Mission to Mars Review
by Gary Jones (gary AT bohr DOT demon DOT co DOT uk)May 5th, 2000
Mission To Mars (3/10)
"You've got ten seconds."
"OK. Astronauts go to Mars. Encounter strange alien forces. Fate of crew unknown. Rescue mission sent to Mars. Meet aliens."
"How much."
"Ninety million."
"Deal."
It probably wasn't quite like that, but I shudder to think that people with the intelligence to tie their own shoelaces might actually have sat down and thought this thing through. However Mission To Mars made it to the screen, the result is a film which is not only as offensively stupid as Armageddon, but which in an attempt to be spiritually uplifting has an alien encounter even more crass and syrupy than the one which ruined The Abyss. But the saddest part of all is that it's a Brian De Palma movie. I've grown up watching his films, and although he has never achieved the same artistic credibility as his fellow New Yorker Martin Scorsese, he has always been a fine technician, as demonstrated in films such as Carrie, The Untouchables, and the under-rated Blow Out. He has also made a near masterpiece in Carlito's Way, but his technical skill can't protect him from making the odd stinker, such as Body Double and The Bonfire of the Vanities. And now Mission To Mars.
The film is crammed full of implausibilities, such as the re-boot of the spacecraft's entire computer system, and the astonishing and quickly glossed-over way the astronauts of the rescue mission, seemingly doomed themselves, make their way to the Martian surface. Perhaps the funniest is the survival of an astronaut who has lived for a year in a scrappy windblown tent on the Martian surface - his oxygen and food being provided by a few houseplants. Even if you buy this, the climate on Mars might pose some other difficulties that are completely overlooked. Off- hand, I don't know what the pressure and temperature of the Martian atmosphere are. I'll just check. Temperatures vary from around minus 120 to minus 20 Fahrenheit and atmospheric pressure is around 0.7 percent of Earth's. That took about three minutes to find out. Looking stuff up in books. It's obviously a lost art in Hollywood.
Does scientific accuracy on movies matter? It depends. When the spacecraft whoosh past us in Star Wars and the explosions roar, we can forgive the film-makers for adding the sound effects because they presumably took the view that the silence of space would detract from the excitement. Scientifically inaccurate, but fair enough. Often, however, getting the science right is as easy as getting it wrong and will only help the dramatic impact of the story. There are no real excuses for howlers like those in Mission To Mars. A message is coded in the form of a DNA sequence. (The coding method used is ludicrous, but we'll let that pass.) On seeing a few turns of the resulting DNA double- helix displayed on a monitor, an astronaut concludes straight away that the genetic information is "missing the last two chromosomes". OK, so the writers don't have a clue about biology, and maybe neither do the majority of moviegoers, but to get this sort of thing so hopelessly wrong is pure laziness and is insulting to everyone.
If you can fight through the boredom and embarrassment, you'll find much of the film strangely familiar. The opening sequence is straight out of Apollo 13, and the references to 2001: A Space Odyssey are too many to be accidental - the shape of the spacecraft, the rotating living module, the dull but precise voice of the computer, the word-for-word reference to "voice-print identification", and the astronauts in a white room during their alien encounter. A knowing reference or two is fine, but this is all a bit much.
The score by the once-great Ennio Morricone is simply awful - when it isn't crashingly inappropriate it's spacey wallpaper for the ears. The only thing in the film's favour is the lovely photography by long-time De Palma collaborator Stephen H. Burum. In fact, his photography is so good, it almost made the film worth watching. Despite the wonderful images he has produced, I suspect he won't be introducing himself at parties as the guy who shot Mission To Mars. Neither can I see Tim Robbins or Gary Sinise looking back on this movie as a high point in their acting careers, although they are to be congratulated for managing to keep a straight face throughout.
The biggest, but prettiest, heap of interplanetary hooey you'll ever see.
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Gary Jones <[email protected]>
Homepage: www.bohr.demon.co.uk
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