As per IMDb here.
Loved the books as a kid, hope it turns out right.
They’ve got half the cast of Rome there, so that bodes well.
Michael Chabon screenplay? Fuck yeah.
These are the books that taught me, at age seven or eight, that there was a world of literature beyond comic books.
The Barsoom novels are comic books. They just use words instead of pictures.
Uh oh, a glance at the IMDB boards tells me that fanboys are already in a rage, so sure, so absolutely SURE that it’s going to suck hard because it won’t be faithful to the book. Note to self: stay away from the JCoM message boards.
Andrew Stanton directing? Fuck yeah.
Directed:
A Bug’s Life
Finding Nemo
WALL-E
Wrote:
Toy Story
Toy Story 2
A Bug’s Life
Monsters Inc.
Finding Nemo
WALL-E
Which would make an excellent transition between the two media.
This was my point. I just didn’t state it very clearly.
Sorry. Lynn Collins just doesn’t cut it as Dejah Thoris.
Pre-comics. I started reading “A Princess of Mars” to my daughter (didn’t get all that far) and I was struck that the vocabulary level in the book is really high, especially for something meant for a popular magazine. An excellent way to study for the verbal SATs. I think maybe kids 100 years ago were smarter than we are today.
Point ceded. I was thinking of the plots, essentially simple, always dramatic, heroic, and action-packed, where John Carter is always trapped getting in some elaborate maze of hazards he has to negotiate by his wits, silence the guards, kill or avoid the BEMs, figure out how to work the machinery, etc. Also some social commentary, but always on a very simplistic level (the Green Martians are so committed to “the idea of community” that individual relationships between lovers or between parents and offspring are excluded; the White Martians of the south pole profit from a long-standing religious hoax; etc.). I believe Burroughs stated once that he never wanted to put too much strain on his readers’ intelligence. Anyway, classic comic-book material, and probably inspirational to the writers of early superhero comics.
They were certainly better educated. My father graduated from a little high school in rural Kansas in the 1930s. By then he had had classes in Greek, Latin, English (French was spoken in the household), Calculus, the gamut of Literature, and a myriad other subjects today’s kids can’t even spell, much less learn anything about.
Dad loved the Barsoom books.
Judging from the identity of the star and the number of cast members listed as “Harem attendant”, I’m guessing that a lot of folks found it easy to top Traci Lords as Dejah Thoris.
Taylor Kitsch?
Meh.
That’s the problem with Dejah Thoris, she has to be spectacular, the woman so inspiring that J. Carter will do anything to win her and then face any foe to rescue her. But, every person is going to have thier own vision of what that person looks like. I am unfamiliar with Lynn Collins but from the pictures on Google image search she really doesn’t fit how I pictured her. It seems to me that the casting of Dejah is way more important than the casting of JC (I’m unfamiliar with Taylor Kitsch as well). There are tons of actors that could play Carter, I pictured a more exotic, odd looking DJ. Who knows what they will do with make-up and costume.
It doesn’t matter whether I think Dejah is the most beautiful and desirable woman in the three worlds.
What matters is that the director and actors convince me that John Carter believes her to be so.
But probably couldn’t properly format a spreadsheet, configure a wireless router, or use AutoCAD; all things I could easily do when I graduated high school 
In other words, kids are differently educated, not necessarily better. Why the hell would I need to know Latin or Greek?
I was also reading the Mars books when I was around 10, and I’m not really sure a movie adaptation can live up to my imagination. It certainly won’t be the same without everybody bounding around naked. I’ll definitely see it, though.
I’m pretty sure JCoM has been cast before. I’ll believe this movie is being made when the credits roll the 3rd time I watch it. The closing credits, not the opening.
I had calculus, a broad range of literature, and Latin in high school, too. No Greek, but I could have if I had so chosen (I figured four years of Latin would be more useful than two years of each, for college purposes). Plus computer programing in a few different languages.