Space Pugs for Everyone!

• JOHN CARTER By which we mean “the space pug movie.”

Performing an autopsy on John Carter is currently Hollywood’s favorite past time, with director Andrew Stanton taking a lot of blame for it. Like this!

Stanton (who also nixed all mentions of his Pixar work in the teaser for fear that people would think this film was for little kids) was working from the belief that John Carter was still as universally iconic a figure to people as Dracula, Luke Skywalker, or Tarzan. “It was my Harry Potter,” he said during an interview at Google last week that was streamed live on YouTube. “All I ever wanted when I read that book was to believe it.” He believed that audiences would gasp in delight at John Carter’s very appearance in much the same way that a Batman teaser might only need to flash the Bat Signal. As such, he felt that the very first John Carter trailer needed only to intrigue, not explicate. “To him, it was the most important sci-fi movie of all time,” recounts one Disney marketing insider present for the pitched battles. “He could see no idea in which someone didn’t know who John Carter of Mars was. But it’s not Frankenstein; it’s not Sherlock Holmes. Nobody cares. People don’t say, ‘I know what I’ll be for Halloween! I’ll be John Carter!’” (Via.)

But in what’s probably my favorite headline in a while, comics site the Beat reports that “Disney Belatedly Discovers That People Liked John Carter’s Dog.” (It’s true! I loved John Carter’s dog!) Which, I guess, means any more John Carter advertising we’ll see will probably focus on the space pug, much like a recent Blu-ray ad I saw for The Adventures of Tintin that made it look like The Adventures of Tintin’s Dog. Which I would totally watch, by the way, even though I have no interest in seeing Tintin again. Maybe I only like movies about dogs? There are worse movies to like, I guess.

I get knocked down! But I get up again! You’re never going to keep me down! Also, thanks to space pug expert Jamie S. Rich for the heads up.