Trailer Lanterns | Official Teaser | HBO Max

[Paul Farquhar]

Depending upon how deep you want to get into the story. In the novels the Arisians are enacting a plan spanning millions of years intended to culminate in the creation of, essentially, their successors - beings of even greater powers than their own.

Doesn’t make their meddling right though. The story becomes much more interesting if you take a less black and white view of both lots of ancient aliens.

Interestingly, Triplanetary (which features the most meddling) was not originally written as part of the series, it was retconned.

Oh, and you know what else features aliens meddling in human evolution? 2001.

 

[Willie the Duck]

I think you've forgotten what an important plot element Clarissa's position as the first female Lensman and the whole breeding experiment part of the process. Among other things it has impact how, if at all, you plan to engage with the whole "Children of the Lens" part of the storyline.

I don't think I have, but it's possible I may have forgotten something. I feel like the breeding experiment couldn't work simply by having two powerful Lensmen having children, without Clarissa being the first female Lensman. I think X-Men have mined the same premise 2-3 times with Scott Summers and Jean Grey without Jean being the first female mutant*. To clarify, yes, things would have to change to get this to work, but I don't see anything specific that would jeopardize the basic plot points and framework of the story. I think the other ongoing sub-topic going on in-thread about what exactly to do with the Arisian's plans as a whole would have a much greater impact on how it all could or would work.
*in in-setting chronology, I think she's the first female mutant in that Marvel Mutants were created for X-Men comics, unless we consider the previous use of mutant from Amazing Detective Cases to be the same kind of mutant.

 

[Ryujin]

The point stands that Burroughs' Barsoom series was a foundational inspiration to space epics like Star Wars but it being the earlier work not mattering to people introduced to SW first.

However, there were many reasons that movie failed. Foremost in my mind was that it was actually called John Carter and the promotion campaign failed to successfully explain who that was or why anyone should want to go to a movie about him. Calling it A Princess of Mars would have at least alleviated that issue.

It was a good flick. I wish more people had seen it.

I saw it the first day of theatre release, however, I knew the source material (and was a little disappointed that Dejah Thoris wasn't introduced dressed as she was in the book ). I think they should have really leaned into the seminal nature of the character, in advertising.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

One thing that made me a bit uncomfortable when I read Children of the Lens was the evil aliens were utterly annihilated. That didn’t seem like a good action to me (and I was 13).

Also, the “we are going to need a bigger superweapon” trope was getting very tired by that point.

The earlier books were better.

 

[MarkB]

Also, the “we are going to need a bigger superweapon” trope was getting very tired by that point.

That is, perhaps, one of the only major aspects of the series that hasn't been seen in mass media at this point. Plenty of series have something of an arms race, but the sheer scale of going from battles between individual capital ships up to the point where throwing antimatter planets at the enemy is considered so last year is something I haven't seen outside of maybe a couple of anime.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

That is, perhaps, one of the only major aspects of the series that hasn't been seen in mass media at this point

The Force Awakens?