In the following clip from John Carter, you’ll see Taylor Kitsch as the titular character jump from a cliff with Dejah Thoris (Lynn Collins) to a small raft where Mars native, Tars Tarkas (voiced by Willem Dafoe) is waiting to take him down the river. From the opposite cliff Mark Strong’s character, Matai Shang, ominously describes Carter as “the one who jumps.”
I don’t know about you, but I am not overwhelmed by jumping. Sure, it’s hard, and it took even Neo a few times to get it right in The Matrix, but if you’re going to release a clip let’s do a little better than jumping down to a raft.
Meanwhile, co-writer and director Andrew Stanton spoke with Ain’t It Cool News about the project where they explored the possibility of future films based on the Edgar Rice Burroughs character.
What we basically did is we mapped out a trilogy and we took all the cool elements and all of the cool characters, all the cool creatures, and sort of made a grocery list. We said, “We don’t have the time to put all of the things that are mentioned in the first book or in any of these books all in one movie and we don’t want to short change anything, so if we can make them much more grounded and integral to the story some of these things may be worth waiting for later while some of these other things may be worth putting in early,” so you get Matai early, but the air plants will be later.
[…]
I can’t wait to see the goddess ISSUS herself and the plant men. I can’t wait… We kind of held back on really going full bore with air ships, because I knew what we were going to do in film two and I didn’t want it to feel redundant from film one, so I had to find that balance of “How much is just enough” to enjoy what you were seeing, but want a little bit more, “because we are going to give you more in the second one” and then more of… What I geek out on is just the character relationships and I feel like Carter and Dejah’s marriage is just getting started at the end of this movie and I really get to delve into a married couple’s first year of being together on this adventure in the second one and also delve deeper into what’s really going on with the Therns. It just feels like a great second season of a TV show that’s about to come up for me and I get to really delve deeper into all of the characters and the relationships. So that’s really juicy stuff for me.
Stanton also revealed to Ain’t It Cool that he’s developing a new Pixar short film with Pete Docter who co-wrote WALL-E with Stanton. Get more on all of that right here.
You can check out the first clip directly below and I’ve added a new promo featurette for the film to my official page for John Carter right here.
John Carter hits theaters on March 9.
