Review by Bob Ignizio
Before there was Tarzan, there was John Carter. But while author Edgar Rice Burroughs' lord of the jungle has remained a recognizable icon since his debut in October of 1912, the planet-hopping swashbuckler that kicked off his writing career earlier that same year hasn't fared as well. Once almost as well known as Tarzan, Carter is now more of a cult figure, revered mainly by dedicated science fiction and fantasy enthusiasts. There have been attempts to make a film based on the John Carter series as far back as the thirties, but none have come to fruition until now.
Well, that's not entirely true. In 2009 The Asylum made one of their direct to video “mockbuster” adaptations of the property, but more on that later. Director/co-writer Andrew Stanton still earns the distinction of being the man to finally bring John Carter to the big screen. JOHN CARTER is based on Burroughs' A Princess of Mars, the first book in the series, and with Stanton's track record at Pixar (he's worked in a major capacity on almost all their feature films, and directed FINDING NEMO and WALL-E), I saw reason to hope he might do justice to the classic “planetary romance”. And I was really hoping he would, since the John Carter books were among the first adult(ish) sci-fi/fantasy novels I read way back when I was about 12 years old.
