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Review: "Mission To Mars"
Review 1: Jamie and Michael
Michael: I don't want to keep you in suspense here: movies just don't get much worse than this. And I've seen both Waterworld and Attack of the Killer Tomatoes , so I think I know what I'm talking about. When Brian De Palma says on the movie's official site, "I tried to avoid all the cliches of science fiction movies and to give a whole new look and approach to this fantastic story," all I can think of is that someone needs to call the FBI because the movie he made was obviously switched with someone else's fifth or sixth-rate NYU-film-school production before it reached the theaters.
Jamie: People are going to say we're taking this too seriously, and maybe I did expect too much going in. But I really hate seeing wasted potential.
Michael: The whole premise of the film is based upon a scene where one astronaut makes a zero-gee sculpture of M&M (tm) brand chocolate candies rotating freely and circularly in the shape of a DNA helix. Newton's first law? Anyone? Anyone? Brian De Palma was a physics major? I can see why he switched careers.
Jamie: Thanks for pointing out that URL, Michael. When I read this, I don't feel so bad for slamming the film:
"The various things that happen to the Mars One and Two crews in this film all come out of the physics of what could happen in the situations presented in the story. So, it is realistic and extremely authentic."
Ha. The scriptwriters must have had a quota of a scientific impossibility every ten minutes, and they made their quota easily. Spacesuit thrust jets at shoulder-level. A plot device that depends on the concept of inertia, followed by an attempted rescue that defies the law of inertia.
This was kind of like watching The Poseidon Adventure, and then suddenly halfway through the movie everyone discovers that they can breathe water and eat plankton. No explanation, that's just the way it is. They all swim out of the ship into the Pacific and then climb ashore, wading up onto the Chicago beach.
Michael: We are of course treated to many close-up shots of M&M (tm) brand chocolate candies along the way, including several gratuitous close-up and pan shots where we focus in on the "m"'s and the bag to make sure that we do, indeed, realize that these are M&M (tm) brand chocolate candies and not some inferior brand X chocolate candies, but real, honest-to-god, M&M (tm) brand chocolate candies. If you didn't realize they were M&M (tm) brand chocolate candies, we'll later spill them all over the floor and stare at them for about 20 seconds straight, with a statistically unlikely distribution where the vast majority of the candies land with the "m" up, just to make sure that we notice that these are M&M (tm) brand chocolate candies.
Also plugged: Isuzu, Pennzoil, SGI, Barq's Root Beer, Dr. Pepper, several others that I don't recall just now. The product placement was offensive enough that if I was writing this review I'd make a really big deal of it. Oh, I guess I am. Like watching two hours of commercials.
The "plot," if one must call it that, was as exciting as watching paint dry. Or maybe watching a "cinematic blend of texture and movement" as your clothes whirl around in the dryer. There's a lot of stilted acting, some manufactured crises, and a mysterious alien thing. "Hey look! I can spin the camera around so it looks like I'm in a rotating ring! Let's just spin! For about 3 minutes! We're spinning! Whoo-hoo! Just like a dryer!"
Jamie: Yes; there's homage to 2001 , and then there's a dull recycling of a special effect that was cool 30 years ago.
Michael: Finally we meet an alien. It's glowing, it's got baby blue eyes, it smiles at us, some beatific music swells, and then it hands us some M&M (tm) brand chocolate candies to munch on while it explains, with a handy diorama, just why it has been living in a big human face on Mars for the last few hundred million years.
Jamie: Don't forget the tear. The big sad crystal tear dangling sadly from the sad, sad alien eye. Did I mention it was sad? It was crying, it was so sad. You could tell it was sad because it was crying a big crystal tear. Also the fact that we'd just watched its entire planet destroyed in a fiery cataclysm. So there were two ways you could tell the alien was sad: the tear, and the incineration of its homeworld.
I had thought at first that the alien was a hologram, but later, it takes the humans' hands and it looks awfully real. Except for the fact that it looks awfully fake and computer-generated. Or maybe this alien race just happens to look like big nine-foot fake computer-generated holograms.
Inside, by the way, the Cydonia "face on Mars." This is the structure photographed in 1976 by the Viking probe, which caused wild speculation that it was an artificial construct. Unfortunately for De Palma, it was almost two years ago that high-resolution photos from the Mars Global Surveyor showed it was just another rocky plateau.
