# Mission to Mars (2000)



## stripe (Dec 28, 2000)

Looks an intersesting film has anyone seen it yet?







A scientist, interviewed after viewing the 1998 film, Armageddon commented "the filmmakers took the exciting concept of a meteor hitting the earth and just turned it into another boring movie." The writers of Mission to Mars must have lacked the confidence to create a story based on a realistic, yet audience pleasing adventure without borrowing from successful sci-fi dramas, notably from Stanley Kubrick's 1968 masterpiece 2001: A Space Odyssey.

Unlike Kubrick's controversial "art" film, the astronauts in Mission to Mars are family-friendly, as the film opens, we are introduced to the flight team during the "getting to know the characters" barbecue. Next, on to the surface of Mars where the landing crew discovers a "buried structure," and foolishly not heeding ominous vibrations emanating from it, the craft is graphically ripped apart by a giant sand-thing special-effect. On the hunch that one member of the crew has survived a rescue team sets outs on the three-and-a- half million mile voyage as the newly widowed astronaut Jim McConnell (Gary Sinise) flashbacks to his former days of wedded bliss, as the married crew members Woody Blake (Tim Robbins) and Terri Fisher (Connie Nielsen) get down and boogie to the music of Van Halen in zero gravity and before you know it and just as were starting to have fun, it's time to enter orbit around the red planet. The best dramatic sequence of the film occurs as the ship is hit by meteors and is abandoned after it explodes, most of the crew manages to make it to a supply ship in Martian orbit and land on the surface. They find a survivor of the original team, Luke Graham (Don Cheadle) who has analyzed the sounds generated by the alien edifice discovering a hidden mathematical formula that holds the "key" to enter the once buried structure, now revealed as a giant alien head, (in case you don't know what an alien looks like, they have the same features as the ones on supermarket tabloids) the solution to the "key" takes the team about a minute to figure out. Once inside they're presented the history of Mars courtesy of some amazing animation by ILM and we find, as the trailer for the film reveals "scientists have been searching for the origins of life on Earth, but they were looking on the wrong planet" astronaut McConnell is given the opportunity of "fulfilling his destiny" as he given an invitation to "travel to the stars" film neatly wraps up in series of cosmic, and improbable events.

Despite its authentic look and feel, notably, on the realistic space craft, interiors and free floating zero gravity effects. Mission to Mars almost never succeeds in creating a convincing story, unlike Kubrick's masterpiece which conveyed the vastness of deep space travel and the encountering of beings and experiences beyond any human frame of reference. Kubrick's audience may have left the theater not sure what they had just experienced, but that they definitely had experienced, something. 2001: A Space Odyssey broke away from the tired sci-fi/adventure format as it substituted creepy theremin generated sound effects and dramatic scores by brilliantly using classical music to harmonize the beauty and precision of orbital rendezvous, and the empty silence of space by the solitary sound of the astronauts breath trapped within his helmet. 2001 gave audiences a sense of the extraordinary without betraying the underlying mystery and poetry.

The failure of Brian De Palma's direction is its lack of mood, style, or even a sense of wonder of the implications regarding the Mars mission of discovery, that is, until the alien encounter theme is introduced. The film is stifled by his passive lack of cinematic involvement. The characters lack any intrinsic, dynamic qualities, while intrusive dramatic music, even in deep space, is used to pump up the action, and computer-enerated imagery, although fantastic to look at, is simply used to hammer down the obviousness of the plot. In the end through reaching for the extraordinary in such a conventional manner, the film comes off as something predictable, routine and sometimes silly. Choosing to entertain rather than challenge, Mission to Mars simply degrades into a kind of ultimate generic sci-fi adventure movie, kind of a 2001: Space Odyssey aimed at an audience with few demands, and very limited attention spans.

--Russ Steffens 

STARRING:  Gary Sinise - Jim McConnell
Tim Robbins - Woody Blake
Don Cheadle - Luke Graham
Connie Nielsen - Terri Fisher
Jerry O'Connell - Phil Ohlmyer 



DIRECTOR: Brian De Palma (DIR)


WRITERS:  James E Thomas, credited as Jim Thomas - screenplay, from story
John C Thomas - screenplay, from story
Graham Yost - screenplay
Lowell Cannon - from story 



U.S. DISTRIBUTOR: Buena Vista Distribution Company


RUNNING TIME: 113 mins.


MPAA RATING: PG
Copyright 2000 by Hollywood.com, Inc. All rights reserved


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## padders (Dec 28, 2000)

This is unfortunatly the worst film that I have seen for a very long time. I watched it in the US when i was there in Easter and it is so so so bad. There is really no story, the spaceship travel bit is simply boring, nothing happens really just a very very poor version of 2001. Then the bit on Mars is just plain rediculous, corny and well pointless. Watch it when it comes out on TV for the comedy value but don't pay any money for it. 1/10 would be generous.


