Edgar Rice Burrough as a child inherits a vast estate and fortune but more importantly, the journal of John Carter and his many adventures.
As part of the will, the journal is apparently, for Edgar's eyes only, although when it's handed over to him, it's looks like half the world has already read it but anyway, the boy sets about reading the journal.
John Carter from the outset is some decorated army captain/soldier with a devil may care attitude, carving out a meagre existence in the wild west, seeking fortune as a gold digger.
Some other general/captain dude knows of John's reputation as a fearless fighter and attempts to re-recruit him back into military service because basically he thinks John Carter is rock hard and potentially, a one man army in his own right.
He ends up in prison for just beating people up who so much as look at him and eventually escapes into the hills where he finds a cave with weird drawings all over the walls etc.
Then some monk type guy steps through a portal, ala stargate style, looking somewhat surprised to see John admiring the wall art - err...OK.
John Carter slaps the guy about a bit and grabs his medallion, sets it into a stone altar (Total Recall) and gets transported to Mars - check.
John wakes up and meets an army af Jar Jar Binks's - gets recruited and accepted into the Jar Jar Binks army and embarks on another war, on another planet, now bestowed with super human strength because of the low gravity conditions on Mars - what a crock - honestly, it doesn't get much worse than this.
Oh, add to the story that he also has to rescue a martian princess who apparently possesses the brain power of Steven Hawking and the fighting capabilities of Conan the Barbarian, only she doesn't actually do anything.
There's another guy who, you guessed it, wants power and domination over the entire planet and is given a glove by these monk overlords and told not to blow all the power at once.
The glove itself is made of blue tumbleweed and seems only capable of spitting out a couple of plasma bolts not worth worrying about, yet seems to have brought the planet to its knees - yawn.
And so the nonsense continues.
I was thinking, "OK but the special effects and art direction must be mind blowing later on, because it's had 130,000,000 quid spent on it!"
And this is where the problem lies.
With such a massive budget, you're always expecting more from the special effects but they just don't materialise.
Unfortunately, the film goes down in cinematic infamy for all the right reasons - basically blowing huge sums of money and having nothing to show for it.