Friday, October 12, 2007

Mars as You've Never Seen It Before!


How very, very, very, extraordinarily super-mega-cool! Mark Shea reports via his son Luke, who is a student in film school:

Pixar is working on an adaptation of...(drumroll please) JOHN CARTER, WARLORD OF MARS!!

WaaaaaaHOOOOO!!

I actually danced when I first read that. Danced. Like, all around the
room.

Tee hee hee!!

Joyously,

Luke the Totally Stoked


For those of you who don't have the foggiest idea what I'm talking about, Princess of Mars, Gods of Mars, and Warlord of Mars, all by Edgar Rice Burroughs (the creator of Tarzan) form a trilogy about John Carter, a Civil War veteran who is mysteriously transported to Mars. There he finds beautiful, scantily clad Martian maidens (e. g., the image on the right), green bug-eyed monsters, airships, sword fights, lost cities, disembodied brains, and all kinds of cool stuff! I'd bet my bottom dollar these books were an inspiration for Flash Gordon and Buck Rogers, which in turn were an inspiration for Star Wars. This is the granddaddy of all space operas, folks! POM is a pulp classic! The first five Mars books are available online as e-texts, and the first three are available as podcasts. Simply click on the links and do an author search for Edgar Rice Burroughs.

I'm delighted these fabulous adventure stories are finally being brought to the big screen. A few years ago I tried to turn POM into a screenplay myself but gave up after a couple of pages, having discovered that writing for the movies is harder than it looks. I'm sure the Pixar gang will do a much better job than I did. Huzzah!

Thanks to Tangor and friends at ERBlist.com for the use of the image and for the links to the online versions of the texts. ERBlist.com is the one-stop shop for all your Edgar Rice Burroughs needs.

1 comment:

K T Cat said...

How in the world will that movie be true to the books? They were over-the-top sexist. I loved every page of them and read them all, but all I can see is Hollywood ruining them with political correctness.