Let me spoil the big secret: the aliens are us. We're them. Obviously the scriptwriters graduated from a Kansas high school, because it turns out that the Precambrian explosion was actually seeded by DNA from Mars, thereby producing fish, alligators, brontosauruses, woolly mammoths, and (six hundred million years later) humans. But meanwhile, apparently, the Martians are us. We're them.
So there's a big weird mystery that the astronauts have to solve, which they do by looking at a rotating computerized graphic of a DNA molecule on a spacecraft that can't take off because all its computers are fried.
Michael: The electromagnetic pulse was selective, you see. Important things like wave analyzers and radar guns and remote-controlled toy cars were EMP-protected, while unimportant things like navigation computers were not.
Jamie: Right. Anyway, in the future, all astronauts are required to memorize the entire human genome, because they can look at the graphic which shows human DNA at the atomic level, recognize that two chromosomes [sic] are missing, and (I'm not making this up) enter the missing atomic structure of the chromosomes that were left out. They complete the graphic picture and open up the door to the giant white room which ripped off both 2001 and THX-1138 .
How did the Martians know what the proper DNA sequencing for those two chromosomes were? How did they know how many chromosomes humans have?
Because they're us, we're them. They created multicellular life, and apparently evolution is not random natural selection at all because this weird holographic Martian DNA doesn't change in 600 million years.
I can't stand movies that go back and forth between hard science and the worst kind of pseudoscience. Give me one or the other, OK? But don't base the plot around science and then expect me to suspend scientific disbelief every ten minutes.
One more example. There's a tense moment inside the THX-1138-style white room where Gary Sinese takes off his spacesuit. But he knows it's OK because he watched the air pressure rise: 6psi, 7psi, etc., and as he cracks his gloves off, another character is saying excitedly "12psi, 13psi." So they know that 14psi is Earth normal and we're expected to keep in mind the difference between Mars air pressure and Earth air pressure.
But for the last hour, the plot has hinged on this guy stranded on Mars for a year, who has stayed alive and healthy by growing plants in a canvas greenhouse.
OK, forget the fact that there's no water in the Martian atmosphere - none. Forget the sunlight being half Earth's and filtered through canvas. Forget canvas not producing a greenhouse effect by any stretch of the imagination. Forget all that; he has some magic beans that let him grow a splashy leafy warm wet jungle inside a canvas greenhouse. OK.
This canvas greenhouse is tethered to the Martian dirt by ropes. It flaps in the Martian wind. It looks about as airtight as, well, a Boy Scout tent. And everyone inside it gets to take their helmets off because it is an Earth-pressure atmosphere. Inside the canvas tent. Mars-pressure outside. Earth-pressure inside. Pressure differential between the two: one ton per square foot. Canvas and rope are going to (a) hold down a thousand tons of force and (b) flap in the breeze. Right!
Michael: Don't forget the temperature differential: Mars' average temperature is something like -70 Fahrenheit. Much colder at night, of course. But I guess the magic greenhouse can fend off -70 degree temperatures too. I wish my military-issue shelter half had been made of that material!
Jamie: And finally, at the end of the film, the astronauts climb into the return vehicle and blast off for Earth. As the credits roll they begin starving to death, because it's a six-month minimum journey and it's already been established they have no food. What a happy ending.
Robert Zubrin, co-author of The Case for Mars , was an advisor to this film and he must have held his nose all the way through it. Zubrin is a rocket scientist who has spent the last ten years telling anyone who would listen about a very realistic, practical system for getting people to Mars within ten years. I know he must have had his reasons for signing on but he must be a little embarrassed now that he's seen the finished product.
The reason this movie offends me so much is because it treats the red planet, and space travel in general, with disrespect. It tries to be realistic, but whenever the science gets in the way of Hollywood, Hollywood wins. It did have some powerful moments, true, and they were especially moving if you believe (as I do) that space exploration is important. But when a science-fiction film jettisons the science, it turns into campy space opera - which makes the good parts just that much harder to take.
Michael: This movie looks like it was stitched together from a couple of thoughts the director had and thought were cool. (The studio probably thought they were being slick, capitalizing on Mars enthusiasm generated by NASA missions, so they rushed it through production, never figuring NASA would just hurl probes at the planet like a bunch of lawn darts.) There's zero consistency between those parts, not even hand-waving, you just jump from one to the next with no explanation whatsoever.