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## stripe (Dec 28, 2000)

*LOL*

Thanks for the tip Padders I definately will wait for this one to air on TV then...


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## padders (Dec 28, 2000)

I just hope that the new mars film "the red planet" will be better.


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## stripe (Dec 29, 2000)

Oh really I seem to remember a very old movie called the 'Red Planet' and it wasnt bad ... of course I was a kid back then..LOL!!!


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## padders (Dec 29, 2000)

Why they don't make a mars movie from a decent book like Red Mars, Green Mars and Blue Mars is beyond me...


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## Ice (Jun 22, 2001)

*mission to mars/red planet*

I t wasnâ€™t too bad-Iâ€™ve seen a hell of a lot worse- The main reason I watched it because Iâ€™m a big fan of stargate and I wanted to see what kind of roll Michel Shanks played in it.
I going rent Red Planet out this weekend, have any of you seen it? What did you think of it?
Ty
~Ice~


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## imported_space monkey (Oct 11, 2001)

*Not bad actually*

I really liked Mission to Mars.  It was cool apart from the weird ending.  I recommend it.  Was Michael Shanks in Red Planet then?  If so that's a must see, LOL!!!:rolly2:


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## Chicky Babe (Nov 11, 2001)

I love this film it is so cool.  I cant believe you don't like this film Padders!:rolly2: :alienooh: :rolly2:


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## DarkCity545 (Dec 9, 2001)

mars started slow, the middle was even slower and the ending please:evil: 

red planet was good, they needed more action with the robot.


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## Ivanhoe (Feb 9, 2002)

*My view ...*

THE PLOT: Crew of four is send to a mission to Mars in order to study it and prepare for future colonization. After a mysterious sand storm all contact with Earth is cut off. NASA is sending an another group to investigate this strange disappearance in order to  rescue the personnel. But the trip doesn't quite go as they've expected....

REVIEW: Once again we get a feeling of deja vu. As I have noticed we can distinguish two groups in the so called "alien" movies. The example of the first is the Alien (later Predator , Alien sequels and many other not so successful) where aliens are a threatening and aggressive and there is the other group (Close Encounters..) where the aliens are friendly and nice. But eventhough Close encounters was so successful to offer the benign nature that aliens might have, we seem to get more and more of the same in the latest SF alien movies. This movie tells a story very similar to Close Encounters or Abyss but it's setting is not on Earth but instead it happens in  space, Mars to be precise. The Close E. and Abyss were one of the first to support the friendly idea and they worked fine at the time but I'm kind of growing tired of  "mute" Aliens. This movie follows the same pattern. First the build up with several crisis proving how clumsy we are when it comes to science and then finally the awaited encounter with the aliens. What bothers me that the movie makers spend so much time trying to show the visual beauty of the aliens that they forget to give them some sort of a message. Once again the message is nothing new, Mission to Mars uses the segment of 2001 and exploit the idea that humans are in fact manufactured by another species. OK but what now ? We need something new, a groundbreaking message that civilization more advanced can give us,  this type of movies are getting pretty boring with this kind of  repetition of motives!!


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## neXus_6 (Mar 8, 2002)

*Mission To My Arse!*

Worst Movie Ever!:angryfire


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## Lonewolf89 (Mar 12, 2002)

Hey, MtM was good, a little lacking in the action area, but an okay movie.


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## Dave (Sep 3, 2003)

You know I took your advice Padders, and waited until this came to TV. 

It really isn't THAT bad, 1/10 is very harsh, but no one could say that it was very original either.

It was simply just a 2001 remake, and there wasn't a single thing added that wasn't ripped-off from somewhere else either.

I also think that some of the EVA space maneuvers might be impossible. Wouldn't that wire-reel gun have recoil? How does that computer in the spacesuit arm calculate the fuel point-of-no-return then? 

There were a few other plot holes too. Why did the original astronaunts get killed anyway? I assumed that the "password test" was to determine if we were human or alien. They just got the "password" wrong because they didn't understand it, they didn't do anything aggressive, so they could have simply been sent away until they learnt more. 

How did the remaining astronaunt solve the puzzle using the computer, when the computer was said to be "fried"? That's why he couldn't return home on his own.

Overall, very poorly thought out.


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## inca (Jun 28, 2006)

www.goroadachi.com/etemenanki/sc2012-1.htm

www.goroadachi.com/etemenanki/sc2012-2.htm


www.goroadachi.com/etemenanki/sc2012-3.htm


www.goroadachi.com/etemenanki/sc2012-4.htm

www.goroadachi.com/etemenanki/sc2012-b1.htm

www.enterprisemission.com/MTM.htm

www.enterprisemission.com/m2m2.html


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