UPDATE: We've added high-res screenshots to the bottom of this post giving specific looks at some of the scenery and the unexplainable stuff-- blue glowing lights?-- you can see in the trailer. Click on the gallery below to get started!
The first trailer for John Carter, formerly known as John Carter of Mars, has come online, and it's probably not what you're expecting. As I suggested in my edit bay report, it's far moodier and a little slower than you might expect from your usual giant CGI movie set in outer space. But that also makes it a lot more interesting. Boasting a cover of an Arcade Fire song by Peter Gabriel and just a little bit of dialogue from some of the main players, it's the real kind of teaser that gives you a hint but stops far short of giving away the whole thing. Check it out below, or at Apple in beautiful HD.
The live-action directorial debut of Andrew Stanton, the director of the Pixar masterpieces Finding Nemo and Wall-E, John Carter is an adaptation of the series of Edgar Rice Burroughs novels written about 100 years ago, referred to collectively as John Carter of Mars. Taylor Kitsch stars as the titular character, a Civil War soldier mysteriously transported to, well, Mars. He meets both a race of nine-foot green aliens called Tharks and human-ish aliens, led by a princess called Dejah (Lily Collins). Honestly beyond that I don't know much, and I don't really want to. You can tell in the trailer that a lot of action ensues, but also some heavier stuff; one of the scenes we saw in the edit bay focused on the relationship between John Carter and Dejah, and even in that short clip it felt very significant and true. Stanton has proven himself a master of storytelling in his two Pixar films, and teaming up with novelist Michael Chabon and fellow Pixar vet Mark Andrews to write this script, I have to assume it's a focus here too.
John Carter will be in theaters next spring on March 9, and right now appears to be really unusual in a very good way-- an adaptation of the science fiction series that influenced all the science fiction to come, but still a movie that looks original. I know Stanton is too committed to maintaining the mystery to show us much of anything more than this for a while, but I'm dying to see more all the same.
