The Unproduced Sequel to JOHN CARTER Sounds Like It Would've Been Awesome!

First of all, I thought director Andrew Stanton’s John Carter movie was great! I enjoyed it, but, the movie completely bombed at the box office because the marketing was the absolute worst. So, no one went and saw the movie, and there was also a ton of bad press surrounding it, and the movie completely bombed at the box office. This should’ve been a successful franchise! But stupid mistakes were made.

It’s been ten years since that movie came out and Stanton recently sat down with The Wrap to talk about the unproduced sequel that he was planning. It actually sounds like it would have been an epic sequel that I would have loved to see. It would have been titled God of Mars.

Before we get into his plans, the film ended with Carter (Taylor Kitsch) being tricked into being sent back to Earth by Matai Shang (Mark Strong) after his wedding. Carter ends up spending over a decade trying to get back to Mars and the film ends with him finally figuring it out. That’s where the story picks up. Stanton said:

I love the idea of you were going to open with the prologue. It was going to be that every movie had a different character saying the prologue. The first one is Willem [Dafoe], as Tars. The second one’s prologue narration was going to be Dejah [Lynn Collins]. And it was going to give anybody that hadn’t seen the first movie a little precursor of the history that got you to this movie. Shorthand, interesting imagery, whether it was artwork or whatever. And then you were going to reveal she was telling it to her baby. And you were going to realize, Oh my God, it’s the child. It’s Carthoris, this child of Dejah Thoris and Carter. And that story she’s telling, she’s telling the story of the father that this child will never know.

And then her dad, Ciarán Hinds’ character, Tardos Mors, said she’s been up too long, she’s tired, let her grandfather have a moment with the child and I’ll put her to bed. Then it was going to be revealed to be Matai Shang in shapeshifting mode. And he was going to steal the baby. And then it was going to go onto the opening credits. The next image after the opening credits was going to be Carter lying in his funeral suit in the middle of the desert, just looking like a dead body in a wake and just waking up.

Then he’s just going to take off his jacket like it was nothing and just start walking. And then eventually, just like out of Lawrence of Arabia, way out in the horizon, is going to come a Thark on a thoat. And he’s going to surprise Carter by saying he knows exactly who he is and there’s been somebody looking for you. He brings him to a camp and it’s Kantos Kan which is James Purefoy, who’d been searching forever off of any river where this guy went. And so shocked that he’s found him. And then he says, ‘You have to get back now to heal him.’ And he gets back and you think it’s going to be a reunion, only to find out that there’s been some time between the prologue and the main credits.

Now Dejah’s gone missing. She’s convinced that the Therns took their child and if Carter ever comes back, she went down the River Iss to try and find him. 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. There’s a whole race down there that has been with high tech. Basically, it’s been a third world without anybody knowing it on the top of the surface and the first world’s been inside the whole time operating the air, the water, the everything to keep the world functioning.

Stanton concluded, saying, “And yeah, I can keep going, but I’ve never told anybody the beginning of that. You can hold that dear.”

That sounds like a sequel that I would have loved to see. Unfortunately, it will never happen. Maybe one day someone will trying to adapt the John Carter of Mars book series again, but after the epic failure of the Disney film, it may be awhile before something attempts it.