John Carter's Mars Isn't As Red As You'd Expect

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John Carter's Mars Isn't As Red As You'd Expect

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The first trailer for Disney's John Carter is out, and it certainly looks promising.

After only 80 years, John Carter of Mars is finally coming to movie theaters. Actually, this isn't breaking news, as it's been widely-known for a while that the series of books was getting a film adaptation from Disney, but the studio has just released a trailer that definitely proves the movie is a massive, epic, undertaking.

Based on the trailer, it looks like the story will be told as a giant flashback, courtesy of the journals that Edgar Rice Burroughs inherits when his uncle John Carter dies. From there, the story is transported to the deserts of "Barsoom" (Mars) where Carter shows some skin, fights with a sword, and strikes epic poses as he and princess Dejah Thoris fall in love with each other.

Here's the official synopsis, which explains way more of the plot than the trailer does:

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.

Production-wise, this looks impressive (even if Mars does look like the landscape I drive through on my way home to California from Arizona). However, the four-armed Martians from Burroughs' books are in woefully short supply, but maybe we'll get another trailer that showcases them a bit more in the future.



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[Canid117]

I am impressed. Lets hope its good.

 

[josemlopes]

Wow, a movie by Disney where the trailer doesnt contain a joke? Thats a first.

Either way I am not very interested, and doesnt look like Mars at all, it looks so much like Earth that it is kind of distracting

 

[Kahunaburger]

Wow, that looks terrible. It's like every single modern medicore fantasy movie ever with "lol this is all on mars" tacked on to it. The green martian looked pretty laughable, the red martians aren't red, Mars looks like SoCal (go figure), the messed up the low gravity thing, and everyone walks around with a perpetual derpface.

 

[BrotherRool]

I have to admit I saw a lot of red landscapes. Wasn't the first shot before he got transported?

EDIT: And isn't Mars surface a lot less red than people thought? To the extent that NASA coloured the first rover photos of Mars so people would believe it wasn't just earth?

 

[King Toasty]

First off, that music is gorgeous.
Second, if they pull this off right, it could be really amazing.
Third, I hope it isn't too gritty. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows had that problem.
Fourth, I haven't read any of the books. /shame.

 

[The_root_of_all_evil]

Pah, the chances of anything coming from Mars are a million to one.

 

[Ultimate747]

That looks awesome.

 

[JPArbiter]

I have to admit I saw a lot of red landscapes. Wasn't the first shot before he got transported?

EDIT: And isn't Mars surface a lot less red than people thought? To the extent that NASA coloured the first rover photos of Mars so people would believe it wasn't just earth?

not quite, but it is proven thanks to Rovers that Mars has a blue sky like on Earth (much thinner though) and the Iron Oxide rich soil is more of a deep Red Brown the the Crimson we see in telescopes.

 

[Duruznik]

Pah, the chances of anything coming from Mars are a million to one.

But still... they come!

OT: This looks pretty epic. Let's just hope that the rest of the movie is as good as the trailer makes it out to be.

 

[ThaBenMan]

Would it be that hard to give everything a red tinge with cg?

It looks like it might be pretty good.

 

[Jaebird]

Keeping in mind that I've only read halfway through A Princess of Mars, this trailer isn't how I'd imagined it in my mind from what I remember in the book. Even more so, I thought Pixar was doing this, which would have been awesome, in my opinion. This trailer left me feeling underwhelmed.

 

[BabySinclair]

SyFy already did this a year or so ago. Disney's behind the curve, if SyFy cranked out a decent original movie

 

[The_root_of_all_evil]

Pah, the chances of anything coming from Mars are a million to one.

But still... they come!

Martian cookie for you, sir.

 

[redisforever]

Well, the music is nice...
That's about it, never read the story, no interest. But the music did strike me as quite good. First I heard about this story was when Yahtzee brought it up on his podcast, on his website.

 

[TsunamiWombat]

Well i'll wait and see, but i'm impressed by the non-traditional trailer.

 

[Andy Chalk]

One of the things that has me nervous is that IMDB lists Sarkoja and Matai Shang, who didn't turn up until the third book (according to Wiki, yes, I had to look it up) which suggests that they're planning on cramming in more than just the first book - which is an awful lot of ground to cover for one movie. Meanwhile, there's no mention at all of Mors Kajack, and the Thark looks like a cross between a Salarian and Jar-Jark Binks.

I am concerned.

 

[Duruznik]

Pah, the chances of anything coming from Mars are a million to one.

But still... they come!

Martian cookie for you, sir.

I for one welcome our new cookie overlords!

*Bows down*

 

[Wolfram23]

I read all 3 of the books in the not too distant past (within the last 2 years). They are so awesome. After seeing this trailer, I think that Disney pulled some pretty typical shit and are in no way whatsoever being true to the books. It looks like they just made up some stuff that is vaguely reminiscent of what was in the books. Of course I'll wait for final judgment when I see it - it could still be good. I suppose it's good they aren't calling it Princess of Mars since it seems that it will be quite different...

 

[NickCaligo42]

Wow, that looks terrible. It's like every single modern medicore fantasy movie ever with "lol this is all on mars" tacked on to it. The green martian looked pretty laughable, the red martians aren't red, Mars looks like SoCal (go figure), the messed up the low gravity thing, and everyone walks around with a perpetual derpface.

I'm with you on this one. Looks like a blatant Hollywood CGI-fest. There's that, and I heard they tried putting Aaron Kruger (writer for Transformers 2 and 3) on this project.