Maybe you could justify spending $2 on a non-new-release movie rental of Mission to Mars, assuming it's even released on video, which I honestly think would be a sick joke. But $30, which is what it costs for two people to attend a movie and buy a soda in Manhattan? I'd rather gouge my eyes out. This one definitely gets two thumbs down, and if I had more thumbs, they'd be down too, unless they were holding a bag of M&M (tm) brand chocolate candies.
Other Reviews:
- Salon: Disney, We Have a Problem
- Rotten Tomatoes has a great pick of choice quotes from dozens of reviewers around the U.S.
Review 2: JonKatz
I had two primary responses to Mission. The first was disbelief that Brian De Palma -- the same man who made Wiseguy, and Scarface, among others -- could have made it. The second was awe at the impact of sophisticated animation on movies. It's now possible for a movie to be beautiful, even awe-inspiring and touching at times, and still be a lousy movie. To me, that was the real fate of Mission To Mars.
The characters were so noble, self-sacrificing and one-dimensional, they were practically cartoons. And what Kubrick and Lucas have done so brilliantly -- remember that space and sci-fi ultimately revolve around very human people and stories -- DePalma forgot. He was so busy evoking awe that any sense of humanity was drowned out.
In fact, DePalma's efforts made me appreciate Lucas especially, who I was beginning to resent for all of his mega-hyping. Whatever Lucas's failings, in all of his movies, you're occasionally blown away by the idea of what might be out there, while still identifying with the hapless humans who are trying to sort it out. DePalma gives us instead some God-like alien life force powerful enough to run the universe, but too dumb to figure out the motives of the encroaching humans. And not a single line of dialogue uttered by any star in this movie made them appear real or relevant. Still, the movie was gorgeous, which is why it will sharply disappoint some people. Three or four space scenes, and some of the scenes on Mars, were really jaw-dropping, and made the movie quite worth seeing.
But DePalma seemed way over his head with the subject matter. High-class science fiction isn't all that easily to replicate, it turns out. In terms of character and narrative, Mission to Mars was a stinker. But I won't be surprised if people with imagination and heart will go see it and be touched.
The Matrix didn't get ripped because it was a GOOD movie! The technical aspects also didn't really need to be addressed because the movie had a strong religious theme overlaying its cyberpunk setting. Just look at the symbolism of the names "Morpheus," "Trinity," and "Neo." When religion comes into the picture logic has to be thrown out the window. The Matrix had quite a bit of depth when you dig into it.
My dick is hard. suck it?
Yes, it is incorrect.
dont be lame.. go and laugh.. POLYESTER DOT NET! (ANTI-LINUX!@!#@$#)
I mean, did that shitty CGI of JarJar fool anybody? That was the worst fucking thing I've ever seen; inside the worst movie I've ever seen. Quite a feat!
It could have been the gravitational force of the M&Ms holding themselves together :)
You're right, but I think the original poster's misconceptions run deeper than that.
Jamie, I have grown tired of hearing your tired and misguided remarks about the teaching of evolution in kansas. Evolution is a Theory, and a flawed one at that. I grew up in Alberta Canada, and I was taught evolution as fact, gravity was a theory, but evolution was always fact. As far as I know, creationism as taught a theory, as it rightfully should, and so is evolution. I personally believe more in evolution than creationism, but both are flawed, and both should be taught.
I would appreciate a response
EOM.
The earth is ***slowly*** losing it's rotational inertia due to "Tidal Braking" - ie the moon (and to lesser degree the sun) pull on the oceans creating the tides (we all learned this in 3rd grade, right?) As the earth rotates *through* the tides (because when you think about it this is really what is happening), there is friction between the oceans (and the liquid core too) and the earth, thus slowing it down (try spinning a raw egg as compared to a hard boiled one) .... whew.
Flesh Gordon is the crappiest movie I have ever seen. A flash gordon semi porno movie with lots of breasts.. everyonce in a while a network like THE SPACE CHANNEL stoops low to show it. By the way, if you ever catch Barbarella sit down and watch it. All women should be like her, hahahahaa
This movie was really very bad in hindsight, yet it wasn't the worst movie I have ever seen. My favourite bad science part was the solar rock that burst through the ship and then went right through Jerry O'Connell's hand but then didn't break the glass touch screen panel of their ship, it only embedded itself in the glass. I think the best part of the movie was the preview for the movie hollowman
Correction:
Work = Force * DISPLACEMENT
KINETIC energy = 1/2 * mass * velocity squared
POTENTIAL GRAVITATIONAL energy = mass * gravity * height
And apart from the formulas, a rotating body does *not* explode if there is no force.
