There have been many great writers throughout history,
many authors who have influenced generations of literature: Shakespeare, Poe,
Isaac Asimov. Perhaps the most prolific in volume of work is that of one of my
greatest literary loves—Edgar Rice Burroughs.
Edgar Rice Burroughs (ERB) has been described as “the
most influential writer, bar none, of our century.” — Ray Bradbury. I would
have to agree.
It is difficult to know where to begin or how much to
include when discussing my longtime love affair with the works of ERB. I could
spend the next month writing about the massive volumes of work he produced, and
the influence on both pop, and sub-culture. Some of you may have never heard of
him, much of his work you may attribute to the likes of Disney as they have had
a long and storied history with rights to ERB`s work, most notably Tarzan. I
often visit antique stores and auction websites in the hopes of finding first
editions of his work, which I can tell you is extremely difficult, more so the
science fiction books vs the adventure series as his “Barsoom series” is smaller
in runs, and a great love of mine.
Who was Edgar Rice Burroughs?
Born September 1st, 1875, in Chicago, ERB
had a brief stint in the U.S. Army 7th Cavalry, before going to work
in Idaho with his brother as a rancher, and later gold miner. Much of his life
was reflected in his work, as I will touch on later. After the families
ultimately, unsuccessful adventures in gold, in 1911, ERB moved on to become a
pencil sharpener wholesaler, and soon began his writing career. Starting with pulp
magazines, Burroughs eventually found a home for his famous “Barsoom series,”
and published his first book entitled, A Princess of Mars featuring my
favorite novels and characters of his; John Carter and Dejah Thoris. By 1912 he
published his highly successful and most famous series, Tarzan of the Apes.
Fast forward to March 1950, and after publishing over 80 novels, ERB died of a
heart attack. So that’s the Wikipedia of it in a nutshell. The library of ERB
is so extensive that I have to make severe cuts to just how much I am going to
delve into. Let’s hit a few of the big topics.
How many books did Edgar Rice Burroughs
write?
Barsoom Series: 11
Tarzan Series: 26
Pellucidar Series: 7
Venus Series: 5
Caspak Series: 3
Moon Series: 3
Mucker Series: 3
Jungle Adventure Novels: 5
Westerns: 4
Various other works: 17
Total: 84
That’s an incredible number when you consider he was
only actively publishing for 38 years. 2.2 books a year is a large amount to
sit down and write. When you also consider that he had pioneered marketing and
trademarking of a character (Tarzan) he surely had less and less time on his
hands as his empire and family flourished.
What movies were inspired by Edgar Rice
Burroughs?
So many movies! Seriously. To date, Michael Crichton
has had 19 productions of his works made, both tv and movie. That’s huge! But
that is still nothing compared to my man ERB. According to the IMDB page,
Burroughs has 79 credits involving writing and producing. 51 of those are
Tarzan franchise movies. 51! That is an insanely successful franchise that
nobody will ever compete with. You hear a lot of talk these days about how
Hollywood has started remaking movies because they have run out of ideas. Well,
it ain't a new concept folks! Not only is Tarzan the most prolific franchise in
history, (not including financial results) but ERB was the first person to
market his hero into swimwear, games, and bubblegum, to name a few. He was a
marketing genius and paved the way for franchises as we know them today. The
books and character, John Carter, had a significant influence on other science
fiction/fantasy tales and characters throughout the 20th century, including
Buck Rogers, Flash Gordon, Superman, Dune, and Star Wars. Jim Cameron stated
that Avatar was also inspired by ERB`s work. One of my favorite cinematic
characters inspired by John Carter is the enigmatic, and always heroic, Captain
Kirk who`s charm and masculinity was a reflection of that of Carter. These
qualities and more were reflected in both cinema and literature for decades to
come. Unfortunately for me, the Barsoom Series and John Carter spinoffs have
been one that has never quite flourished. This brings me to my next topic.
How Disney ruined John Carter of Mars.
So here’s how the story goes; in the mid 1930`s, Bob
Clampett of Looney Tunes fame approached Burroughs on behalf of Warner Bro`s
studios in an attempt to make an animated movie out of A Princess of Mars. The
studio liked the idea, and Clampett set about creating animation shorts with
the help of his fiancée, and Burroughs son, who would eventually inherit the family
estate. Footage and audio of Clampett discussing the proposed film can be seen
at this link: https://youtu.be/bTAlgZlqwnQ
The only problem was, Warner Bro`s liked Tarzan even more than Carter and asked
Clampett to scrap the Princess of Mars project in favor of creating a
Tarzan animated feature. This project would eventually fall apart as Clampett
stated that his heart just wasn`t in it, and so his interest level waned. If
the A Princess of Mars production had been completed and released, it
would have been the first animated feature film in history. This prestigious title
is held by Disney`s Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, released in 1937.
