Between 1917 and his death in 1950, the prolific pulp author Edgar Rice Burroughs, creator of Tarzan and founder of the Los Angeles district of Tarzana, wrote SF tales about the intrepid space adventurer John Carter, whom he described as "a splendid specimen of manhood". Burroughs was much influenced by H G Wells and in turn influenced the Flash Gordon strip, George Lucas and James Cameron. This terrible movie is the live-action debut of another fan, the Pixar animator Andrew Stanton, director of Wall-E and Finding Nemo. A framing story has Burroughs inheriting the wealthy John Carter's estate, including a secret diary of how in 1868 he went into a cave in Arizona and emerged on Mars to participate in a war between competing factions with ridiculous names like Tharks and Zodangans. His gravity-defying locomotion makes him a valuable asset to either side. The movie is poorly staged and mind-numbingly tedious. Carter is played by an actor called Taylor Kitsch, presumably a reversion to that old medieval tradition of people being named after the trades they practice.