You bitch about a fiction movie forever, yelling "PHYSICS", but you believe it when someone tells you that man went to the moon, and there are pictures to prove it (although nobody knows who is holding the camera when the Apollo ship blasts off into space). You people have no common sense.
DIE HYPOCRITES!!!!!
It was okay, but I don't like melodic trance that much.
The Iron Giant
Great Message(s)
Great Animation
Great Plot
'And all that that implies'
I hope that you honestly don't believe that even if the entire slashdot reading public decided to stop going to movies that the MPAA would actually even notice. I hate to break this to you but people who actually give a damn about being able to watch dvd movies in linux is a distinct minority. This will probably get marked as a troll or as flamebait, but hey the truth hurts doesn't it?
Most Glaring Scientific Errors In Mission to Mars Clouds on Mars (Those are not dust!) Gravity Seems Normal. That whole planet covering storm is moving REALLY fast. The weather in general, especially the wind, seems too earthlike. The M&M floating DNA pattern is rotating. What's keeping it from flying off!?! The dancing people break the laws of physics in SOOO many way's. Just watch. It's really weird. That centrifuge is awfully shallow! (The people woulod get sick from coreolis forces.) Why does the air leak draw liquid to it and not other things? They hear the leak on the outside of the ship but not on the inside! They haven't covered finding an air link in the training simulations? What causes the frozen rocket fuel to break off? Most normal rocket fuels (most liquids actually) would evaporate rapidly in vacuum (not freeze.) What force causes the rocket fuel to drift to the back of the rocket? What kind of rocket fuel burns without an oxidizer? Kaboom! So, they're navigating a kilometer through space and intersecting with a moving target visually? ("I can't see the probe!") Ok, so a space probe designed to go to jupiter is capable of landing on mars? The rocket has too little velocity to stay in orbit and the space probe is slingshotting out to jupiter or something, but the space probe is only going like 10 miles per hour faster when they intersect orbits. What causes the space probe to fall into mars's atmosphere? Why doesn't she just jump off the probe to get some velocity toward Tim Robins? So, she's at the point of no return, and she barely has enough fuel to get back to the probe, how could she possibly drag her mass and his back when he was connected to the tether? They got darn close to that original landing site considering the probe wasn't designed to land on mars, they added a signifcant unknown mass to it, etc... The green house, which seems to be just a tent, is flapping really hard considering the pressure inside is 100 times the pressure outside. How can that few plants produce enough oxygen and food for one, let alone five, people? "That DNA looks human!" Ok, human DNA consists of BILLIONS of nucleotide pairs (ACTG thingies!) They were looking at like four on the computer screen! I seriously doubt that there is any series of four pairs that is unique to the human species. "But it's missing the last chromosome!" And a chromosome constists of HUGE amounts of DNA all tightly wound with tons of other proteins! Arrrggghh! They just make this stuff up!!! This gets my vote for the worst scientific error EVER in a movie! And don't even get me started about Gary Sinese's train of logic leading up to the "It's a puzzle!" thing. So life had already evolved on earth (it was already green) and the aliens put more (single celled, by the way) life on it? Why would that life be more succesful? If I were earth life before that I would be really mad! Those aliens must have spent less money looking for asteroids and comets than we humans do. By the way, is that the most cliche alien ever, or what? And that tear!!! Why would the aliens go to a completely different galaxy? Aren't there any more good planets in this one? Why didn't they just move to earth? How did the aliens know exactly what the genetic sequence of humans would be after millions of years? So, the dinosaurs evolved into mamoths? (Maybe it was just metaphorical...) Wow, I've probably just grazed the surface of what's wrong with this movie... Maybe I'll do another one on dialog.
I apologize for this in advance, Neo, but you are simply a colossal loser.
Your maint points seem to be as follows:
1. A theory is framework to which physical data is attached in order to make a cohesive view of reality.
2. Creationism is simply a religious view that is untestable.
3. Evolution chages over time to better accomadate physical evidence.
4. Logic and philosophy need to be taught in order for people to behave more rationally.
5. Evolution should be taught as science, as a theory subject to change based on new evidence, and creationism should be taught as something that is not subject to science.
