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Director Andrew Stanton does his most substantive interview yet at Hero Complex about the JOHN CARTER movie, and, rest assured, ERB-fans, he gets it. Stanton gets practically tongue-tied just trying to explain why he loves the material so much:

But my big thing is this: There were so many personal fantasies that were fulfilled or cathartically found by fans through those books — in other words, they used the books as a conduit to their own fantasies and the things in their own head. I’ve never had to answer this before so I’m stumbling around a bit, but the thing is that because I know this book was so much the source material, directly or indirectly, for so many things, I got intrigued by the idea of treating it as if it really was the source material in the historical sense of the term. What if this really happened? That kind of opened my eyes. I suddenly had a fresh way to see it. And it goes back, in a way, to the way we take things in when [we were young readers]. When I was a kid I really wanted to imagine it as if it was a real sequence of events that took place on the surface of Mars in another century.


Stanton also expands on the idea that Comic-Con is now just too noisy for movie studios.

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GB: I was surprised to see you’re not going to Comic-Con International with the project. It seems like the logical place to start a conversation with fans leading up to the film and the 100th anniversary next year.

AS: I think what it was is the perception that it’s getting harder and harder to stand out amid the din. We’re going to do our special event to get some focus and separation. I know some people will read that as a sign that we’re unsure of our property. It’s just the opposite. We want to control how and what is being seen and the way it is presented. So much stuff now is just spit out so fast and the churn of it all. You almost gain nothing by talking about things really early in this day and age. I think in the future we might see things arrive the way Prince announces a concert where a few days before the show he announces it and tickets just go up. You might see that with movies and other things. That seems like the only way to get people interested and then capitalize off that interest.


The concept art isn’t what we were expecting, but it looks pretty groovy.

1 COMMENT

  1. This looks cool and all, but the Dougan Household is most looking forward to seeing Taylor Kitsch and Lynn Collins in their sure-to-be skimpy costumes. The Missus misses Tim Riggins.

  2. What I really don’t understand is how Disney expects to build some awareness if not hype for this movie based on a license few people know (especially teenagers) without showing ANYTHING less than one year before the movie is out. There has been no trailer, not production art, no set shots, no shots of the actors, just those 2 little images that at this point look like nothing.
    Why all the secret with this?
    We all know it’s going to be light PG classic heroic fantasy fare ala Star Wars/Avatar with none of the sexy/violent edginess that some could expect, so why all the secret? Show us the toys already!