Rick Moran surveys various media pundits on why Edgar Rice Burroughs’s sure fire hit has gone down in flames.

Perhaps the culture HAS changed too much in the past century:

While Burroughs’ time was more literate, it was the imagination that forged a connection to the stories and characters and created such a powerful hold on our affections. In an age before film, before TV, before radio, there was only the reader, the written word, and however we imagined the world being created by the author.

Burroughs’ prose could be turgid at times — to our ears anyway — but the compelling way in which he described his world of Barsoom far surpassed any attempts we might make today to translate the author’s imagined adventures to the screen.

There are simply no cultural touchstones that connect the world of Burroughs with our world today. A young boy living in pre-World War I America imagined Barsoom far differently that I did in the 1960s.

And it is likely that most kids today hadn’t even read the books, waiting instead for the video game.

— Rick Moran, ” ‘John Carter’ Headed for $200 Million Loss”, PJ Lifestyle, March 21, 2012