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by Steve 'Frosty' Weintraub Posted:July 11th, 2011 at 8:00 am
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John Carter can’t stand up. When he does, he falls over. Finally, after putting in a lot of effort, he’s able to take a step and he jumps about thirty feet. He’s stunned. Looking around, he has no idea where he is and what’s going on. Of course, if you were transported to Mars from the 19th Century, you’d also have a tough time figuring out what just happened.
What I just described is part of a scene from director Andrew Stanton’s (Finding Nemo, WALL-E) first live-action movie, John Carter. Based on the celebrated novel, A Princess of Mars, by Edgar Rice Burroughs, John Carter is Disney’s first film in what they’re hoping is a franchise starter and based on what I saw, it just might work. The reason I know this is the other week I got to go to San Francisco (along with some other online reporters) to see the first teaser trailer, watch some footage, and interview Stanton for almost an hour. I learned so much about this very cool looking film, so I suggest hitting the jump for more.
Before going any further, since many of you might not be familiar with John Carter, here’s the official synopsis:
From Academy Award–winning filmmaker Andrew Stanton comes “John Carter”—a sweeping action-adventure set on the mysterious and exotic planet of Barsoom (Mars). “John Carter” is based on a classic novel by Edgar Rice Burroughs, whose highly imaginative adventures served as inspiration for many filmmakers, both past and present. The film tells the story of war-weary, former military captain John Carter (Taylor Kitsch), who is inexplicably transported to Mars where he becomes reluctantly embroiled in a conflict of epic proportions amongst the inhabitants of the planet, including Tars Tarkas (Willem Dafoe) and the captivating Princess Dejah Thoris (Lynn Collins). In a world on the brink of collapse, Carter rediscovers his humanity when he realizes that the survival of Barsoom and its people rests in his hands. The cast also includes Samantha Morton, Mark Strong, Ciaran Hinds, Dominic West, James Purefoy, Daryl Sabara, Polly Walker, Bryan Cranston and Thomas Haden Church.
Anyway, with John Carter set to hit theaters in March of 2012, this week marks the beginning of Disney promoting the film. In a few days they’re going to release the teaser trailer online, and it’ll be attached to Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows – Part 2 in theaters. While I didn’t think the teaser was perfect, it will give you a taste of the film.
Though I had some issues with the teaser, the footage I saw from the movie and the concept art I saw later in the day made me think Disney has something very cool on their hands. And if the film is a hit, they’ve already optioned two more of the books and they’re planning on making a trilogy. So if you’re a John Carter fan, fingers crossed audiences respond to the material.
While I’d love to give you a detailed write up of the scenes they showed us, we were asked to avoid complete scene breakdowns. However, they were totally cool with us reporting on what we thought and what we did that day. So after leaving our lunch with Stanton and producer Jim Morris, Quint (from AICN) and Peter (from Slashfilm) and I recorded a video blog at the Oakland airport. If you’re curious about John Carter, I promise you’ll learn a lot by watching the video below. As usual, it’s time indexed so you can watch the parts that interest you.
And when you’re done, I suggest clicking here and reading or listening to the hour long interview with Stanton. I’ve also listed the “20 Things to Know About John Carter.” I really think this movie has the potential to be something special, and something I’ll want more of…
JOHN CARTER Video Blog
- 00:00 Introduction
- 00:25 What is John Carter?
