‘John Carter’ is being called the biggest flop of all time. That’s pretty unfair. I mean, it might lose money for Disney, but it’s not ‘Waterworld’.

It’s not a great movie, but I’ve seen a lot of worse movies make insane amounts of money. ‘John Carter’ is a perfectly serviceable port of the Edgar Rice Burroughs series that spawned it, and I think the criticism it’s been receiving is misguided.

Misapprehension #1 – Opening weekend grosses have some relation to a film’s quality.

I shouldn’t have to say it, but three days is a pretty small window for judging the merits of a film. Studios like to use this metric because the parameters can be manipulated with cash. It’s almost guaranteed to be more reflective of the marketing budget than the audience reaction. After the first weekend, almost nothing but an Oscar can turn around bad word of mouth. If the producers can get most of their money back on a turkey in the first weekend, they’re protected from the drastic drop off that comes from people telling their friends how much they hated the experience.

It’s a relatively recent phenomenon – the general public caring what the studio’s take is on the films they see. It’s also a recent development that films that don’t have a good first weekend get abandoned and have their rollouts scaled back. One of the consequences of this sort of commerce-centered thinking is that when people hear a movie had a bad couple of days, it can keep them out of the theaters. Self-fulfilling prophecy sequence initiated.

Misapprehension #2 – Spending 100 million on promotion entitles you to a good opening weekend.

Not if you spend it all in the wrong places. Kids who want to see a sci-fi movie starring Tim Riggins from Friday Night Lights don’t read newspapers. They don’t even watch TV commercials. Lots of them don’t watch televisions at all. If you insist on neutering the name so that no one can tell it’s a sci-fi story, and releasing posters that feature nothing but the monogram, it’s your fault for wasting that giant budget. You have to sell to them where they are, and you have to tell them what they’re getting. And it’s been said before, but it bears repeating: if you have a title like ‘John Carter of Mars’ and you shorten it to ‘John Carter’, you’re an asshat. John Carter of Mars. Four words, and it tells you everything you need to know. It’s a run-of-the-mill Earth name. On Mars. In fact, not just on Mars, but somehow of Mars. It’s really a model of efficiency, and it still sounds cool, all these years later.

If your entire business model is based on tricking people into paying for crap you’re not proud of, you can’t blame them for getting wise to the grift.

As a movie, it’s pleasant. A bit quaint, I guess, but ERB started the series a literal century ago. We have a lot of information about Mars Burroughs didn’t have. JC’s a little Disney for my tastes, but it delivers the kind of fun stuff sci-fi flicks are supposed to. The effects are decent, although I found it hard to see where all of the 250 million went. With so much green screen, no giant tech breakthroughs and B-list talent, it seems they could have tightened up the budget a bit.

The story is as efficient a device as the name. Civil War soldier decides to hang up his guns and become a prospector. He’s got a line on some gold, and he’s grown disillusioned with soldiering. In his search for fortune, he comes across a medallion. Somehow this medallion transports him to Mars. He finds himself granted some middling superpowers by the weak gravity on Mars, and finds himself thrust into the center of another civil war. At first, he only wants to go home, but the (OK, profoundly implausible) hot humanoid Princess he meets convinces him to get involved.

There’s definitely 20 minutes or so of flab that could come off, and the jumping effect is a bit corny-looking, but I had a pretty good time. If you like sci-fi, there’s a decent chance you will, too. If ‘John Carter’ loses a ton of money, Disney’s to blame, not Edgar Rice Burroughs.