Thinking of "Avatar" and Dejah Thoris

The trailers for the movie "Avatar" reminded me of several sci-fi stories (one obvious one being the Dragonriders of Pern series by Anne McCaffrey), but as I thought about it more, I started thinking along the lines of human-alien relations -- as in sexual.

This could go a lot of ways and be long, but I'll try to keep it short and relatively simple. In Avatar, the differences between aliens and humans are fixed by putting the human into an alien -- so he gets to do everything that aliens do. No adaptation problems, no genetic or genitalia differences; everything fits nicely. Contrast that with L. Sprague de Camp, who had humanoid (oviparous) Krishnans who could engage in enjoyable fleshly pleasures with humans (short summary here).

And finally these musing brought me back to Dejah Thoris, the Princess of Mars in Edgar Rice Burroughs John Carter of Mars series. The prolific Burroughs was most famous for Tarzan, and John Carter was a distant second (he also had several escape-and-capture novels on Venus and inside the Earth, in Pellucidar -- don't ask). John Carter ends up on Mars (Barsoom) somehow mentally, but bodily -- and is therefore able to fall in love with, romance, and mate with the fabulous Dejah.

Totally impossible -- but given the fact that Burroughs described Dejah as wearing very little clothing, quite appealing in a fantasy-adventure kind of way. The beauty of Dejah has thus inspired fantasy artists to portray her -- and that's a wonderful thing. So in the following linkages, caution is advised; Dejah is partially covered, totally uncovered, and somewhere in between. There is some consistency in the portrayals -- and parallels with the Princess Leia bikini in "Return of the Jedi" are not to be overlooked. After the links, there are some brief thoughts on the upcoming John Carter of Mars movie.

Dejah View 1 -- the Frazetta traditional

Dejah View 2 by Boris Vallejo

Frank Cho, line drawing, very uncovered. Click to see it considerably larger.

Another Cho view of Dejah.

Dejah Thoris by Cho, in color

Dejah View 4 -- detailed and also uncovered; nice costume, another line drawing

Dejah View 5 my favorite, covered suitably

Dejah View 6 by Bane, fully realized (and more covered)

more covered and more exotic. Click to see it a little larger.





Now, here's the thing; according to lots of press reports, Disney (Pixar) will be filming "John Carter of Mars" (also here) starting next month, with a 2012 release date slated. I want to know how they will finesse the difference between the Barsoom that Burroughs could envision based on very little knowledge of Mars at the time with the Mars we know now from orbiters and landers and rovers. I.e., there isn't a Barsoom on Mars now. Is John Carter of Mars going to go to a parallel-universe Mars, or travel back in time to a Martian civilization now covered by the dunes of time? Good darn question.

But more importantly, who's going to play Dejah? According to the same general sources, it will be Lynn Collins, lately of X-Men: Origins fame (or Wolverine: Origins -- I forget and I'm lazy). Does she qualify?

Apparently, eminently, she does. To decide, Allure magazine provided us with a totally-uncovered (though judiciously posed) view of Lynn.

That image comes from this page, which had other uncovered and similarly judiciously posed ladies from Allure -- leading me to note that Eliza Dushku would also have made a fine Dejah Thoris. Probably Padma Lakshmi too, but she's not an actress and she's about to have a fatherless (well, father-unnamed) baby.