Bull crap. Plenty of movies have died before they ever hit the box office, because bad marketing and negative media speculation diminished the opening weekend numbers.

And yes, it is true. People do love to see things fall, the bigger the better. Big budget films naturally make the easiest targets. All Internet journalists’ mouths will be salivating if John Carter disappoints, including yours.

This article is very ironic, because you’re doing exactly what Bird is saying, albeit it much more subtly.

Pissing and moaning on twitter doesn't help my impression of this film. No one owes JCOM any "support". It's not a person. It's a movie, whose budget may be absurd if not reckless.
I'd much rather go see Safe House, or The Grey, or see another movie other than this one. I'm pretty confident I won't enjoy it, so if I had my own publication I'd have that opinion. I don't have to rate this movie with others opening this week or in the next few weeks during its theatre run. I can spend the 2 hours elsewhere.

That said, I've seen thePlaylist go the other way after seeing certain films they didn't trust before hand. And they've given credit where it was due.
It's not just John Carter. I don't trust the Star Trek series, the Marvel movies, Sherlock Holmes. I trust Pirates of the Caribbean more than these, if you want another tentpole mass-market-movie to compare. It's just tastes.

If the budget is half of what is reported, this movie has already failed. And probably cost talented people the opportunity to produce something new, and cost us viewers the chance to see that $150-300million spent elsewhere.

Film and Sci-fi buffs (or snobs depending on your point of view) are the ones most likely to become journalists in those realms, and the rest are venting on Reddit with good reason. They love the story and they love Andrew Stanton, but they hate that which is made for the lowest common denominator. Disney's John Carter looks like a trashy spectacle. The marketing campaign reminds me of how I felt when Green Lantern rolled out.

In that case it wasn't a poor representation of the film, it was a spot on indicator.

Instead of embracing the history and influence of the book series John Carter of Mars. Disney seemed to run from it and still is. They did enough damage with a poor marketing campaign that the reviewers just was the icing on the cake. Disney still has not learned from this other then it was a "bad ides to make the movie" which was wrong. It was bad marketing that did not see the gold in front of them and still does not. Disney, you have a 100 years of history you can use in the marketing of "John Carter OF MARS" how did you miss that????? Is anyone at home?

Oh, bless your heart. If only that were true. Have you seen the IMDB boards? The fans there have had to invent a new word for the people who exist just to crow about the possible failure of a film: floptrolls.

There are people (many of them bloggers and Tweeters) who have been gunning hard for this movie to fail since it was greenlit. There are literally hundreds of people online who were gleefully predicting its failure before a single frame from the film was ever seen in public. I don't disagree that the marketing department dropped the ball on this one, but I also think you're thinking everyone is as nice and fair-minded as you are, Kevin, and that's just not so.