It’s the third weekend of the month and so it’s time for another Book-To-Movie review! [link] In a Book-To-Movie we review a work of prose fiction and its movie adaptation. This month’s Book-To-Movie is a review of Edgar Rice Burroughs’s A Princess of Mars and the Disney movie adaptation. And as I said I would in the previous blog post, I also have a mini movie review for you of Doctor Sleep, the new movie based on Stephen King’s novel of the same name!
Warning: Potential spoilers.
Even though it didn’t become the pop cultural icon that his Tarzan character did, Edgar Rice Burroughs’s John Carter series of books has influenced several of the best-known science fiction writers of all time, including Ray Bradbury. The first of this 11-book series, A Princess of Mars, was published in 1912 as a serial under the title of “The Moon of Mars” in All-Story Magazine. It was one of the earliest science fiction stories to be published in pulp fiction magazines that were so popular during that time until about the 1940s.
The Book: ‘A Princess of Mars’
In A Princess of Mars, Confederate soldier John Carter is transported to the red planet while trying to escape an enemy attack in the Arizona desert. His means of transporting there reflects not only a period in history before rockets were invented but also the time of the novel’s publication when space ships were not quite the craze in science fiction yet. Instead of traveling to Mars in a space vessel, he teleports to there by a kind of mystical meditation from gazing up at the planet from a cave entrance. On Mars, called Barsoom in the language of the Martians, he is caught in the middle of a war between the cities of Helium and Zodanga. Carter sides with Helium to battle off the rival city and in doing so falls in love with the Heliumite princess, Deja Thoris. The two eventually marry making him Prince of Helium. Shortly after that, however, he is separated from her when he is, sadly, teleported back to Earth inadvertently.
A Princess is filled with a lot of action and exciting scenes. It’s a pulp sci fi epic with plenty of futuristic technology (on the Martians’ parts) for its time and inhuman alien races. It has characters in it that, although are not the most well-developed, work well for pulp science fiction. The setting and societies are believable within the story. One of the interesting things Burroughs does that many imaginative writers before him did, such as Poe nearly a century earlier, is write the story in such a way that merges fantasy with reality. Burroughs ties biographical and historical accounts in with the novel. One of the ways he does this is with the foreword where he talks about a friend of his family’s, a Jack Carter, who he referred to as “Uncle Jack” when he was a kid. Another way is by inserting a footnote into pages of the story itself, particularly when he refers to the fictional Carter’s “manuscript” of his account of the red planet. This suggests the account of the real Carter from the foreword and so adds an effect of historical as well as biographical realism to the novel.
The Movie: ‘John Carter’
The novel’s 2012 Disney movie adaptation, John Carter, is overall faithful to the book even though it’s somewhat condensed as are most movies based on novels. It was the next step in adapting a Burroughs book since the studio’s 1999 Tarzan animated feature. Unlike Tarzan, however, it was a failure at the box office. According to Screen Rant, even the Edgar Rice Burroughs estate who gave the rights to Disney to make the film “implied Disney hadn’t done Burroughs’ work justice in its adaptation and would seek out another studio to better adapt the author’s work.” And so the estate took those rights back, as Screen Rant explains. Perhaps the Burroughs estate is right about it not doing justice to the book. However, I feel the movie has been far too underrated.
Until Michael Eisner had taken over the studio in the 1980s, Disney had its own style of filming live-action movies and so didn’t rely on cinematic paradigm a lot like it often does today. John Carter director Andrew Stanton made (perhaps unintentionally, perhaps not) the movie in a manner closer to that of pre-1985 Disney: the movie has a near-Technicolor look to it; Woola, a six-legged Chow Chow-like creature that befriends Carter, provides the comic relief that animal characters of many earlier Disney films do; and the movie ends in a fairy tale-like happy ending.
Disney’s interpretation of the novel does not take away from its original story. For instance, the ending in the novel is more tragic mostly when compared to that in the movie. In addition to this kind of deviation in the movie, Carter’s transportation to Mars isn’t so much by mystical meditation than by way of a Martian pendant-like device. Although this explains a little more concretely how he is teleported, the device is alien, its workings are not explained and so Carter’s means of transporting is still mystical in appearance. The movie goes a step further than the book in creating its historical/biographical realism and does so very cleverly. The events indicated in the book’s foreword, which is presented as inspiration for the story, have been written into the movie’s story line itself without obscuring the original plot.
The violence is perhaps a little more graphic than it should be for a Disney film. However, it mostly consists of the spilling of blue blood from the inhuman Martians and is even minimal considering the movie’s PG-13 rating. The movie has been toned down of the book’s racism and sexism, which were probably not seen as such by the standards of Burroughs’ time. Because of this reduction, the film is one that’s suitable for the 21st century while still being faithful to the book.
John Carter is not a bad adaptation of A Princess of Mars. If it doesn’t seem to do justice to the book that’s probably because the director used more of the style of directing particular to that of Disney’s earlier years (1950s through early ‘80s). Even though the movie hasn’t been given the credit it deserves, it doesn’t mean that the Burroughs estate won’t find a studio or director to do a better interpretation of the book, one that will do good enough to lead to a sequel and so an adaptation of the next book from Burroughs’s John Carter series. Unfortunately, this is something Disney is very unlikely to do for the reasons mentioned above.