Considering how popular the Disney formula for child-friendly fairy tales and
humor centric animation was in the 30`s, I suspect that the audience just
wasn`t ready for John Carter of Mars, swashbuckling interstellar hero, and
ladies’ man. A number of ERB`s film, tv, and merchandise rights are public
domain in some countries, and for this reason, a very, very, bad John Carter
movie was made in 2009 by Asylum Entertainment. Focused on producing
low-budget, straight to video films, Asylum often use existing franchises to
essentially steal their ideas, bastardize the scripts, and produce low-grade b-movie
quality films that spend their time on channels such as SyFy. Some of their
titles include Atlantic Rim, DaVinci Treasure, Independents Day, and Transmorphers,
to name just a few knock offs. Starring Antonio Sabato Jr, a former underwear
model, the Asylum produced Princess of Mars, a straight to DVD, and bad
cable network film that has a 1.5 out of 5-star rating on IMDB. Obviously, this
does no justice to the worlds built by the imagination of Burroughs and does
nothing to ingratiate new fans to his characters. Fast forward to 2012, Disney
has acquired full distribution rights to Burroughs, Barsoom Series, and finally
releases a big-budget blockbuster that can bring life to the wonderful world
and rich history of Barsoom and it`s larger than life characters; John Carter
and Dejah Thoris. Except... nobody goes to see it. Taking $73,078,100
domestically, (almost half of which was taken opening weekend) and $211,061,000
internationally, you may consider that a huge success, but when you factor in
that the budget and advertising costs ended up ballooning to over $400 million,
it really left no wiggle room, and ultimately, the movie cost the studio in
more than just money. The audience, now disappointed by the story, had little
interest in seeing a sequel. I do not recall where I saw the figures, but
reportedly, Disney put a lot of money into running commercials, including a
Superbowl ad, which oddly resulted in the reception of the movie becoming
sourer with each viewing. People literally liked the movie less and less, the
more adverts they saw. Trying harder and harder to get this film franchise off
the ground resulted in Disney losing a fortune. Compare this to Marvels, The
Avengers, that opened just a couple of months after John Carter
with an equally high budget of $220 million, but with a gross of now over $1.5
billion. The saving grace here for Disney, of course, is that they purchased
Marvel Studios in 2009 for $4 billion, an acquisition that has more than paid
for itself since.
Disney may have screwed the pooch on my boy John
Carter, but if I am totally honest, I kinda love that movie. Yes, it was not as
visually stunning as we could have hoped, but there was a solid base there. The
casting was good—Taylor Kitsch was a fast-rising star and played the title role
with appropriate charm and satire. Lynn Collins, who viewers would have
recognized from a stint on True Blood, was also a rising star having
recently starred alongside Hugh Jackman in, X-Men Origins: Wolverine. At
the time of release, I didn’t know much about Lynn Collins except that I
thought she fit the physical description of Dejah perfectly, and to be quite
honest, I will forever have a crush on her for having played this role. For me,
she was the heir to the throne of Carrie Fishers, Princess Leia. She was
stunning and played her part well.
The CGI heavy production came under much criticism,
but it is difficult to imagine a visual representation of ERB`s works without
it. One of the reasons it may have taken over a hundred years for ERB`s work to
grace the big screen is most likely that the technology was just not up to the
task until 2012. Despite its poor ratings from the film critics and its
lukewarm reception in the U.S., I think that John Carter is a wonderfully
exciting, and fun, family film that really gets harsher a turn than it
deserves. As I stated earlier, much of Burroughs life was reflected in his
characters, which is evident in this film as the gold hunting former cavalry
soldier turned cowboy, suddenly finds himself transported to another planet. Of
course, ERB never visited another planet, but the similarities are there to
see. After the failure of the movie to find an audience, the rights to all of
ERB`s works reverted back to the family estate. My hope is that sometime soon,
we will see a resurgence in interest, most likely in animation form, as I
believe Bob Clampett had the right idea in the 1930s. The Barsoom Series really
may find a greater home in animation due to the ability to control the medium a
little more, a wider audience base, and the ability for that audience to
suspend their disbelief a little more than they could via live-action viewing.
If you have not seen John Carter, I recommend sitting the kids down for
a watch one night. You can find it on Netflix at this time. Who knows, it may
just make a lifelong believer out of you.
Did Edgar Rice Burroughs invent Cruise
Control?
When reflecting upon the impact that Edgar Rice
Burroughs had on future writers, and indeed, science, I often think of the most
memorable of his inventions—cruise control. In Thuvia, Maid of Mars,
ERB`s fourth Barsoom installment, John Carter and Dejah`s son, Carthoris,
embarks on a rescue mission to save his love, Thuvia. Riding upon his flier, a sort
of hovercraft, not unlike the ones you see in the movie, he enables one of the
devices upon it that has the ability to point the vehicle in a particular
direction at a specific speed, and maintain it. Sound familiar? The flier also
had a collision-avoidance system onboard that could detect upcoming obstacles
and steer around them. This is current technology being used by Tesla in their
self-driving cars. When you consider that ERB penned this story in 1916 for All-Story
Weekly, it is clear that Burroughs was far ahead of his time as real-world
cruise control was not invented until 1948 by mechanical engineer, Ralph
Teetor. Fascinating stuff.
So here’s the thing about ERB and his writing
style—it`s a century-old! I make this point because a common theme amongst
Burroughs books is that men were real men—macho, self-reliant, and afraid of
nothing. Always heroic and ready with a quip, the influence on future writing,
such as the characterization of Captain Kirk, is evident. The villains, as evil
and unscrupulous as always, forever convinced by their own intelligence and
arrogance of their superiority, always succumbed to the hero of the tale, ala
James Bond. The women, of course, always gorgeous, always scantily clad, as the
men often were, particularly upon Barsoom, and despite being fearsome and
highly capable, could never prevent a kidnapping or ever avoid becoming a
proverbial “damsel in distress.” It is often formulaic, and quite honestly, at
times, Burroughs seemed to favor quantity over quality when it came to his
series. But... if you are not offended by the outdated notions of heroes and
heroines, not perturbed by a writing style that is classic in its structure,
then you will find a bounty of imagination upon each page. A wealth of “ahead
of its time” ideas that transports the reader from the fields of Virginia to
the deserts and rivers of Mars in the blink of an eye.
If you love ERB the way I do, or you decided to
explore his works after reading this, let me know, I'd love to hear what you
think. Leave a comment and subscribe to keep up to date on the new happenings
and musings.
Until next time, be well, be merry, but most of all,
be good. :)
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