The notorious flop of John Carter, formerly of Mars, halted Disney's plans for a major space fantasy franchise (they bought Star Wars a few months later, so don't feel too bad for them), but that doesn't mean that's the last time Barsoom will be seen on cinema screens. In a reversal of how they normally act, the Mouse House sold the character rights back to Edgar Rice Burroughs, Inc, who are now planning to make their own movies based on the Tarzan creator's influential work. And that single word, influential, is the only reason over a hundred years on from its first publication we're still talking about John Carter. The books are ridiculous pulp sci-fi with none of the maturity gifted to the genre in the past century, but as it coined so many of the space fantasy ideas that are still regurgitated with little alteration to this day - no John Carter, no Star Wars - there's this idea that it's somehow relevant. How Disney unknowingly engineered the flat-out failure of their attempt should really go to prove this. The studio (and particularly director Andrew Standton) clearly thought John Carter was a name as ingrained in the popular culture as Luke Skywalker or Bruce Wayne, releasing trailer after trailer that hinged on his iconography; the first teaser treated the character reveal as if he was a Peter Parker. Carter has no place in modern culture beyond a footnote on the sci-fi genre; first isn't always best.