I’m not including this review as a Book-To-Movie even though Doctor Sleep is based on a book. That’s because I haven’t read the book, Stephen King’s sequel to his earlier novel The Shining. And I’m not sure if I’ll ever read it, not because the story itself would put me asleep but because the length of it would. That’s due to a short attention span on my part that comes from my ADD and so has nothing to do with King’s writing. I did read The Shining a long time ago and liked it. I’ve also seen the 1980 movie adaptation and liked it even more for reasons I won’t go into here. Because of that, I made sure to go see Doctor Sleep during the weekend of its release.
In this movie, Dan Torrance of the first film is a grown man in his middle ages who picks up on the telepathic frequency of a teenage girl, Abra, who has the same psychic power he has, a power referred to as “shining”. Through her he discovers that an evil cult is kidnapping children who have shining power so its members can drink it and live forever. Dan and Abra meet up both in person and in projected spirit to locate the cult and stop it from killing more children.
The movie doesn’t do justice to Stanley Kubrick’s Shining. Kubrick adds a special creepiness with his style of filming, especially with his long shots of corridors in the Overlook Hotel. Director Mike Flanagan doesn’t do that with Doctor Sleep. However, the screenwriting, acting and great characterization make the story believable, and the timing of the peak points make this film entertainingly scary. The movie is almost completely loaded with suspense making you not want to leave your seat to got to the restroom or concession counter. It does a great job connecting itself with the original film while still presenting itself as a complete story.
I only had a few problems with Doctor Sleep. One was the scene at the abandoned Overlook Hotel when Dan turns on the lights and water heaters. It seems unlikely that the owners would have any reason to keep power going to a building that has not been in use for more than a quarter of a century. Another problem was that the very end did not make any sense even though it does keep the movie open for a second sequel and the main conflict is resolved.
Doctor Sleep is a great entertaining movie with good writing and neat special effects and monster creation. Doctor Sleep won’t put you asleep. Unless you have a much shorter attention span than I do and if that’s the case, well, maybe you’re better off waiting until it comes out on video so then you can watch it in segments.
Have you read A Princess of Mars or/and seen Disney’s John Carter? What did you think of both or either? Have you seen Doctor Sleep or read the book? Feel free to leave your answers or any other comments in the box below.
Until next time . . .
Book-To-Movie: ‘A Princess of Mars’/’John Carter’
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| Credit: Wikimedia Commons |
Even though it didn’t become the pop cultural icon that his Tarzan character did, Edgar Rice Burroughs’s John Carter series of books has influenced several of the best-known science fiction writers of all time, including Ray Bradbury. The first of this 11-book series, A Princess of Mars, was published in 1912 as a serial under the title of “The Moon of Mars” in All-Story Magazine. It was one of the earliest science fiction stories to be published in pulp fiction magazines that were so popular during that time until about the 1940s.
The Book: ‘A Princess of Mars’
In A Princess of Mars, Confederate soldier John Carter is transported to the red planet while trying to escape an enemy attack in the Arizona desert. His means of transporting there reflects not only a period in history before rockets were invented but also the time of the novel’s publication when space ships were not quite the craze in science fiction yet. Instead of traveling to Mars in a space vessel, he teleports to there by a kind of mystical meditation from gazing up at the planet from a cave entrance. On Mars, called Barsoom in the language of the Martians, he is caught in the middle of a war between the cities of Helium and Zodanga. Carter sides with Helium to battle off the rival city and in doing so falls in love with the Heliumite princess, Deja Thoris. The two eventually marry making him Prince of Helium. Shortly after that, however, he is separated from her when he is, sadly, teleported back to Earth inadvertently.
A Princess is filled with a lot of action and exciting scenes. It’s a pulp sci fi epic with plenty of futuristic technology (on the Martians’ parts) for its time and inhuman alien races. It has characters in it that, although are not the most well-developed, work well for pulp science fiction. The setting and societies are believable within the story. One of the interesting things Burroughs does that many imaginative writers before him did, such as Poe nearly a century earlier, is write the story in such a way that merges fantasy with reality. Burroughs ties biographical and historical accounts in with the novel. One of the ways he does this is with the foreword where he talks about a friend of his family’s, a Jack Carter, who he referred to as “Uncle Jack” when he was a kid. Another way is by inserting a footnote into pages of the story itself, particularly when he refers to the fictional Carter’s “manuscript” of his account of the red planet. This suggests the account of the real Carter from the foreword and so adds an effect of historical as well as biographical realism to the novel.
The Movie: ‘John Carter’
The novel’s 2012 Disney movie adaptation, John Carter, is overall faithful to the book even though it’s somewhat condensed as are most movies based on novels. It was the next step in adapting a Burroughs book since the studio’s 1999 Tarzan animated feature. Unlike Tarzan, however, it was a failure at the box office. According to Screen Rant, even the Edgar Rice Burroughs estate who gave the rights to Disney to make the film “implied Disney hadn’t done Burroughs’ work justice in its adaptation and would seek out another studio to better adapt the author’s work.” And so the estate took those rights back, as Screen Rant explains. Perhaps the Burroughs estate is right about it not doing justice to the book. However, I feel the movie has been far too underrated.
