Since his serialized magazine debut 100 years ago, Edgar Rice Burroughâs John Carter has fueled the worldâs imagination as a man caught between two worlds. Traveling from Earth to Mars, Carter uses the strength, skills and morals of the former to forge his destiny in the latter. Itâs only appropriate then, that Andrew Stanton, the man responsible for finally bringing Carter to the screen, is simultaneously crossing worlds of his own, moving from directing animated fare like Finding Nemo and WALL-E to embracing an epically scaled live-action production roughly five years in the making.
In an unprecedented invitation, ComingSoon.net traveled twice to see two very different sides of Stantonâs film. The first set visit, in February of 2010, took place at Surrey, Englandâs Longcross Studios on a series of massive production stages. The second, several months later, occurred in Utahâs Moab Desert, where the incredible landscape doubled for the rocky surface of Mars (or, as the natives call it in Burroughâs books, Barsoom).
THE DIRECTOR OF MARS
âA lot of people think that when youâre on an animated CG movie, youâre working with computers,â says a beaming Stanton inside a fully-realized cockpit of a Martian airship. âI have to keep telling people, âNo, I work with human beings.â I work with 200 human beings. I have conversations with at least 50 human beings a day about the art form, about why a character would do this or what a set should look like. Why we should use the color red or the motivation of the plot. The conversations Iâm having here are absolutely no different. Itâs just real and you can actually touch it. Instead of saying, âThe bottle kind of look like that there,â I can actually touch it The intellectual, artistic and even practical conversations on a lot of things havenât been as huge a transition as I had thought.â
GALLERY: View new behind-the-scenes photos!
Seeing John Carter come to the big screen was a dream of Stantonâs since childhood, though he admits that his fondness for the character didnât begin with Burroughsâ series of books.
âIf Iâm giving full disclosure,â he laughs, âI first read the adaptation that Marvel Comics did in the 70âs. I was fascinated by those and that lead me to wonder what the origin was. I went to the books and I had a friend with many older brothers. They were always drawing these nine-foot tall, four-armed, green-tusked creatures. I said, âWhat the heck are those?â They said, âThose are Tharks!â and theyâd tell me about them. .. Pretty much my entire life between ten and maybe about six years ago was, as a fan, hoping that somebody would finally realize the book and the world and put it onto the screen.â
Plans for a feature film version go back almost as far as the character himself, but the elaborate fantasy of Barsoom has always been a challenge to bring to life. It wasnât until an Oscar after-party in 2004 (the night Finding Nemo won âBest Animated Featureâ) that Stanton realized he might wind up even tangentially involved in the projectâs production.
âI bumped into Robert Rodriguez and he was about to do it,â Stanton recalls. âI was seething with jealousy, not that I thought Iâd be able to do it, but just that someone was going to do it. As a fan and because I knew him I said, in the most loving way, âDonât fâk it up! Donât screw it up! I just really, really want to see it done right.â He said, âOh, no, no, no!â I said, âHereâs how I would open it! You can have it!â He said, âLay it on me! Lay it on me!â I pretty much thought, âOkay, itâs finally going to make it to the screen!â Then he had a falling out with the DGA in the middle of making âSin Cityâ and it just kind of fell apart. Then it went to Kerry Conran, who did âSky Captain and the World of Tomorrow.â I was always following from afar as a fan going, âIs it going to make it?'â
It wasnât long before Stanton discovered that a co-worker shared his enthusiasm for the property. Mark Andrews, the head of story on âThe Incrediblesâ and âRatatouille,â also grew up with the world of Barsoom. He and Stanton even shared pictures with one another that they had drawn as children, depicting Tharks battling against the red deserts of Mars.
â[Mark], too, had independently been tracking it,â Stanton says. â We just sort of made this goofy pinky swear to each other. âIf you ever get involved in it or if I ever get involved it, weâll carry the other one on board with it.'â
By then, the property had ended up with Jon Favreau slated to direct but, as fate would have it, he left the film to take on Iron Man instead.
