It's definitely pulpy, with unrealistic stretches of dialogue, racist depictions of Native Americans and martian races that fit that role, and the female characters in the novel are anything but role models, but these things are not out of the ordinary for this type of work and the time period in which it was written. I'll have more to say once I've finished it, but it's interesting so far, both in itself and in comparison to the movie.