I set myself up for disappointment, I suppose

I finally got a chance to watch "John Carter". As a fan of Burroughs' Barsoom series, I looked forward to it with some trepidation. After all, the director's and screen writer's interpretation might not match my own. They often don't.

Studios often produce movies from books that only vaguely resemble the original stories. It's sad. But, in some cases, quite understandable. The movie technology of the time may simply be unable to reproduce the scenes in the books. There might be time constraints, there might be budget constraints. These are acceptable reasons for deviating. Sometimes, however, someone decides the story is not good enough in its original form so they "spruce it up" a bit. That is not an acceptable reason.

It appears that this happened with "John Carter". It's not like the original story but an attempt to pull in the events and characters of most of the series that Burroughs wrote.

It failed to do a good job.  What a pity. They could have created a starter for a great series of films.

You might want to go to the Project Gutenberg Website
where you can download and read these books on a number of eReaders or at the site with your computer. I obviously highly recommend them.