The fact Carter is a Confederate soldier is mostly moot. A Princess of Mars opens with Carter and a friend prospecting in Arizona - that they were former Confederate officers is, within the scope of the story, a minor detail at best serving merely to explain his basic knowledge and fighting skills.

Being a Confederate soldier would certainly not explain swordsman skills. Cavalry artillery, and staff officers carried ceremonial swords, but in an era of rifles and pistols it would have been suicide to consider a sword a viable weapon you needed to master.

In A Princess of Mars John Carter's sword skillz come from his history as an unaging avatar of the god of war. As Carter explains, he's received "the honors of three republics and the decorations and friendships of an old and powerful emperor and several lesser kings, in whose service my sword has been red many a time." One assumes he's talking about events that happened before the 19th century.

I suspect the movie will drop the whole Highlander thing. ERB seems to have realized it was a dumb idea and dropped it in later books.

Well, it probably would be fair to say that swordsmanship played a negligible role in the American Civil War. I seem to recall reading somewhere that Nathan B. Forrest's cavalry in particular almost entirely abandoned the use of the sabre, greatly preferring revolvers (of which they usually carried two pairs -- one pair on the belt, and another pair of "horse pistols" in holsters attached to the saddle pommel), and, oddly, sawed-off shotguns, for close-range shock action.

Most Union, and many Confederate, infantrymen had bayonets, but I recall one Union soldier remarking in a letter that it was "practically a miracle" whenever anyone was killed with the bayonet."

I reckon you're right that Carter's swordsmanship came from his long history as a sort of "Eternal Champion." I hadn't thought to equate that with the whole "Highlander"-immortal thing. The first association to spring to mind for me was, well, Michael Moorcock's Eternal Champion cycle of stories. And Moorcock may very well have lifted that trope at least partly from Burroughs -- E.R., I mean, not William S..

You can even see an echo of it in some of Alan Moore's characters, especially the quasi-immortal, constantly gender-shifting Orlando.

I kind of like the "unaging avatar" idea and I hope the movie will NOT drop it.

I don't seem to be putting this very well.

Oh Rascal, I know what you mean about the Fight Club trailer! I thought it was a stupid action film ... Die Hard light. I missed my chance to see it at the theater and I wish I hadn't.

Saw it tonight. Very enjoyable in an old-fashioned adventure way. Possibly a bit too earnest, and the Mars-speak might not work for casual viewers, but well worth your time. Willem Dafoe (sitting 2 rows behind me as it happens) as Tars Tarkas walks off with the movie, and I could look at Lynn Collins as Deja Thoris all day. So purdy...

Where does it rate on the action-ometer?

It's more adventure than action, but there's some neat stuff.

It does violate the C.S. Lewis "an oddity too much" dictum, and is the sort of thing that just goes to increase the movie's dork factor. But maybe it'll only attract dorks anyway, so why not just go for it.

Given Disney's atrocious job of promotion I think only dorks KNOW about it.

Considering the immortality bit never went anywhere in the books, I can't imagine a reason to keep it in the movie. It's just distracting.

Incidentally, the hardcore ERB community hates it if you say John Carter is immortal, or make a big deal about it. The general consensus is that he is not immortal (based on pedantically defining the word far beyond it's colloquial meaning -- yes, it's stated Carter can die by misadventure, but so can Highlanders), and the several passages in the first chapter that discuss it are just unimportant details that ERB threw in for local color, or something. I don't understand the attitude at all. At some point in his writing process ERB obviously thought Carter's unaging-no-childhood-having-always-fighting-knowing-emperors-and-kings-drawn-to-Mars nature was important. He wouldn't have stated it in the first fricking paragraph if it wasn't. That he abandoned it is interesting and I'd love to why, but it's still there in the first few chapters.

I guess I'm not hardcore enough to hate it, and just dorky enough to like it.

Oh, I found another clip from the movie on YouTube. I think I like this one better than the big action set pieces we've been shown so far (though I did like the briefly glimpsed airships). The part with the two moons kind of does something for me.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5DrHlDC-vzY

There's also the fact that countless movies and TV shows have featured former Confederate soldiers as protagonists. More so than Union soldiers, really, and no one's ever complained. Just this year, AMC's Hell On Wheels had the standard, "I fought for the Confederacy but I'm totally cool with black people and union soldiers murdered my wife!" plot, and the world did not end.

They did release that ten minutes of the movie on YouTube, and Carter is clearly a Confederate. The cavalry officers spell out Carter's service record (and mention his swordsmanship -- okay, whatever), and later Carter derides Bryan Cranston's "blue ass."

Thanks for posting that TED talk. Good stuff.

Here is a review i found fo rthe movie on Salon.

http://www.salon.com/2012/03/08/will_jo ... singleton/

They think it could be one of the biggest bombs of the decade. <Gulp>