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We love it when the stuff we imagined in childhood confronts us on a screen 20 feet high. Technology has caught up with the literary imagination: we never doubt that the four-armed fifteen-foot tall green humanoid Tharkians are real. We haven’t read Edgar Rice Burroughs’s Barsoom series since we were in the sixth grade, but John Carter, Andrew Stanton’s film adaptation of A Princess of Mars, has the ring of familiarity to it. Yes, we approve of this movie.

Liberties have been taken to make the protagonist’s sudden teleportation to Mars seem less incredible, and the giant machine that made Barsoom’s atmosphere breathable is not mentioned at all. But we don’t mind the changes, and we don’t think Mr. Burroughs would have either. The books are pulp science-fiction after all, full of weird and wonderful things.

John Carter is both a throwback to big old adventure movies and a showcase for new moviemaking tricks. Stanton and company have produced a great daffy yarn with visual wit and humor; with all the digital wizardry at their disposal they have not forgotten that the story rules. We hope John Carter is a hit so that the other Barsoom books can be made into movies: there’s one in which super-intelligent creatures that look like giant spiders attach themselves to headless bodies and animate them. (Read The Chessmen of Mars.)

Taylor Kitsch looks set for stardom, his grasp of geography notwithstanding. Lynn Collins is fabulous as the fighting heroine, and we like the fact that the movie has provided employment for actors from beloved TV series like Rome, The Wire and Breaking Bad.

After Uggie, Cosmo and Blackie, here comes the new dog: Woola.

John Carter opens today in cinemas.