âDisney called me just to check and see how things were going on âWALL-E,'â Stanton continues. âI donât know what possessed me to do it, but I sort of said, âI just heard that this project fell through and has gone back to the Burroughs estate. I donât know if Iâm a one-hit wonder. All Iâve made is ÂNemo.â If ÂWALL-Eâ is a bomb, just forget I ever had this conversation. But if ÂWALL-Eâ is any good, Iâd love to see this possibly made on the screen.â I knew that, to do it right, half the characters would have to be CG generated. I felt comfortable in that world. I was always interested in live action and I thought this would be a good hybrid for me to try it out. They said, âOkay. Weâll look into it.'â
Soon, Disney had managed to work out the rights with the Burroughs estate and extensive planning began to bring the books to the screen. Teaming with Mark as his co-writer and second unit director, the team found an equally fanatic Carter devotee in Pulitzer Prize winning author Michael Chabon who, himself, produced childhood drawings of Tharks.
âItâs almost like a club,â Stanton laughs. âYou have to prove that youâre that much of a fan. I think itâs almost lucky to have been a fan first and a filmmaker second on this movie, because then itâs not about my vision or my film. Itâs about what Iâve always wanted as an audience member, which is what weâre always trying to do on any of the films that we make at Pixar. How to find the audience member in yourself and not the filmmaker in yourself.â
The trio began scripting John Carter even as Stanton was finishing work on WALL-E and, while though the goal is to make a single, solid film, the director is not shy about hoping for a full-fledged franchise.
âThatâs the character that youâre following through it all, John Carter,â he explains. â I always thought it would be cool to do, âJohn Carter and the something of Mars.â All the books use that as the backend of the titles. ÂChessmen of Mars,â ÂThe Gods of Mars,â ÂThe Warlords of Mars.â If, by some lucky chance, thereâs ever a film two or three or whatever, I think it would be an easier thing to track.â
Several months later, we caught up with Stanton again on our visit to the Utah desert where he welcomed press into the shade of a Barsoomian hut. Outside, leading man Taylor Kitsch had been rehearsing a scene that called for crane and harness that would let him recreate one of Carterâs seemingly superhuman leaps.
At this point in the day, production is winding down because of âMagic Hour,â the period of even lighting just before dark. Normally, thatâs a boon for filmmakers, but Stanton is after harsh shadows and bright sunlight to make for the best Martian landscape. As he sits, the ever-smiling director betrays no signs of exhaustion and, in fact, looks even more energetic than he did in London.
âI just sort of accepted my fate before I went onto this that it was going to be hard as hell,â he says, laughing off the stress level involved of a production that has barely reached its halfway point. âItâs sort of like saying, ÂOkay, weâre going to go sail around the world.â Thereâs nothing really easy about that, but thereâs something mental about just accepting that up front.â
While on-location filming has roughly another month to go, Stanton is, at this point, still more than two years away from a finished film due to the extensive CGI work involved.
âI donât call it post,â he explains. âI call it ÂPrincipal Digital Photography.â Once you look at it like that, you realize, yeah, Iâm not done with this shoot at all when I finish in June. Four of my leads are CG and Iâd say three or four supporting cast members are CG. Then half the world â not half literally, but the extension of worlds and the extension of sets. These things that are so massive and fantastical that you canât build them â have to be done. The movie always was planned to be half CG and half live action. Not in look, but in the attempt to build this vision we had. Hopefully, if we do it right, when itâs all done, nothing will look CG and youâll just accept it Thatâs really my goal, to not be showy or spectacle for as much as there is, but just believe that Iâm really there. Because Iâve spent a whole lifetime just wanting to go there.â
Looking out at the Utah landscape, itâs not a hard shift to believe that itâs a different world entirely. Stanton plans to tweak that inherent awe with non-traditional effects work and the help of production designer Nathan Crowley, best known for The Dark Knight and the upcoming The Dark Knight Rises.