6. That a person educated in Kansas has a worse education than someone educated somewhere else.
The truth:
1. Point 1 is correct, this is just a basic definition of a theory.
2. This is a false statement if one should examine it a little more closely. Creationism is testable simply by looking at the world and seeing if the basic assumptions it makes fit reasonably with what we know about the universe. In fact this is how one tests evolution, by examining the world and adjusting one's theory. Creationism fits well with the world as we know it, using the basic biblical assumptions one can construct a theory that works. The assumptions are that the universe is young ( approximately 10,000-20,000 years old) and that at some point in the past a cataclysmic flood occured that completely remade the earth. If one assumes that the universe is young, then one only needs to modify one of the assumptions of physicists for their explanation for their belief of the age of the universe. (15 billion yrs old). That is that during the inflation period of the big bang that the speed of light slowed down. The modification needed is to say that the speed of light slows down relative to the size of the universe. i.e. As the universe gets bigger the spped of light becomes proportionaly slower. If you read the Genesis account of creation, it says "God said let there be light. And there was light" The big bang was essentially the release of a form of light. Thus big bang cosmology does not contradict the biblical account of creation.
The second assumption is that a cataclysmic flood covered the earth. This assumption explains how things like mountains and the Grand Canyon could be made in such a relatively short time span. The flood caused the re-shaping of the continents, the run off of this water after the mountains were pushed up and the deep ocean canyons were formed caused features like the Grand Canyon and other things. Immediately after the flood a great climate change would have occured creating the ice ages, the tectonic plates would be very unstable and the continents would push away from each other rapidly causing various geological formations that are visible.
This is how one would go about constructing a theory for creationism, this is testable, and it is modifiable, thus meeting your requirements.
3. This is just what people do, they try to modify the theory to meet the evidence.
4. We need more logic taught in schools, if people had to pick the correct answer for various syllogisms to graduate from high school politicians would not be as bad as they are now.
5. I agree that evolution should be taught in schools, and I don't think that teaching creationism alongside it is necessarily a good thing, however people should be able to present ideas that don't cater to the party line, as long as they are logical and supported by physical data. This would stand in stark contrast to todday where the party line is the first check when it comes to thesises presented on evolutionarily related topics.
6. This is a blatantly false lie. In fact evolution is still in the state standards, and there is five times as much about it than there was before. The change has occured from the emphasis on macro-evolution to micro-evolution. Macro-evolution is still being taught in every single Kansas public high school. The discrimination against people from Kansas is simply a way to try to force an idealogical view point onto a group of people. This is what the anti-Kansas activists really want, the state board of education has not removed evolution from the curriculum, they have not introduced creationism, they have simply re written the section to include more material, and focus more on micro-evolution, which is where most biologists work any way. The are shifting towards the work that the majority of scientists in that field do, if anything they should be rewarded for having more real life experience with things on a practical level.
What, are you new around here?
Takedown!
Thank you.
I can't find the site mirror, but this has a good pic.
i saw south park the movie on video this weekend and i just got back from watching mission to mars and i have to say that less laws of nature were violated in the script of south park than in mission to mars.
super weak
Of course, the Earth is not a perfectly rigid body. Its non-rigidity might slow it down over time.
Well, I haven't seen the movie, but after reading all these truly HATEFUL comments, I'm dying to see it. Anything that got under people's skin this well must have a Truth in it.
This movie sucked big. Lots of people seem to say that the acting sucked; it didn't. The screenplay was just so terribly written that the best actors in the world would have come off as being terrible. How in the hell did they get Robbins and Sinise, among others, into this piece of crap?
that can't be, the enterprise's quatam phase array only has capacitence for 4K kilojules.
Capacitence is mesured in Farads Not joules. Cockmaster
Lets see how many ways we can slip Jon Katz' crap into /. and by-pass everyone's filters.
I tried to warn you on the 10th but no one felt like moderating me up... Well, you can still enjoy my brilliant critique there. Ah well.
You're wrong. I'd rather watch Dina Meyer any day.
When you are talking to yourself, do you actually hear the voices?
damn troll
unneccessary? Well that's what the ninth picture said was to happen... so it couldn't be unneccessary exactly. Besides it was very ironic... remember the line "So it's all about sex?" I was very impressed with the movie. I have seen better occult films, and better detective thrillers with occult themes. Ninth Gate will definitely go in my library though. Have to go see it again, didn't catch all nine gates the first time.
after the air was gone, there would no longer be a medium for the sound.. so as the ship was leaking, the voice should have changed.. maybe gotten softer, not cracked tho..