Until Michael Eisner had taken over the studio in the 1980s, Disney had its own style of filming live-action movies and so didn’t rely on cinematic paradigm a lot like it often does today. John Carter director Andrew Stanton made (perhaps unintentionally, perhaps not) the movie in a manner closer to that of pre-1985 Disney: the movie has a near-Technicolor look to it; Woola, a six-legged Chow Chow-like creature that befriends Carter, provides the comic relief that animal characters of many earlier Disney films do; and the movie ends in a fairy tale-like happy ending.
Disney’s interpretation of the novel does not take away from its original story. For instance, the ending in the novel is more tragic mostly when compared to that in the movie. In addition to this kind of deviation in the movie, Carter’s transportation to Mars isn’t so much by mystical meditation than by way of a Martian pendant-like device. Although this explains a little more concretely how he is teleported, the device is alien, its workings are not explained and so Carter’s means of transporting is still mystical in appearance. The movie goes a step further than the book in creating its historical/biographical realism and does so very cleverly. The events indicated in the book’s foreword, which is presented as inspiration for the story, have been written into the movie’s story line itself without obscuring the original plot.
The violence is perhaps a little more graphic than it should be for a Disney film. However, it mostly consists of the spilling of blue blood from the inhuman Martians and is even minimal considering the movie’s PG-13 rating. The movie has been toned down of the book’s racism and sexism, which were probably not seen as such by the standards of Burroughs’ time. Because of this reduction, the film is one that’s suitable for the 21st century while still being faithful to the book.
John Carter is not a bad adaptation of A Princess of Mars. If it doesn’t seem to do justice to the book that’s probably because the director used more of the style of directing particular to that of Disney’s earlier years (1950s through early ‘80s). Even though the movie hasn’t been given the credit it deserves, it doesn’t mean that the Burroughs estate won’t find a studio or director to do a better interpretation of the book, one that will do good enough to lead to a sequel and so an adaptation of the next book from Burroughs’s John Carter series. Unfortunately, this is something Disney is very unlikely to do for the reasons mentioned above.
Bonus: Mini Movie Review: ‘Doctor Sleep’
Warning: Potential spoilers.I’m not including this review as a Book-To-Movie even though Doctor Sleep is based on a book. That’s because I haven’t read the book, Stephen King’s sequel to his earlier novel The Shining. And I’m not sure if I’ll ever read it, not because the story itself would put me asleep but because the length of it would. That’s due to a short attention span on my part that comes from my ADD and so has nothing to do with King’s writing. I did read The Shining a long time ago and liked it. I’ve also seen the 1980 movie adaptation and liked it even more for reasons I won’t go into here. Because of that, I made sure to go see Doctor Sleep during the weekend of its release.
In this movie, Dan Torrance of the first film is a grown man in his middle ages who picks up on the telepathic frequency of a teenage girl, Abra, who has the same psychic power he has, a power referred to as “shining”. Through her he discovers that an evil cult is kidnapping children who have shining power so its members can drink it and live forever. Dan and Abra meet up both in person and in projected spirit to locate the cult and stop it from killing more children.
The movie doesn’t do justice to Stanley Kubrick’s Shining. Kubrick adds a special creepiness with his style of filming, especially with his long shots of corridors in the Overlook Hotel. Director Mike Flanagan doesn’t do that with Doctor Sleep. However, the screenwriting, acting and great characterization make the story believable, and the timing of the peak points make this film entertainingly scary. The movie is almost completely loaded with suspense making you not want to leave your seat to got to the restroom or concession counter. It does a great job connecting itself with the original film while still presenting itself as a complete story.
I only had a few problems with Doctor Sleep. One was the scene at the abandoned Overlook Hotel when Dan turns on the lights and water heaters. It seems unlikely that the owners would have any reason to keep power going to a building that has not been in use for more than a quarter of a century. Another problem was that the very end did not make any sense even though it does keep the movie open for a second sequel and the main conflict is resolved.
Doctor Sleep is a great entertaining movie with good writing and neat special effects and monster creation. Doctor Sleep won’t put you asleep. Unless you have a much shorter attention span than I do and if that’s the case, well, maybe you’re better off waiting until it comes out on video so then you can watch it in segments.
Have you read A Princess of Mars or/and seen Disney’s John Carter? What did you think of both or either? Have you seen Doctor Sleep or read the book? Feel free to leave your answers or any other comments in the box below.
Until next time . . .
Skipped the Doctor Sleep review as I haven't seen it yet.
ReplyDeleteI think John Carter got dissed unfairly and most people didn't go see it in part thanks to Disney's poor marketing. Not to mention dropping Mars from the title. I thought the film followed the book well and really enjoyed it. We bought it on DVD the day it came out.
Right, that's another thIng that I meant to mention but ran out of time, was that the movie was not titled as well as it should have been; John Carter could have been a historical drama to many people who don't know the book series and aren't into historical dramas.
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