LIke a lot of flops, the big problem with John Carter is that it was so expensive to make, it would need to get really huge audiences to cover its cost - if you make a movie as expensive as this, it's all to easy to lose out financially. At present this film is set to lose around $200 million, which would make it one of the worst failures in cinema history - which doesn't necessarily mean it was one of the worst films.

Overall, neither the critics nor the public are much impressed with John Carter, and they all seem to say the same kind of things (which is unusual; you more often get a lot of argument over a new film.) Basically, everyone is impressed with the special effects, but most find the story flat, the dialogue rather dull and the characters too one-dimensional.

I suspect that, now special effects are so sophisticated, people are no longer overly impressed by them but want a really good story and atmosphere as well - John Carter may have concentrated too much on the effects and not enough on other aspects of movie making.