First, from a financial standpoint, the film did far better internationally than it did domestically, adding some $70 million to its gross. Outside of the U.S. and Canada, it could be poised for some more quality weekends ahead. John Carter posted the fourth-biggest Russian opening of all time and it's performed strongly in Asia, without even opening in China or Japan, the continent's two biggest markets. Box Office Mojo expects the film to ultimately take about $300 million globally. Add to that perhaps $60 or $70 million domestically and you don't have a profit-maker, but losses would be drastically reduced. Post-release revenue (DVD sales, TV etc.) could conceivably push the film closer toward the black, though it's unlikely to get there. Whatever the case, there's no comparison between what should turn out to be a mild flop and, say, Pluto Nash, which cost around $100 million and wound up earning about $7 million total.

There's also the legacy question. A true flop must be a flop in every sense, with a financial shortfall matched by a creative failure. Some of the biggest bombs of all-time have been savaged by critics as "a mediocrity wrapped inside a banality" (Sahara, 2005), "coarse [and] clunky" (Town & Country, 2001), and "unpleasant in a hostile way" (Battlefield Earth, 2000).

On the other hand, John Carter has been hailed as "colorful and kind of fun" in the New York Times and applauded for its "utterly immersive and lifelike" characters by NPR. The Atlantic's Christopher Orr praised the film's "hokey charms." That's not the stuff of a masterpiece, of course, and the film did get its share of bad reviews, but the critical split (The Tomatometer is hovering at 50 percent) defies the "disaster" characterization. Audiences seemed similarly taken with the film, awarding it a B+ according to CinemaScore.

There's also the inescapable fact that the movie simply didn't have a chance of performing well. It's not based on a comic book or an established filmed franchise, which are about the only surefire ways to have a shot at profitability at $350 million.

Disney offered a full-throttle marketing campaign that placed the bare-chested, abs-sporting hero, played by Taylor Kitsch, across the media spectrum but singularly failed to explain what the movie was about. The vague title tells you nothing, a problem Moviefone epitomized when a reporter called a "John Carter" in all 50 states to see if they'd planned to see the film. The trailers, which stressed the epic nature of the movie with vague allusions to gladiator, Civil War, and sci-fi tropes, only further muddled things.