So I went to see it the other day, and I went with a friend (person a), who also brought a friend (person b). Now 'person b' was a certified DORK (not a geek, a dork, geek == good, dork == bad). Due to the seating in the theater I got to sit next to the certified dork while my friend sat elsewhere. When the movie ended.. and he stood up, he said pretty damn LOUD, "Wow.. that's like the movie of the year, that was awesome!!".
Now excuse me, but I fell asleep during that movie TWICE (mainly the first half). I was going to KILL this guy, everybody else though he (and I as an accessory) was carazy!
I can't beleive how BAD this movie was. The actors just 'stood' there during important scenes, they acted BORED (or dead?)! The only action was the guy floating away and that was the slowest sappiest action I have ever seen in my life!
....and to make it worse none of the special effects were good enough to make up for the lameness! I saw a COUPLE of nice still rendered backgrounds and stuff, but the actuall special effects sucked. What was the deal with the alien? It was made out of plastic!
This was like an A budget movie with B budget directors... or perhaps they had to spend all their money on the big name actors and couldn't afford a real movie?
However, since the object is moving in a circle half the acceleration is positive and half is negative. It varies sinusodialy. Engergy is conserved.
This is so completely and utterly wrong. I hope you're just kidding.
Did anyone but me see Snake Eyes?
It was hard to figure out which was worse in it,
the Z-movie script,
Nick Cage's chronic overacting or
Brian DePalma's chronic overdirecting....
If you had seen this movie before Mission to Mars, you wouold have seen this coming!
Bonfire of the Vanities proved that he was spent.
Carlito's Way proved that he couldnt go back to
the mafioso well again.
Mission Impossible proved that he is ready
to direct MTV-movies.....
but Snake Eyes.....ughh!
That was the warning that he was done....
> Also the human body tends to explode rather
> gruesomely when exposed to a vacuuum,
Wrong. The bodies pressure is much to low to make you explode.
This is a common misbelief.
Marcus
I'm surprised no one else picked up on this, but um, chromosomes are _seperate_ DNA strands (anyone remember highschool biology?). The X and Y chromosomes which they claim no seeing are strands that are three dimensionally folded into an 'X' shape, and a 'Y' shape respectively. So, how the hell are they going to know those chromosomes are missing by looking at only a small subsection of a DNA strand!?!? And as pointed out by the original review, it would impossible, even at that day and age to actually have memorized the sequence. Besides, whose sequence do they use? I mean, everyone's DNA is slightly different...
- Yes, space has temperature. Heat != temperature. Heat != "moving particles". Robbins would radiate heat in the form of thermal photons. This would cause his temperature to fall. On Earth, you constantly radiate heat. However, you also receive heat energy from surrounding objects of the same temperature and from the air. Without this constant incident radiation, you would freeze in seconds.
- The loss of gas depends on the size of the hull breach. Mir had a hull breach, but no one died (it was a slow leak). So yes, small leaks are possible.
- Not all liquids boil when pressure is reduced. For instance, acetone can freeze solid in vacuum systems. Many liquids, including water, would freeze and sublimate upon introduction into space.
- The equation for conservation of momentum with initial velocity zero is:
- Conservation of angular momentum did come into play. The ship/peroxide jet system conserved angular momentum. You just can't see the peroxide once it dissipates.
If you really want to nit-pick, my personal favorite was the M&Ms moving in circles without central force!0 = m1*v1 + m2*v2
If she has 100 times more mass then the hook, and the hook moves at a few m/s, then she'll move back at a rate of a few hundredths of a m/s. Not easy to see.
I saw it at 4:20 (no really, in the p.m.) and it *still* sucked, hard.
And others, like myself, were laughing out loud at the horrible acting, "air-tight" green house, and cartoon alien, amoung other things.
Some great lines from the movie include:
"We've got an incoming packet!" and "We gotta get them some new motherboards and drives right away"
Another priceless tidbit includes the fact that nasa appeared to be run by some old guy with an accent who lived on the earth space station. a six month recovery mission to mars was just a matter of winning over the old guy.
I think there is one thing and one thing only that could have saved this movie. A cameo alien appearence. It should have been ET, Warf, or Darth Vadar they ran into on mars. That would have made the whole thing worth it. Instead they had an alien from toontown..
Go see it if you're in the mood to laugh.
