I'll tell you how I feel about John Carter of Mars this weekend but since we're midway through the week let's pause for a breath, a sigh, and to absorb the beauty of Taylor Kitsch of Earth.
He started out as a model and after breaking through as an actor playing Tim Riggins on television classic Friday Night Lights, he proved he could pop on the big screen with his cameo as Gambit in the otherwise execrable X-Men Origins: Wolverine. Now he's getting true showcase parts in blockbuster films. John Carter hits this weekend and Battleship arrives in the summer.
I read A Princess of Mars (the first in an 11 book franchise, and the basis of this film's plot) when I was a little boy. Literally the only two things I remembered about it as an adult were that:
- the green martians had six arms
- John Carter and his princess were totally naked!!!
These are the things a little kid commits to memory. Since I remembered nothing else I thought it would be amusing to test my memory and I Kindled "A Princess of Mars"... BEEFCAKE & BOOKS after the jump
After reading the first several pages I realized I was wrong about the six arms (the martians have but four. How mundane!) but I was totally right about how the nakedness. He's totally starkers! Alas the movie is not faithful. So I thought it would be amusing to share quotes from the book with beefcake picks of Taylor Kitsch.
John Carter transported to Mars
And then the moonlight flooded the cave, and there before me lay my own body as it had been lying all these hours, with the eyes staring toward the open ledge and the hands resting limply upon the ground. I looked first at my lifeless clay there upon the floor of the cave and then down at myself in utter bewilderment; for there I lay clothed, and yet here I stood but naked as at the minute of my birth. The transition had been so sudden and so unexpected that it left me for a moment forgetful of aught else than my strange metamorphosis. My first thought was, is this then death! Have I indeed passed over forever into that other life! But I could not well believe this, as I could feel my heart pounding against my ribs from the exertion of my efforts to release myself from the anaesthesis which had held me. My breath was coming in quick, short gasps, cold sweat stood out from every pore of my body, and the ancient experiment of pinching revealed the fact that I was anything other than a wraith."
John Carter first lays eyes on Princess Dejah Thoris
Again was I suddenly recalled to my immediate surroundings by a repetition of the weird moan from the depths of the cave. Naked and unarmed as I was, I had no desire to face the unseen thing which menaced me. She was as destitute of clothes as the green Martians who accompanied her; indeed, save for her highly wrought ornaments she was entirely naked, nor could any apparel have enhanced the beauty of her perfect and symmetrical figure. As her gaze rested on me her eyes opened wide in astonishment, and she made a little sign with her free hand; a sign which I did not, of course, understand."
The Princess schools John on why she didn't realize he was from Earth
Earth men, almost without exception, cover their bodies with strange, unsightly pieces of cloth, and their heads with hideous contraptions the purpose of which we have been unable to conceive; while you, when found by the Tharkian warriors, were entirely undisfigured and unadorned. "The fact that you wore no ornaments is a strong proof of your un-Barsoomian origin, while the absence of grotesque coverings might cause a doubt as to your earthliness." "
SILLINESS!
I'm still weighing what I think of this John Carter of Mars but Taylor Kitsch of Earth will always be Tim Riggins of Dylan to me.
Taylor Kitsch's intro in the pilot of "Friday Night Lights"