Why 'John Carter' of Mars is the original Star Wars film

Star Wars was a lot of things. But originality was never its strong point. In fact Star Wars could be the biggest ripoff franchise ever that made it to the mainstream (with the exception of parodies). That's why I don't like to see anyone taking about Star Wars as something original. I'm yet to get into Barsoom series. 

I did enjoy reading some of the Tarzan books and enjoyed them.So I might get into the other works of Edgar Rice Burroughs eventually.

In other words, most of the best elements of Edgar Rice Burroughs' Mars fantasies had already been "borrowed" for George Lucas' space saga, and just because the film was dismissed by many people, the source material cannot be so easily rejected. Lucas made no bones about how he was inspired by Rice's work and said in 1977 “Originally, I wanted to make a Flash Gordon movie, with all the trimmings, but I couldn’t obtain all the rights.So I began researching and found where (Flash Gordon creator) Alex Raymond got his idea: The works of Edgar Rice, especially his John Carter series of books." Indeed, the first draft of the Star Wars follow up, The Empire Strikes Back was written by science fiction author Leigh Bracket.She was quoted as saying: “I was introduced to Edgar Rice Burroughs at a very young age . . . That changed the course of my life . . . My fascination for Mars came from the fascination for his Mars.”