Disney at war against Mars

American Edgar Rice Burroughs (1875-1950) is above all known as the creator of Tarzan, about whom he wrote 26 adventure books and who featured in numerous film adaptations including one cartoon film by... Disney. This American film giant has now decided to tackle another of Burroughs works, the Barsoom saga; Barsoom being the name that the Martians gave to their planet. By taking the basic idea of an extraterrestrial civilisation on the point of death popularised by American astronomer Percival Lowell (who saw canals on Mars which he believed were a desperate attempt on behalf of its inhabitants to drain water from the polar ice caps in order to irrigate the deserts), the author gave free rein to his imagination and recounted the adventures of John Carter from Earth, mysteriously transferred to this world at war. His physical capabilities, greatly increased by the lack of Martian gravity, make him a formidable warrior who earns the natives’ respect.
This adaptation by the Disney film studios appears to be predominantly based on “A princess of Mars”, the first tome in Burroughs’ Barsoom series. However, this is not a cartoon, but a film endowed what’s more with an impressive 200 million dollar budget which, as the trailer below shows, can very probably be explained for the most part by the number of special effects required to bring this phantasmagorical Mars, imagined by the creator of Tarzan, to life.

It was the company Pixar (bought out by Disney in 2006), known for its computer-animated cartoon films (Toy Story, Cars, etc.), that took care of the special effects, marking its entry into the field of “classic” films with actors. And, moreover, it was an “in-house director”, Andrew Stanton (Wall-E, Nemo), who was in charge. True, the Red Planet presented in the film John Carter is far from the reality and will be very different from the one that NASA’s Curiosity rover will explore as of August 2012 (see this article), but with this Disney production being released in March 2012, it looks like 2012 will be the year of Mars!

Published on 7 December 2012

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