During Disney's outstanding showcase at this year's Empire Presents... Big Screen, there were a couple of serious gems. One of these gems came all the way from Mars, thanks to a man by the name of John Carter.
Previously only shown to a select group of super-special journalists (ourselves included, natch), the lucky men and women of the IndigO2 were blessed with a number of scenes from the upcoming sci-fi adventure based on A Princess of Mars by Edgar Rice Burroughs.
Feeling very western indeed, a key scene saw Taylor Kitsch's John Carter, having just arrived on the Red Planet, negociating with soon-to-be-best-buddy Tars Tarkas – who's a 12-foot tall, 4-armed green barbarian from space, by the way – in English, whereas Tars is chatting away in good ol' Martian.
Then, during this Lost-In-Space-In-Translation moment, John leaps that massive leap of his and suddenly he's hurtling through the air and into the line of fire of hundreds of much less friendly green men. Shot rings out, and it fades to black.
Looking at the first clip, what we can say is that the Martian language feels "real" – for the lack of a better word – and the four arms looks natural, with each pair of arms on each side basically following each other wherever they can. Oh, and the jumping is a beautiful thing to behold.
Cut to a gladatorial scene, where John and Tars – now speaking English, which is handy – are defending themselves against a massive, four-armed Yeti-like creature. Sure, they call it a "White Ape", but if you ask us it looks like one hell of an Abominable Snowman. On Mars.
John then leaps about more and more, with slow-motion jumping somehow becoming a thing we want to do ourselves, really, really soon. Plus, he's doing it all with a chain attached to his leg, which we reckon might be how he's going to fell the beastie in the film. Hey, if it works for Princess Leia...
For more info on John Carter, you'd be best off going to your local newsagents and grabbing ahold of our new issue of Empire, or failing that, checking out the Peter Gabriel-themed trailer here...
John Carter will be out in cinemas March 9, 2012.