Barsoom or Bust: Bow down and be humbled, fools!

[kali921]

So, I have a ton of links to post about Andrew Stanton's collaboration with Disney for the upcoming John Carter of Mars films, particularly about the fact that there's some rather horrific whitewashing going on in the casting of the Red Martians in the same way that the cast of the live-action Avatar film is being whitewashed

Comments

[sdelmonte]

I fondly remember Kayanan from his DC Comics days, as the successor to Pat Broderick on both Firestorm and Captain Atom. Glad to see he's gotten some sort of work, if not as much as he should.

[kali921]

He's not working on the new Stanton-helmed John Carter film, at least not that I'm aware of. It's too bad, because Kayanan simply draws the BEST Tars Tarkas that I've ever seen. If I were Stanton, I'd be hiring Kayanan YESTERDAY to help me design the film version of Barsoom. I'm sort of sad that Stanton wants this film to be a wan, limp, and polite version of a rip roaring canon chock full of things that would make stiff upper lip types blanch and back away. Barsoom isn't messin' around - it's a dying world full of ancient civilizations but it's also the Wild West and the Barbary Coast.

I don't think I've seen Kayanan's work on Firestorm - what run was this?

[sdelmonte]

The second Gerry Conway series (1982-1990) - he started around issue 25 or so and lasted about three years.

[jmatonak]

*BZZT*. Lynn Collins is not incomparable. Lynn Collins is comparable to, like, anyone else who has ever gotten a job in a movie. I bail out before we even get to the racefail. :)

(For newbies reading this, "the incomparable Dejah Thoris" is a standard construction, much like Allah is "the compassionate, the merciful".)

[kali921]

Yes. I hadn't even gotten to the fact that Dejah Thoris is NOT generic Hollywood starlet pretty. She is supposed to be the kind of beautiful (and bold) that is absolutely singular. And if you can't find a singular beauty, at least cast someone with a keen intelligence and character to her face, you know?

[jmatonak]

It would be nice if Dejah Thoris, in the movie(s), actually had all the ass-kicking power Carter's narration imputes to her. Because, to hear him tell it, she kicks more ass in the morning than most princesses can manage all day. But he is biased by love. :)

(oh, uh... Barsoom spoilers, I guess? The male lead hooks up with the female lead. Sorry to ruin that surprise, comment readers. :P)

SPOILERS FOR 1912!

[kali921]

ZOMG SPOILERS FOR 1912!

Anyone who kicks up a fuss about being spoiled for plot-related points for a film based on material published OVER NINETY YEARS AGO needs to go away from online fandom. I'm certainly not going to be warning for spoilers for any John Carter-related material. Ferchrissakes.

[merrickm]

So what are they going to do, put her in redface to play Dejah? Well, yeah. That's what I'd do, regardless of the ethnicity of whoever was playing her (though I'd probably have someone darker-skinned playing her as well). I never pictured them as having the complexion of any real human ethnicity. They're reddish copper. Yeah, a lot of art has Dejah as a stereotypical Exotic Beauty of Persianish appearance, but as you pointed out, a lot of art of her has her wearing clothes. (Which of course she'll have to be in any live-action movie adaptation in order for the movie to be remotely marketable enough to get the budget such an adaptation would require. I don't think any studio is gonna go for the naked thing

[kali921]

Mind you, were it up to me- well if it were up to me this wouldn't be live action, but if it was- I'd still cast a Middle Eastern or possibly Native American actress just in homage to the way she looked on a lot of covers, as well as to emphasize her being racially different than John Carter, but I'd still put coppery makeup on her if there was the budget for it. Er...the Red Martians always read to me as Burroughs' partial inversion - a sci fi fantasy inversion, partial - of the Red Indian trope. Yes, even with some of the problematic depictions in the Barsoom books when it comes to race and gender. (I thought it was sort of a poetic justice that the White Martians were assholes while the Red Martians were most clearly not

[merrickm]

Huh, well, like I said, it's been years since I read the books (and I don't think I read them all- mostly drawing a blank on Black Martians, for example) so no doubt you are right, in which case this casting is even more clearly no good at all than I thought. (Also, as I recall, the books I read as a kid didn't have pictures, which probably contributed to me imagining less human Red Martians than others.)

[outlawpoet]

This looked like a totally awesome adaption that never was, but when people mention Carter of Mars adaptions or retoolings, all I can think about is Swanwick's Periodic Table of Science Fiction, and the entry for Helium:

2

[kali921]

So very eighties. Amusing, but eighties.

[outlawpoet]

whatever! PUNK IS TIMELESS!

[timjr]

Mmmmm, sugar flavored apocalypses.

[kali921]

NOT IN MY BARSOOM, THANKS. I want spurting blood! Radium guns! Huge air navies trying to invade Helium with pitched battle after battle! Five-alarm sex on the floor! Vast and picturesque vistas of an ancient world!

[jmatonak]

Eighth ray!

[kali921]

YES. The River Iss! Mors Kajak! Horz! The Kaldanes! The Plant Men of Valley Dor and their problematic dentition!

(Dude, I was sitting here going through the books, and I forgot that the Thark carry spears that are forty feet long.)