- 01:20 Andrew Stanton and Pixar’s “involvement”
- 02:00 First part of a potential franchise
- 02:30 Talking about the footage
- 04:30 The White Ape sequence
- 05:25 Shooting in the deserts of Utah rather than green screen stages
- 06:00 Performance Capture for the Martians will actually just be reference for “Animation”
- 06:45 Drawings of John Carter from the filmmakers/screenwriters childhoods
- 07:55 Not being 100% faithful to the books
- 08:30 Giving depth to the simple archetype characters
- 09:20 The uber realism environment vs. big fantastical
- 10:00 Almost steampunk-like props and environments
- 10:30 Casting attractive non-star male and female leads
- 11:10 Reaction to the teaser trailer
- 11:35 Sci-fi that doesn’t look like its sci-fi, and changing the title from “John Carter of Mars” to “John Carter”
- 12:30 What the teaser should have been, and how they should promote the film
- 14:00 They need to sell the book’s legacy, or the movie might feel derivative
- 14:45 Will be released in 3D, a completely different post-3D process
- 15:50 Animation and CG usually looks fantastic in 3D
- 16:40 Quint expresses doubts about the film in his bottom line reaction
- 17:20 Peter has mixed feelings, was amazed by the White Ape sequence, but didn’t see enough
- 18:15 Frosty was more excited seeing the Concept art than he was the footage, agreed that we didn’t see enough
- 18:55 Trailer song: Peter Gabriel covering Arcade Fire
- 19:20 Andrew Stanton is an absolute movie nerd
- 20:00 Stanton really cares about the property, this is his passion project
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3 nerds , common , just show us the damn trailer !!!
hahaha damn true
Yep I feel same too spent 20mins of my life watching that…when all i really wanted was the trailer!
No offence guys it was interesting but if I knew it was just you’all probably wont have bothered
…interesting or not.
my thoughts exactly!!
Sounds fantastic!
In the star wars prequels defence, most of which we see and think is CGI is infact a LOT of sets and landscape with cgi added/enhanced. I went to celebration europe a few years ago ans witnessed so many models and props/miniatures etc from the prequels that i assumed were all cgi. from the podrace tracks/vehicles and buildings etc. Shame jar jar ruined it on film, but the making of it was amazing.
The Attack of the clones arena was also a huge model, and the location was real too (Australian outback) yet on film it looks cgi.
John Carter sounds amazing, but dont be surprised if people scream too much cgi.
For me, I’m just glad theres new scifi fantasy in the works. Theres not enough of it.
Music wise, I don’t like it when they use pop/metal etc songs over fantasy/historical/epic movies. Its the equivallent of these horrible photoshop slap up posters for films instead of cool/retro/collectable painted posters of old. You wouldnt play Jamiriqui over Superman would you!?
3D is the only thing stopping me wanna see it in theatres. Costs tooo much to see a movie in theatres these days. Especially when taking family and kids.
If the script is good, then the movie will have a good chance to succeed.
Really psyched about John Carter of Mars, I don’t how Disney will make it under PG-13? Have you seen Princess Dejah Thoris?
How many of these guys who were surprised by Kitsch have watched Friday Night Lights? Probably not many.
Brought to you by the guy who made that sweet family classic Finding Nemo
What happened to employing a todays equivalent of P Verhoeven or j Millius to do a real mans movie
You are clearly a moron and your internet posting privileges are hereby revoked.
If you’d listen to the interview with Stanton on this site, it would be abundantly clear that this man knows how to make a good film, not only that but Finding Nemo and WALL•E are two of the best films of the last decade. Spielberg has made both family films (E.T.) and epic adventure films (Raiders of the Lost Arc), and I believe Stanton is capable of doing the same thing.
Thanks a lot for posting vids like this Steve. I find them very interesting.
Keep ‘em coming!
in the wise words of Simon Pegg…”skip to the end”
I saw the entire movie tonight (though not complete; still in production viz. still animating…), and they will definitely have a franchise going here. The romance though needs to be re-shot. The middle third was a tad slow, but kept the story going. Some scenes were brilliant and were very Star Wars’esque. I will definitely go see the final production in March and will encourage others to do so as well.
As much as it pains me to say it this bears little resemblance to Burroughs mars, in fact it looks a lot like Conan the barbarian on mars and not A Princess of Mars.
Would have cast someone with a more exotic look for Dejah Thoris. Everyone has their own vision of her in their head while reading the book, but I think a more exotic appearance (more Asian perhaps) would have also reinforced the sense of her being from another world.
I’ll immediately seize your rss feed as I can’t to find your email subscription link or newsletter service. Do you’ve any? Kindly allow me realize so that I may just subscribe. Thanks.