I’m seeing reports that Disney execs have changed the title of John Carter of Mars, the film adaptation of the Edgar Rice Burroughs pulp novels I grew up on, to — are you ready for this? — John Carter. Rumor has it they’re gunshy of the word “Mars” because their animated flick Mars Needs Moms crashed and burned so spectacularly this spring. What’s that, you don’t remember Mars Needs Moms? Yeah, well, neither does anyone else, and Disney knows it, and they apparently figure it’s because the word “Mars” was in the title. Couldn’t have anything to do with the fact that the trailers made it pretty apparent Mars Needs Moms was a shitty movie, could it? No, it has to be because audiences avoid movies that mention the planet Mars in the title. So they’ve dropped the word from the title of a movie that is about a guy roaming around a fantasy version of… the planet Mars.

Yeah, trying to downplay the movie’s premise and setting is really going to help attract audiences, isn’t it?

And it pisses me off because, as I mentioned, I loved the books on which the film is based and would like to see a good adaptation version of them, and also the movie was filmed here in Utah, so my home-team spirit has got me hoping it does well. But I have a hunch people who don’t already know what this film is about — which is probably most people, if we fanboys are being honest — are going to hear the new, shorter, and completely uninformative title and say, “What’s that about? Who the hell is John Carter?” After all, he’s not exactly a household name like Buck Rogers or Flash Gordon. And if they can’t figure out what the movie is about, they’re not real likely to want to see it, now, are they?

Good job, Disney… and for my fellow Burroughs fans out there who were excited at the prospect of a trilogy, as the movie’s producers at Pixar have proposed? I think we’d probably better stick with our tattered old paperbacks…