Ticket to Barsoom
Our ancient paperbacks of the John Carter series by Edgar Rice Burroughs
After we finished reading all the Nancy Drew mysteries in the fifth grade, we scoured the school library for another series to keep us occupied. (Series appeal to our obsessive-compulsive/completist side.) Fairy tales kept us entertained for a week or so, but we preferred recurring characters we could obsess about. Then we chanced upon A Princess Of Mars by Edgar Rice Burroughs. Of course we’d heard of Burroughs—Tarzan was showing on TV every Sunday afternoon.
A Princess of Mars introduced us to a fascinating protagonist: John Carter, a veteran of the Civil War who finds himself teleported to the planet Mars. How exactly he got teleported is a little murky, but the descriptions of the flora, fauna, and dominant species of Barsoom (what the Martians call their planet) got us hooked. Our school had the first two volumes of the series; the rest we got at the National Bookstore in the old orange brick Quad in Makati. (We shouldn’t have peeled off the price stickers. Now we leave them on as an anthropological curiosity.)
Some years ago we heard there were plans to adapt the John Carter books for the screen. Then last year we started seeing the trailer for John Carter the movie. We were not impressed. A couple of days ago we found out that the screenplay was written by Michael Chabon, author of The Mysteries of Pittsburgh, Wonder Boys (loved the movie) and The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay (Where is the movie? By the way if you run into Edward Norton could you ask him what happened to his planned film adaptation of Motherless Brooklyn by Jonathan Lethem? We forgot to ask.) Now we’re impressed. The movie could still stink, but now it has nerd cred. According to the posters it opens next month.
Answers to questions you might be asking, unless you wandered onto this site purely by accident >>>
February 22nd, 2012 at 07:17
Oh my goodness, the Kavalier and Clay movie. I read an excerpt from the script in Entertainment Weekly; Jude Law was attached to play one of the title characters. If the movie does finally get produced, filmed, and released theatrically, I would be greatly happy.
February 22nd, 2012 at 10:31
Also… Andrew Stanton is directing “John Carter”. If you watch Pixar movies, you’ll see his name in most of them, especially in Finding Nemo. I don’t know about you guys but this name alone makes me geek out over this movie! I can’t wait till it gets shown here!