Tuesday, May 22, 2007

John Carter to suck

From cinemablend, Disney bigwigs John Lasseter and Ed Catmull were caught by the guys over at IESB during the premiere of Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End this weekend, and being the smart lads they are the IESB gang quizzed them about some of Disney’s upcoming projects. In particular, they asked them about John Carter of Mars, which is currently at Disney and moving towards production. Neither was willing to give up much information, but apparently they did get from them that it’s moving forward and that it “will be different when compared to other kid friendly Pixar/Disney Animated films because it will be based on the book.”

That scares me. IESB has taken that to mean that maybe it’ll be a little more hard hitting, but what I don’t like is that they’re lumping it in with kid friendly animated movies.


John Carter of Mars should not be a kid’s movie. The books are graphic, hard-edged, and full of naked alien women. I’d have felt better if they were comparing it to say, Pirates of the Caribbean. Granted, that’s still sort of family friendly but that’s about as hard-edged as Disney gets. You won’t get exposed alien breasts in a PG-13, Pirates-like movie, but you’ll still get at least some of the war story. Unfortunately, it sounds like Disney has something PG and more in the vein of Meet the Robinsons in mind for this particular adaptation. If you’re a fan of the books, that’s pretty disappointing.

1 comment:

Octopunk said...

Irksome. Done right, this movie could be frickin' iconic in a way that the Prequels should have been.

The early 20th century fantasy vibe is so good, but the only cinematic examples that exist are Sky Captain and King Kong, and in a second-tier way Fifth Element and further down the ladder the Prequels.

Somebody's going to nail it, and there will be twenty years of movies like that.

But John Carter isn't moving that way.

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