Those stalking me on The Twitters are all too aware of my recent trip across Europe. Eight cities. Seven countries. Two weeks. I know what you're thinking: that's crazy. What I was thinking: that's a lot of film posters.

So every time we passed a bus stop, lamppost or cinema with a poster on the outside, I took a quick snap to have a rummage through when I got back on home soil. What I found made me love Serbia even more - and made me wish I went to Russia. Or Poland.

In Madrid and Barcelona, I was pleased to find that movie titles continue to sound better in Spanish than in any other language:

Protocolo Fantasma sounds infinitely cooler than Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol
"George offers the performance of his career" according to the Spanish press, saying the same thing as everywhere else. Old George's descendientes will be proud.		Sam Worthington is... ON THE EDGE OF THE ABYSS.

But Serbia, Portugal and Spain also proved that some titles are so powerful that they don't need translating...

Director: Andrew Stanton
Cast: Taylor Kitsch, Lynn Collins, Mark Strong, Dominic West
Certificate: 12A
Trailer

“You think you know Mars… BUT YOU DO NOT KNOW MARS.” A booming voiceover begins Disney’s epic sci-fi romance. It’s ridiculous. It’s laughable. It sounds incredibly stupid. But from that daft opening narration, Andrew Stanton’s John Carter is properly charming stuff.

The tale of a confederate US soldier who travels through space, battles green men with shiny blue weapons and falls in love with a princess? It’s the kind of nonsense that could only be written by a barmy warlock  in the early 20th Century. And it’s all the better for it. Edgar Rice Burroughs' story may be packed with state of the art mo-cap, but Disney’s latest is as dated as Clash of the Titans, as cheesy as Flash Gordon and as crazy as H.P. Lovecraft. In short, it’s what all old-school fantasy adventures should be: wonderfully bonkers.

There's all kinds of mixed buzz flying around John Carter. Will it be as good as fans say? Will it be as big a flop as Disney executives fear? Having still not watched it yet (ask me again on Friday morning), all I can say is I still think it looks pretty decent. Either way, this final John Carter trailer is certainly no less convincing than anything else we've seen so far. And besides, it has Mark Strong in it. What could go wrong?

But a memo to Disney: enough with the white, gorilla wolf motherfucker, OK? No one wants to see Attack of the Clones again.

For more on Disney's sci-fi blockbuster, head this way for some John Carter stills (and a love letter to Double Negative) and over here is the full John Carter trailer. The film is released on Friday 9th March.

It reminds me a lot of Attack of the Clones, but this full trailer for John Carter is still jolly exciting. Who knew that Taylor Kitsch (aka Gambit from X-Men Origins: Wolverine and That Kid from Snakes on a Plane) could go all Conan and run around an alien civil war without it all looking like a load of ridiculous nubbins?

Answer: Andrew Stanton. Who probably watched Attack of the Clones several times to avoid falling into the same traps that George Lucas did. John Carter is out in March next year. For more on the film, check out the new John Carter stills released this week.

Some new John Carter stills have been doing the rounds this week, along with a new poster. And while a lot of people are rightly praising Andrew Stanton (Mr. WALL-E) for his jump from the animated director's post to the live action helm, CGI geniuses Pixar aren't the people doing the effects.

That would be a lovely London company called Double Negative.

I first heard of Double Negative back when Let Me In director Matt Reeves was doing the rounds for Cloverfield. I can't find my notes from then in my filing cabinet (read: drawer full of crap), but here's what Reeves said to Den of Geek:

"Double Negative are amazing. They did the Bourne movies, they did United 93 - in fact I saw the crash in United 93 and I said 'That crash is just burned into my memory, and when we have a similar sequence I want to pull on that for inspiration,' it was so convincing. They also did the latest Batman films..."

Being mightily impressed by Cloverfield, I moseyed on over to Double Negative's website. After Reeves' handheld monster madness, you might expect to see them on credits such as Green Zone, but they've also worked on everything from Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows and Scott Pilgrim vs. the World to Inception and Attack the Block. Plus they were responsible for getting the boat to sink in The Boat that Rocked (the only good part of the film).

Go back to 1998 and they even worked on Pitch Black. Now that's an awesome start to a CV. In short, Double Negative? Yeah, they're the dogs bollocks. And they could probably even create a convincing pair for you if you wanted.

Director: Andrew Stanton
Cast: Taylor Kitsch, Lynn Collins, Willem Dafoe
Certificate: TBCRelease Date: March 2012

From Academy Award®–winning filmmaker Andrew Stanton comes “John Carter”—a sweeping action-adventure set on the mysterious and exotic planet of Barsoom (Mars). “John Carter” is based on a classic novel by Edgar Rice Burroughs, whose highly imaginative adventures served as inspiration for many filmmakers, both past and present.

The film tells the story of war-weary, former military captain John Carter (Taylor Kitsch), who is inexplicably transported to Mars where he becomes reluctantly embroiled in a conflict of epic proportions amongst the inhabitants of the planet, including Tars Tarkas (Willem Dafoe) and the captivating Princess Dejah Thoris (Lynn Collins). In a world on the brink of collapse, Carter rediscovers his humanity when he realizes that the survival of Barsoom and its people rests in his hands.