mini-plot-bunny: John Carter of Mars
Mar. 12th, 2012 09:51 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
marbleglove
So I went to see John Carter and it was oodles of fun. It is not a great movie, but it is fun. It was pretty and silly and there was some clever dialogue and some clever plot twists, and they someone managed to remove the vast majority of the sexism from the original and a significant amount of the racism so that it's now only a standard modern amount of racism rather than the pure stuff that Burroughs wrote.
But anyway, ignoring all of that, let us consider the villain of the piece, Sab Than.
There's massive spoilers under here:
A reminder:
REALLY VERY MASSIVE SPOILERS.
If you're still reading:
Sab Than is out to conquer and to kill and is doing a pretty good job of it, when lo, mystical priest-type guy comes to him to assist. The mystical adviser provides him with a super-weapon and then tells him how to use it and when to use it and how he (Sab Than) should obey his (mystical adviser's) every word or he (mystical adviser) will go find someone else to support.
Plus, a bunch of the advise centers around forcing the enemy city (i.e. the good guys) to betroth their princess to him and then kill her and massacre the city on the wedding night. Sab Than is okay with this except that he's not all that enthused regarding the wedding or the girl and would kind of like to get on with killing his enemies rather than playing nice.
So I have to thoughts regarding this:
First is that Sab Than loses all credibility as a warlord once the mystical adviser is on the scene. From that point on, he comes across as a petulant child and a tool.
Second is that Sab Than displays absolutely no interest in and certainly no chemistry with any of the other characters, whether they're the scantily-clad princess he's supposed to be wooing or the (also scantily-clad) warriors he's fighting. He reads to me as pretty much asexual. He's interested in violence and fighting and sex just isn't interesting.
So here's this character with no interest in what he's doing and being successfully pressured into avoiding the violence that does interest him, and yet, he was a highly terrifying warlord for many years pre-movie.
What happened?
What would make this characterization make sense?
And this question is why this post is labeled as a "mini-plot-bunny," since I don't actually know the answer. What would make this character make sense?
But anyway, ignoring all of that, let us consider the villain of the piece, Sab Than.
There's massive spoilers under here:
A reminder:
REALLY VERY MASSIVE SPOILERS.
If you're still reading:
Sab Than is out to conquer and to kill and is doing a pretty good job of it, when lo, mystical priest-type guy comes to him to assist. The mystical adviser provides him with a super-weapon and then tells him how to use it and when to use it and how he (Sab Than) should obey his (mystical adviser's) every word or he (mystical adviser) will go find someone else to support.
Plus, a bunch of the advise centers around forcing the enemy city (i.e. the good guys) to betroth their princess to him and then kill her and massacre the city on the wedding night. Sab Than is okay with this except that he's not all that enthused regarding the wedding or the girl and would kind of like to get on with killing his enemies rather than playing nice.
So I have to thoughts regarding this:
First is that Sab Than loses all credibility as a warlord once the mystical adviser is on the scene. From that point on, he comes across as a petulant child and a tool.
Second is that Sab Than displays absolutely no interest in and certainly no chemistry with any of the other characters, whether they're the scantily-clad princess he's supposed to be wooing or the (also scantily-clad) warriors he's fighting. He reads to me as pretty much asexual. He's interested in violence and fighting and sex just isn't interesting.
So here's this character with no interest in what he's doing and being successfully pressured into avoiding the violence that does interest him, and yet, he was a highly terrifying warlord for many years pre-movie.
What happened?
What would make this characterization make sense?
And this question is why this post is labeled as a "mini-plot-bunny," since I don't actually know the answer. What would make this character make sense?
