It’s taken Hollywood 100 years to bring Edgar Rice Burroughs’ Barsoom novels to the screen as Disney’s John Carter on March 9th. The otherworldly epic stars Taylor Kitsch as John Carter, a troubled former Civil War calvary soldier that is transported to the planet of Barsoom (better known as Mars, to you and me). He ends up in the middle of a war between differing species and factions that’s been raging for thousands of years. As it turns out the gravitational changes on Mars turn Carter into something of a superhero, and he becomes a game-changer for the almost decimated planet.
Burroughs packed his 11 Barsoom novels with tons of world-building elements including foreign species with weird names, differing tribes (with weird names) and lots of mind-boggling inventions (with weird names). If you’re uninitiated with the book verse of John Carter, then the movie might make your head spin a bit. Thus, we’ve created this Beginner's Guide to John Carter to help you navigate the faces, names and terms so you can enjoy the adventure - and not bug your seatmates asking “What?” for two hours.
