John Carter: 10 Things Even Die Hard Fans Don't Know About The Film 10 Years Later
Many fans will know of the movie John Carter but probably not for the reasons the filmmakers and studio wanted. The Disney live-action adaptation of Edgar Rice Burroughs's influential sci-fi novels stars Taylor Kitsch as a soldier from the American Civil War who finds himself transported to Mars and becoming involved in a war among various tribes.
While the movie has plenty of defenders, it is mostly known as one of the biggest bombs in movie history. With its recent 10-year anniversary of release, many have looked back on the notorious project, revealing some things about John Carter that fans might not know.
10 Earlier Attempts At Adapting The Story
Many have pointed out the original source material by Edgar Rice Burroughs has inspired countless subsequent sci-fi movies, from Star Wars to Avatar. But the quest to adapt the material even predates those titles.
An article by The Atlantic takes a look at some of the attempts to bring the story to the big screen that ultimately failed. There was a time when Disney considered it as their first animated feature instead of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. Animation icon Ray Harryhausen nearly made a stop-motion version in the 1950s. And Die Hard director John McTiernan also came close in the 1990s.
9 Stanton Convinced Disney To Buy Rights
With directors like John McTiernan and Jon Favreau circling the project at various points, it was Pixar alum Andrew Stanton who ended up directing the massive project. However, Stanton's passion for the project is what made it happen at Disney.
In a recent in-depth exploration of the movie and its production from The Wrap, Stanton admitted he was a huge fan of Burroughs's books. This led to him urging Disney to buy the rights to the movie and finally bring it to the big screen.
8 Tom Cruise Pursued The Lead Role
Despite the fact that many actors were considered for the lead role, very few names were made public before the casting of Taylor Kitsch in the titular role. However, Tom Cruise had a long association with the project.
Cruise was initially thought to be playing the role in the 90s when John McTiernan was set to direct. However, according to The Wrap, when Stanton's version began to come together, Cruise reached out to the director to express his interest in the part.
7 Kitsch Was Cast Because Of One Friday Night Lights Scene
Though he faced heavy competition from A-list actors like Tom Cruise, Taylor Kitsch was always Andrew Stanton's first choice for the role. In fact, in the article from The Wrap, Stanton explained that he thought Kitsch was ideal for the role before he even signed on to direct.
Stanton explained that he saw a scene from Kitsch's hit show Friday Night Lights in which his brooding character of Tim Riggins is standing out in the rain. Stanton immediately recognized the image as similar to the cover of one of Burroughs's books.
6 Willem Dafoe's Gruelling Role
Though Kitsch was not a huge star when cast in the lead role, the movie managed to assemble a number of stellar actors in supporting roles, including Willem Dafoe. As Tars, the leader of the alien race of Tharks, Dafoe was unrecognizable in a motion-capture performance.
However, in an interview with Daily Actor, Dafoe describes the part as a physically demanding one. Not only did he and the other Thark actors need to measure the motion-capture suits and camera's but also had to walk on stilts to portray the aliens' tall stature.
5 Lynn Collins's Frustrations With The Shooting
Along with Kitsch as the star, Lynn Collins was an up-and-coming actor who was front and center in the movie as the Mars princess, Dejah. While the movie could have served as a big breakout role for Collins, she expressed disappointment with how her character was shaped.
While Collins had nothing but praise for Stanton as a director and collaborator, she explained to The Wrap that the movie's reshoots saw drastic changes to her character. She was given the impression that Dejah was "too strong" of a character for some of the executives and the attempts to soften her made it so Collins found it difficult to reconnect with the character.
4 On-Location Vs. Studio Filming
Unlike many notorious box-office failures, it seems like most of those involved with the filming of John Carter found it to be a very pleasant experience. However, when talking to The Wrap, cinematographer Dan Mindel found an early sign of trouble with the shooting locations.
While Mindel expected most of the shoot to be done on-location with Four Corners in the southwestern United States doubling for Mars, production began on soundstages. Mindel explained the trouble of trying to create the feeling of real location in such a setting and the damage that had been done when production eventually did move to Four Corners.
3 The Title Change
It seems as though another early sign of the trouble to come for the movie came with the drama surrounding the title. The title of the first novel in Burroughs's Mars series is entitled Princess of Mars which was changed in favor of John Carter Of Mars, but some controversy arose during production about that title as well.
According to The Wrap, the marketing team behind the movie used examples of other movie failures like Mission to Mars and Mars Needs Moms as a reason for changing the title to simply John Carter. However, Stanton fought to include John Carter of Mars as the title card at the end of the movie, feeling it spoke to the character's journey.
2 Troubled Marketing Push
It seems as there were a number of factors that led to the movie failing to interest audiences, but an article from Vulture around the time of the release suggested the movie was doomed ever since its first trailer.
With very few effects and action sequences complete, the first trailer offered little to excite fans. The Vulture article also suggested Stanton's being given a certain amount of control over the marketing of the movie caused problems with one unnamed executive musing about the campaign that it felt they went "out of their way to not make us care."
1 The Planned Sequel
Before the movie was released, there were plans for a trilogy at Disney with Stanton working on all of them. Obviously, the financial failure of the first movie put an end to those plans quite quickly. But Stanton revealed to The Wrap for the first time what his ideas for the second movie would be.
Among his epic ideas, Stanton described the movie as beginning with the child of John and Dejah being abducted, John waking up on Earth following his funeral, and an exploration of a high-tech society living within Mars.