John Carter

The Book

The Princess of Mars is the book upon which John Carter the film is based and this was the first of a series of books featuring the American Civil War hero by Edgar Rice Burroughs, written before Tarzan fame. 

Amazon: "Virginia gentleman John Carter, unexpectedly transported to the perilous red planet, Mars, finds himself captured by the loveless Green Men of Thark. As Carter struggles to win his freedom—and the affections of fellow captive Dejah Thoris, princess of the rival clan of Helium—the fate of the entire planet hangs in the balance: warring Martian tribes collide and the beleaguered Atmosphere Factory grinds to a suffocating halt."

The story must be one of the earliest of pulp science fiction, with Martian green men and a beautiful princess to rescue, and I found it entertaining to a point. I have no inclination to read the further 10 novels, however.

John Carter film website

The Film

John Carter the film remains pretty faithful to the story. I enjoyed the introduction of Edgar Rice Burroughs himself as a character in the film. It has cherry picked bits from some of the other novels, so I gather, as the Therns do not feature in the first novel. Therefore much of the plot around the magical powers of the ninth ray and the controlling of Martian destiny is added to boost the special effects and menace. Instead, in the book, we have a failing atmosphere factory that has to be broken in to and repaired in order to save the planet (very similar to Total Recall the film).

Ironically for a story that sparked the imagination of many a future science fiction writer, the film does seem quite derivative in parts of Star Wars - the Geonosian arena in Attack of the Clones, the AT-AT Walker, the solo flyers even make a similar noise to those in Star Wars.
As an imagining and recreation of an entire Mars civilization, I thought it worked really well and was very watchable.

If you enjoyed the book, try others in the series or Ray Bradbury's The Martian Chronicles
If you enjoyed the film, try Misson to Mars, Total Recall or Robinson Crusoe on Mars