On the importance of Edgar Rice Burroughs' Barsoom series.

Frank Frazetta's cover illustration for 'A Princess of Mars'.

A war veteran is transported to another planet where he meets eight feet tall warlike aliens and falls in love with a princess and decides to help her people. Also, there are horses with four limbs and psychic connections with animals and people. 

Does that sound like Avatar? You bet it does. That's because James Cameron (director of Terminator 1 and 2, Aliens, True Lies and Titanic) ripped off everything from this little book by Edgar Rice Burroughs (of Tarzan and Pellucidar fame) called 'A Princess of Mars'.

This one little book that spawned a series has had more influence than any other material of literature ever since the early ninteen hundreds. Hell, the only original story/concept/whatever since the advent of ERB's Mars books has been the Lord of the Rings series, which, itself is ripped off by thousands and thousands of other scifi/fantasy stories and games and whatnot.

And it's really unfair what happened to it.

Men wrote books influenced by it. Men wrote and directed movies influenced by this.

And never acknowledged its significance.

Nobody tried to make it famous, because by the time it was remembered again, it had been ripped off a billion times in film and television. The story and the idea became so grounded in the public consciousness that the story of John Carter, if made known to the public, would have been heavily derided as a rip off.

And that's exactly what's happened now.

Tars Tarkas (As played by William Defoe in the upcoming movie)

The John Carter movie has been in development hell since thirty-twenty years. It's been passed on from production house to production house over the years and finally took shape at Disney an unfortunate MONTH before the release of Cameron's 3D "epic", AVATAR.

That it would be hailed as an Avatar rip-off was fairly obvious, and I was wary of that as I browsed through Youtube comments, AICN threads, ComicBookMovie comments and all that, but darn, I'd be damned if I didn't tell that it hurt.

ERB's book is an amazing explosion of action sequences, shocking heroics, and amazing ideas, all supported by the known scientific fact of the early twentieth century. That's the funny thing about ERB's book. It's filled with the weird and the wonderful and every creation is given a scientific reason to exist. In that way, it somewhat makes more sense than Avatar. That's why, to have it be called "A poor man's Avatar" by a commenter just retches my heart.

I admit it. This movie is coming out thirty years too late. It should have been made in the eighties' with a hulky He-Man type of guy in the lead, with aliens animated by Ray Harryhausen.

But hey, Harryhausen's dead. And so is the school of stop motion animation. There's CGI and motion capture and all that. So we have to accept the John Carter that we're getting. Even though it won't be faithful to the book, it's a goddamn John Carter movie. You can't help but want to see it.

Another Frazetta Illustration (for Gods of Mars, book II in the series)

You can't help but love these books, you see. These little penny dreadfuls, or pulp fiction as we know call them were the blockbusters last century. And these were brimming with ideas. Publishing houses had these amazing editors who would hire the best of the crop, force them to go with the best of the concepts and push them to their limit.

That's why we got awesome stories in the early twentieth century, because of these penny dreadfuls. You can blame all that Pulp Fiction material for amazing stories of characters such as Conan, Sherlock Holmes, Professor Challenger, Zorro and last, but definitely not the least, John Carter.

No book has influenced so many since the John Carter series. It's influenced EVERYONE. From Arthur C Clarke to Akira Toriyama. You can find shades of the books in almost every scifi/fantasy ever released since. That's because it's such a great idea, such a great concept that people just want to devour it.

Original cover to A Princess of Mars

So it's really sad to see it being torn apart and lambasted and being called a poor-man's-Avatar. Because it isn't.

In fact, Avatar is a poor man's John Carter.

Avatar is a fat, jell-o eating man-child's John Carter.

Avatar is a cynic's John Carter. A moron's John Carter. A cheater's John Carter. 

That's what it is. 

The first book in the series, 'A Princess of Mars' is more nuanced, more poetic and more beautiful than Avatar will ever be, or any other movie for that matter. Although so many have copied from it, there is no outmatching the book. I don't know why. Neither does anyone. Maybe it's the wonder that is encompassed in this book. Maybe it's the magic of discovery that most other stories lack.

Or maybe it's just one helluva book.

John Carter stars Taylor Kitsch, Lynn Collins, Samantha Morton, Mark Strong, Ciaran Hinds, Dominic West, James Purefoy, Daryl Sabara, Polly Walker, Bryan Cranston, Thomas Hayden Church, Willem Dafoe, and will be released on March 9, 2012.
The book "A Princess of Mars" by Edgar Rice Burroughs is in the public domain and can be downloaded here.