When it comes to science fiction franchises, Disney doesn't have the greatest track record. The studio's Star Wars content has been heavily criticized for a decade now, and other projects like Tomorrowland, A Wrinkle in Time, and the Tron series never made much of a dent or garnered a big fanbase. However, perhaps the biggest sci-fi tragedy in Disney's entire catalog is 2012's John Carter, which adapted the long-beloved works of Edgar Rice Burroughs to the big screen. With Taylor Kitsch playing the leading John Carter of Mars, the film was supposed to spawn a trilogy that would have continued these intergalactic adventures. Unfortunately, poor marketing killed John Carter before it had the chance to jump too high off the ground — but what would the sequels have been like? From what we can tell, they would have been magnificent.
The Second 'John Carter' Would Have Been Titled 'Gods of Mars'
Since the first film was an adaptation of Burroughs’ A Princess from Mars, it stands to reason that the next two installments — which director Andrew Stanton revealed to have been titled Gods of Mars and Warlord of Mars, respectively — would do the same. Indeed, these titles each derive from the next two novel appearances of John Carter. Unfortunately, Disney let the rights to the Barsoom series revert back to the Edgar Rice Burroughs estate in 2014. Indeed, the estate claimed that it would, "be seeking a new partner to help develop new adventures on film as chronicled in the eleven Mars novels Burroughs wrote," yet there has been no further movement on that front. Ever since, Stanton (and many of us fans) have mourned what could have been.
When talking to The Wrap in 2022, Stanton revealed that the plot for Gods of Mars would center on John returning to Barsoom to find that Dejah (Lynn Collins) has gone missing, searching for her and Carter's son, Carthoris, who had been kidnapped by the Therns. John would arrive on Mars and, aided by Kantos Kan (James Purefoy), and later Willem Dafoe's Tars Tarkas, hunt for his wife and long-lost child. "And then, like Beneath the Planet of the Apes, it all takes place, everybody going into the earth to find out who’s really been controlling the whole planet," Stanton teased. Late that year, at San Diego Comic Con (reported on by us at Collider), the director revealed that the goddess Issus was really the Thern, Matai Shang (Mark Strong), all along. In fact, Shang is the one behind the kidnapping of Carter's son, who he genetically aged to be his super-solider assassin.
This departure from the source material — in which Issus is not only real, but incredibly homicidal — may have been upsetting to some longtime Burroughs' fans, but certainly sounds exciting on its own. If the sequel were anything like The Gods of Mars book, it may have ended on a cliffhanger, with Issus trapping John and Dejah in an impossible prison. However, it appears that Stanton and company intended to depart a bit further from the original Barsoom story, giving the Carter family a happy-ish ending in Gods of Mars while still teasing more later. "Carter, Dejah, and his manchild son are reunited," the director revealed at SDCC. "And the three races the Red, the Green, and the First Born are now chasing the Therns out of there."
'Warlord of Mars' Would Have Concluded the John Carter Trilogy
Image via Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures
Image via Disney
Image via Disney
Image via Disney
Image via Disney
As far as the third film is concerned, Warlord of Mars would have picked up where Gods of Mars left off, with Carter once more thrown into deadly combat with the Therns — who now wish to destroy Mars and escape to Earth. "Meanwhile, scientist Dejah has invented a device to detect these Therns, but the spies destroy it," Stanton continued. "They assassinate Carter, and that's when we remind the audience that it was just a copy, his original body wakes up on Earth." On Earth, Carter is aided by his nephew, Ned (Daryl Sabara), and soon returns to Barsoom to reclaim his home. When he finally defeats the Therns (and Matai Shang, in particular), he is awarded the title of Warlord of Barsoom.
How closely the Disney John Carter franchise would have followed the source material is unknown. From what we can tell, there are some pretty clear differences between Stanton's plans and Burroughs' original adventures. However, since most consider 2012’s John Carter to be a relatively faithful adaptation of A Princess of Mars, it seems like a pretty good indicator that the classic novels would still have been taken into account. Sadly, we will never see Kitsch’s version (or Stanton's vision) of John Carter return to the big screen. It appears that ship has sailed far past Mars. Though, hopefully, one day we might see the Barsoom story brought to life in full, even if it’s without Disney at the helm.
- Release Date
- March 9, 2012
- Runtime
- 132 minutes
- Director
- Andrew Stanton
- Writers
- Michael Chabon, Mark Andrews, Andrew Stanton
- Franchise(s)
- John Carter
