Modern audiences are very much familiar with Edgar Rice Burroughs' hero Tarzan, but not so much with his other heavy hitter, the Civil War soldier-turned Martian messiah John Carter, who first appeared in A Princess of Mars almost a century ago.  Disney has been trying to get the name out there, as evidenced by yesterday's Super Bowl TV spot for John Carter in which the name was sort of the central image, despite all the aliens and epic happenings. 

A new batch of seven images from the film include no names, but quite a few digital aliens, such as Tars Tarka and Carter's sidekick Woola.  More importantly, the Princess of Barsoom herself, Dejah Thoris, is front and center.

Super Bowl XLVI is in the books, ladies and gentlemen.  The Vince Lombardi Trophy will spend the next year hanging out with the New York Giants, while Bill Belichick is currently taking an Imperial Shuttle back to the second Death Star so he can brood over the loss in his throne room.  Over the course of the game, though, there were plenty of high-profile TV spots for some of this year's biggest movies.  We've collected them here so that you can view said TV spots without all that, you know, football.

If you're watching the Super Bowl – the most popular televised event in America – right now, then you no doubt saw that thirty-second TV spot for The Avengers, with its superheroes uniting and Samuel L. Jackson giving some good gravitas.  That spot will be included in our inevitable Super Bowl Spot Roundup, but guess what, Marvel Studios and Disney also just premiered an extended version of the commercial online, and it's way better than the one that was actually on TV.

As a general rule, the official site for any major studio release is a fairly by-the-numbers affair where you find sanctioned images, flattering bios, wallpapers, and other promotional detritus.  Every once in awhile, though, an official site actual creates a novel online presence that would be worth exploring even without the movie it's meant to promote.  Paramount has launched an official site for the fictitious nation of Wadiya featured in the upcoming Sacha Baron Cohen comedy The Dictator, and it is just such a presence.

If yesterday was the day of the commercials for commercials – with both John Carter and The Avengers dropping tiny ten-second teases of their respective Super Bowl commercials – then today is the day of straight-up Super Bowl commercials.  Earlier, The Dictator debuted its full Super Bowl spot, and now Paramount has taken the liberty of unveiling its thirty-second commercial for G.I. Joe: Retaliation, the sequel to 2009's G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra that will attempt to cleanse the taste of that movie from the audience's collective palette.

Did it strike anyone as slightly ridiculous that yesterday we saw two ten-second previews of the John Carter and The Avengers Super Bowl spots?  Commercials are one thing, but commercials for commercials is a whole different level.  Another movie that will be showing up during the copious commercial breaks of America's favorite sporting event is The Dictator, the new comedy starring Sacha Baron Cohen and directed by Larry Charles, the guy behind Borat and Bruno.  The comedy has sidestepped showing a ten-second peek and instead just released its first TV spot wholesale online for your viewing pleasure several days before the big game.

We live in a strange modern age, one in which an event can be made out of a thirty-second commercial and that commercial can be teased by its own ten-second preview.  Strange days.  This morning we shared a crazy-brief tease for the John Carter Super Bowl commercial, and now, there's a superquick glimpse at The Avengers Super Bowl spot. 

With just under a month and a half until the movie actually opens domestically, Disney still has a lot of work to do selling John Carter to a mainstream audience.  Most people don't know Edgar Rice Burroughs' A Princess of Mars from Adam, given that it's a nearly one-hundred year old science fiction adventure tale, so the studio can't exactly sell John Carter as a much-loved, seminal story finally making it to the screen after so many fruitless attempts, nor can they hang it all on a filmmaker audiences recognize, like James Cameron's Avatar. 

A big spot during this Sunday's Super Bowl festivities is no doubt a crucial part of Disney's plan to bombard the world with John Carter in the weeks leading up to its actual release.  In order to build awareness of a promotional tool designed to build awareness, the studio has released a tease of the Super Bowl TV spot into the online wilds.