âWe came up with this idea of going around and finding geographical rock structures that already look like ruins,â says Stanton. âThey just need a tiny bit of CG work to suddenly add a stairwell or a few window holes. It flops into your eyes and suddenly looks like a whole ruin, like Petra. Weâre making it look like itâs bleeding off this whole mesa. The whole mesa is going to look like a city We wonât need to do more than 20 percent CG work on top of the physical photography. Your eye will see 80% reality.â
A GENTLEMAN OF VIRGINIA
âNot to dismiss anything,â laughs Stanton, âbut it was almost in spite of John Carter that I liked the books He was always a kind of Prince Valiant, did-it-right-from-the-get-go kind of bland, vanilla guy. I think it was his situation that was more fascinating to me. It was a stranger in a strange land, guy thrown out to circumstances.â
Introduced as a âGentleman of Virginiaâ in Burroughâs original text, Carter is a veteran of the Civil War, fighting for the Confederate side. The character being self-assured to a fault, Stanton wanted to make the on-screen portrayal of Carter far more three-dimensional.
âItâs not that unique to just this story,â Stanton continues, âItâs often that the hero is the least interesting person and that the interesting characters are the people around him. I felt like Iâd rather watch damaged goods than somebody who has their act together. I went for someone who pretty much resigned himself to the fact that his purpose in life was over and sort of went with the thinking that itâs not for us to say what our purpose in life is. You may think itâs done or finished or ended or been missed, but lifeâs not done with you sometimes.â
Stanton found his Carter in Taylor Kitsch, best known for the television series âFriday Night Lightsâ and as Gambit in X-Men Origins: Wolverine.
âI really fought for [the part],â says Kitsch. âYou try to do as much research and everything else to draw from after the auditions. Iâm very familiar now with the books, but the script has to take liberties and vice versa. When youâre reading both at the same time, you kind of get caught up in the middle.â
One of the main ways of humanizing Carter was to make sure that his skills grew throughout the film as he comes used to the Martian environment, the gravity of which enables him to leap with superhuman ability.
âI used to laugh because it seemed like, in every chapter, there was the sentence, âAnd then I fought the greatest battle of my entire life,'â smiles Stanton. âI went, âThat can only happen once, technically!â We decided, hey, itâs an action movie. Itâs probably going to be two hours, two hours plus. I donât want to bludgeon the audience. I donât want to make it a gore-fest. I donât want people to check out. I want every single battle to move the story forward. I want every single conflict to feel like itâs different from another and special We worked really hard to make tentpole scenes of conflict and saved or combined things to make them that much stronger.â
âYouâre definitely going to see him coming from zero,â Kitsch adds, âYouâre going to see him at a point where he canât get any lower than what he was. You see an incredible arc between there and where he finishes. Thatâs a beautiful thing to see. Playing him becomes an incredible challenge and Iâm loving the ride.â
Training for the role began for Kitsch on a mental level, immersing himself in both the Burroughs texts as well as the history of the time period.
âI just enveloped myself in the Civil War and studied with all of these historians and guys who knew the Civil War inside and out,â he says. âYou read the letters from the soldiers and I built a ton of John Carter off of that, where he actually came from and why he went to war to begin with.â
Of course, seeing the actor in costume in the heat of the Utah desert, thereâs a definite respect for the purely physical demands put on the performance as well. Speaking with press between takes, Kitsch is literally bleeding from the last fight.
âI feel worse than I look, so what does that tell you?â he laughs. âI mean, I think getting into it you just try to prep as much as you can and get ready for the adventure, you know? âŠYou learn a lot about [John Carter] with how he deals with fighting, It would be very hard for him to turn away from a fight.â
Beyond the straight-forward physical challenges, Kitsch also has to deal with co-stars that, in the final film, will be several feet taller than him. The Martian race called the Tharks (the green men of Mars) are four-armed creatures that stand nine feet tall and, while doing battle against them is tricky enough, Kitsch also has to interact with a variety of on-set stand-ins: everything from the motion capture suited actors on stilts to full-scale Thark replicas.
â[Y]ou have such great actors,â he says. âTrue actors behind it. Yeah, theyâve got dots on their face and theyâre in pajama-like stuff and theyâve got these helmets on, but itâs like you truly just connect with the eyes. Like you would in any scene.â
In addition to the Tharks themselves, Carter also finds a companion in an enormous creature named Woola that serves the hero midway between a dog and a horse.
âIâm telling you right now, Woola will steal this movie,â Kitsch laughs. âHeâs so great. The way heâs just seamlessly written in. And even the arc with John and Woola is fun. I had a dog, so there are little things that Stanton is letting me throw in there.â