A Princess of Mars by Edgar Rice Burroughs

After the awesomeness that was WALL-E, director Andrew Stanton's next movie will apparently be an adaptation of A Princess of Mars by Edgar Rice Burroughs, of Tarzan fame. He's said that the movie will involve both live action and animation, but that's not much help, since anything from Harry Potter to WALL-E itself counts as a hybrid :-p Either way, I'm sure it'll be an awesome movie.

Unfortunately, after reading the book I have to hope that Stanton doesn't stay too loyal to his source material. (and I never, ever thought I'd say that about a film adaptation of a novel >_< ) It's got a pretty good story, which is why I have hope for the movie, but the main character's narrative style gets old really fast.

Overview
John Carter is a native Virginian and Civil War veteran who finds himself mysteriously and randomly transported to the planet Mars, or Barsoom as the natives call it. He soon becomes entangled in a war between the brutish, alien green martians and the practically human red martians, one of whom is the title character. (oh, and btw, that's red as in red injun--this is a product of the good 'ol pre-PC days) That's about it for the plot. Now, to it's credit the conflict is much more complicated than a simple "green aliens bad, red aliens good" setup, but it does easily fall into the vein of 'squabbling natives need civilized man to step in and make things better'.

Recommended for: I'm kinda stumped on this one. Kids? Fans of turn-of-the-century adventure novels? I'd feel bad not recommending it--it wasn't nearly bad enough for that. Maybe I'll just say wait for the movie ^_^

Parental Worries: Nobody on Mars wears clothes. Because it's a book this isn't much of an issue, especially since they only mention it once or twice, but there you are. There's also a kind of forbidden love affair, but it concerns the more alien of the two martian races and their society is so turned on its head that there's no real moral parallel to ours.

Audiobook Comments: Read by Dennis McKee. He may actually be one of the reasons I found it very hard to like John Carter. The book is told in first person, and Carter's voice (both from the writing and the narration) was annoyingly self-congratulatory and condescending >_<

Ramblings (Spoiler Threat: Low)
I sometimes have a hard time imagining books as movies. Before the Harry Potter movies came out, I was terrified that they'd come off like the old BBC Narnia miniseries for some reason. And before I read Princess I'd seen a few bits of cover art that did not suggest a family-friendly movie along the lines that Pixar's been producing. For example:

So I read the entire book visualizing a more scifi version of One Million Years B.C. or Ben Hur. >_< Princess is credited with being an early scifi novel and an inspiration for Heinlein, Bradbury and Sagan--but don't let that fool you. This is a Lost World novel along the lines of King Solomon's Mines with a thin patina of science on top. Now, I'm a big fan of several more recent adventure/scifi series, coughStarWarscough so this isn't necessarily a bad thing. (on second thought, I'm not sure how much was known of Mars in 1912, so it might have had pretty good science for the time--thin atmosphere, lower gravity--but I stand by my point in the context of today's scifi standards)