Changing Classics

Yesterday for Father's Day the Ravishing Mrs. TB and Na Clann indulged me for Father's Day by taking me to see John Carter.   I am a great fan of the series penned by Edgar Rice Burroughs and although I had some trepidation when I heard a picture was being made (because book adaptations so seldom seem to get things right), I at least excited to see a series that I enjoyed so much growing up brought to visualization on the screen.

I left the theater in a sort of fuzzy aftershock, akin to finding out a friend you knew in high school had taken up an unusual hobby that you weren't sure was really healthy or not.

Did I enjoy the movie?  Overall, yes.  The scenery and recreation of the dead cities and sea bottoms of Barsoom were close to what I pictured.  The representation of John Carter's ability to jump (less gravity on Barsoom, you know) was even better than I could have pictured.  Woola, the Martian Hound, was a treat.  The Green Men - Tharks, Warhoons - were different than my pictures of them, but there have been many different artistic interpretations of them over the years so that was not a huge obstacle.  The interpretation of Barsoomian technology - fliers, weapons, buildings - was different but not all out of line with what I had seen in my mind and on the pages of the books.

Plot and characters?  Ah, there's the rub.

Plot- The plot and storyline actually incorporated parts of the first three books of the John Carter series.  They did what I seem to loathe in other movies:  they used characters and situations from different parts of the books, added a big dollop of explanation to create conflict, and then spun it back out into the theater.  The effect was disconcerting, a sort of fusion plot cuisine in which you discover that Japanese and Bulgarian cooking are not as compatible as you had first hoped.

Characters - This is where the breakdown really occurred for me.  Dejah Thoris has been modified from a Princess to a "Princess-who-is-the-regent-of-the-Hall-of-Science-and-Inventor", I assume to break some kind of character mold and give greater appeal to a female audience - a strong lead (although interestingly enough, Dejah Thoris of the books never strikes you as anything but a strong female presence).  Still, worse things have happened to beloved characters of my youth, so I could soldier on.

John Carter - this was the biggest problem.  John Carter of the movie was a man who was bitter, who gave his allegiance to no-one after the Civil War and the death of his wife and daughter.  He is man consumed with finding his treasure and is not a man of causes.  It is only after great soul searching that he "suddenly" becomes devoted to a cause.

John Carter of the books was none of these things.  He was a man who believed passionately in a cause, a man to whom money was useful but not required.  He fought for causes - even loosing ones.  He was noble and brave, not shirking the call of duty. 

The movie John Carter became a hero.  The book John Carter always was one.

As movies are developed, is there an incessant need to feel that characters need to be redeveloped?  If so, why?  Because they're dated (hardly the case for John Carter I think, as his books continue to sell)?  Because writers like the name and not the character and so are trying to cheat moviegoers into coming to see that which they think they know, a sort of mask of a person without the person behind them?  Or is it that in creating a character they are really creating what they themselves view the society in which they write needs are wants:  that a man of heroic proportions and single minded purpose either no longer exists or should not, that such a man has been replaced by the man of profit and no causes?

Deep thoughts for a two hour afternoon movie, I know.  But it left me with one question:  if a book is popular because of what it is, what sense does it make to change it to make a movie?  Is it hubris on the part of the writers that they know better than the author?  Or simply that if something does not conform to a world view, it's easier to write differently than to confront the outstanding issues in our own souls?