Every once in a while big film faces a collapse at the box office so utter, so complete, that it brings all sorts of observers out of the woodwork, who then comb through the wreckage looking for details, like forensic accident analysts. This year’s pile of trouble was undoubtedly Disney’s sci-fi yarn John Carter.

I’ve been thinking about my own branding efforts recently as I approach the launch of The Tyrant Strategy, and this film kept popping in my head. John Carter may or may not be a good movie. I haven’t seen it. But what really killed it was a branding violation.

I am honestly convinced the film could have at least done marginally better if anyone but Disney was behind the marketing and promotion. But the closer Disney got to the flick, the worse off the film’s wide release chances became.

The sad reality is that Disney fell victim to their own deeply-rooted, perfectly executed branding. If one hears Disney, or sees the classic logo, theme parks and animated musicals pop into their head. Or family comedies.

A science fiction epic involving CGI martians? Yeah, not really feeling it, Mr. Mouse.

It’s not that Disney isn’t allowed to make science fiction films — they’ve done several of them, with some success — but they were bright enough to keep its branding insulated from films that went against the image of the god Mickey.

But this time, ego or bad planning compelled Disney to slather their branding on the film everywhere it went: trailers, the rather obnoxious Twitter account, etc. They even made sure that target audiences understood this was DISNEY’s John Carter. And the film suffered. The impression one gets is that there was no central understanding of this issue, and how it would impact the opinions of science fiction die-hards, like yours truly.

Pixar made one of the best science fiction films of all time, but they found release success not just with a quality product: Wall-E‘s film audience went in knowing it was a gorgeous CGI flick with a loveable central character, which they’d always expected with Pixar films. There was no branding violation. All other the other stuff that made the movie so great was icing on the cake discovered after butts were in seats.

In contrast, the keepers of Walt’s legacy, under the Disney flag, granted no concessions to its traditional audience and repelled the audience it was trying to lure in John Carter. No one got what they wanted in the trailer. “Disney is doing what? Why?”. Disney devotees didn’t get it. The Dragon*Con crowd didn’t want it. No one initially remembered Tron or Flight of the Navigator. The audience was confused. They stayed home. Case closed.

That, and the film really needed to be released during the golden age of sci-fi pulp, but that’s a story for another planet.

Stay tuned.