John Carter of Mars: Press Day Preview

I guess Disney must have overcome their paranoia. Several sites, including Collider and Aint It Cool News are posting reports from an "edit bay visit" that was arranged to preview footage and other material from John Carter of Mars. The visit actually turned out to be two day affair, with the first day devoted to showing footage from the film and the upcoming teaser trailer, while the second was a set down table talk with director Andrew Stanton, shown above with our first glimpse of the Tharks. I decided to go with AICN's report http://www.aintitcool.com/node/50322. Here's what they said and be warned there are spoilers so avoid if you want to preserve the suspense:

-Three scenes and a snippet of one were shown, in some cases with unfinished effects. The first was John Carter (Taylor Kitsch) and his arrival on Barsoom and his first meeting with Tars Tarkas (Willem Dafoe) at the Thark hatchery. The second was a brief scene between John and Dejah Thoris (Lynn Collins) after her capture by the Zodangans and the third was an arena scene where John and Tars have to fight off White Apes. The brief snippet showed Sola (Samantha Morton) talking with Dejah.

-Dejah and the humanoid Martians are not red skin, but rather have "red tribal tattoos." I can hear the complaints now.

-Also John Carter does not arrive on Barsoom naked.

-The Zodangan battle ships are described as similiar to the Galactic Empire's ships from Star Wars.

-Woola is in it with "great white shark" teeth.

-The film is being post-convered into 3D.

-The trailer will feature a Peter Gabriel cover of an Arcade Fire song. Can't we get something from Disney without pop songs?

-Some personal revelations: Stanton first discovered John Carter through the Marvel Comics series (which should explain a lot) and that he and co-writers Mark Andrews and Michael Chabon both took turns drawing Tharks in their youth.

-The film is planned as a trilogy and Stanton is currently planning the second film, if the first one succeeds.

UPDATE: The film's trailer will premiere online this Thursday July 14.

Finally Collider released a "video blog post" that features most of the reporters talking about what they saw. You can watch it below

JOHN CARTER Video Blog from ColliderVideos on Vimeo.