Although you can check your brain at the door, it makes great eye candy, the middle is nice and the acting of Tim Robbins, despite him needing the money to make "Cradle will rock" was not phoned in. But DePalma's never had an original idea in his head, except "I can rip off [fill in the name of a famous director, usually one who lived overseas]!" From Eisenstein to Hitchcock to Kubrick, the guy just regurgitates as vomit the gormet films of the masters. When I went to see "Mission to Mars", I had -1 expectations, and I was delighted by what was much better than, say, "Supernova" (now that I think of it, Brian DePalma just might be a pseudonym for Alan Smithee). And, although Gary Sinise has been in some of the worst films of all time ("The Green Mile" and "Reindeer Games"), he never gives a bad performance no matter how atrocious the film. It had "sense of wonder" all over it, and just might convince the next 9 year old Carl Sagan to go into planetology instead of working in network television on the dumbed down version of "Hit the Big Rock to be a Millionaire", coming to a cable TV near you.
I think that some of you need to pull your collective heads out of your asses. I liked the movie, was the physics unrealistic... yes, were the characters as one-dimentional as a superstring... yes, is the average moviegoer smart enought to care... doubtful. The studios don't give a rats ass about making a GOOD film, they want a film that everyone will go see. If they want to make a half-assed unrealistic, slightly impossible, movie with pretty graphics, good acting (charaters aside) and, you gotta admit, an interesting plot, then it's fine with me. I think that the main reason most of you are so pissed off is that you get your hopes up when you see the trailers for these movies, then the movies come out they're not as good as you wanted and you blame hollywood. These people havn't had an original idea in 5 years what the hell do you expect. I haven't been excited about a movie since x-files turned out to be a 2 hour episode that apparently answer all the questions except mine. Well that being said feel free to begin flames.
I saw it, and like most sci-fi, I pretty much suspended any attempt to see accuracy in the physics pretty early on.
Still, you guys got it VERY wrong on one point....
The escape vehicle was meant to mate up with the Mars-1 interplanetary vehicle, still parked in orbit. DUH. With plenty of supplies aboard.
I would think rocket scientists like you guys could figure that little detail out.
The term 'explosive decompression' is used to describe the RAPID, uncontrolled decompression of a man-made pressurised area; not exploding people. Some blood vessels and organs may rupture but a person will actually be MUMMIFIED because all the moisture will bleed off, fast.
There are so many problems with this film... save the cash and rent it. The science was bad, the music was bad, occasionally the graphics were really bad (I'm sorry... I hated that alien), the story was bad, the dialogue was really bad... and somehow or another, even the acting was bad. I respect Gary Sinise and expect a good performance from him. I adore Tim Robbins, and aside from that college party/spring break movie he made way back when, I have never seen him perform less than stunningly. But the writing was so bad, not even Robbins could act convincingly. The only good things in this film were the overall quality of the graphics and the cheesy humor between everyone else and that guy from Sliders. I honestly have to say that my favorite parts of the movie involved him being a coward, but even those were roll-your-eyes cheesy/cliche/predictable. BTW, when looking at the face on mars ("wild speculations" link above), who else sees Dr. Zaius? ;)
I haven't seen the movie, so I might be off base here, but something that gets me about the commercials for MtM is the statement, this DNA looks human. I believe that human DNA is 98% the same as gorilla DNA, and it is 60% the same as basic bacteria. How could someone tell by looking at a monitor that it "looks like human DNA?"
This is also the reason I'm waiting for American Beauty to come out on DVD (Thanks to DeCSS, I can pirate it! Thanks you guys!) I don't want to support good movies at the box office, so I just go to the really bad ones.
Hopefully, the MPAA will start making *all* bad movies (they're well on their way! It's working!) and then we can all laugh when they stop making profits! It's a win-win situation! Okay, win-lose. whatever though!
That's the best movie review that I've seen for a long time (Jamie and Michael's not Katz's). Guy, make this a regular feature. Keep those scathing critiques coming!
Watching "Mission to Mars" left a bad taste in my mouth. Went home and popped in Recall in my DVD player and it cleared all bad thoughts out of my head. You wont get a better Sci-Fi, existential philosophical, action, adventure, mission to mars movie than Recall... Watch it, analyze it, get it, come away enlightened... -bobby
Could I please have a side of science with this fiction? I believe a bit of re-editing would make the world of difference for this movie. I expected so much and received so little. Eye candy only:(
It truly looks like it was added by someone either with a fifth grade education, or without opposable thumbs. Aren't nerds supposed to be intelligent enough to write at least somewhat coherently?
Rob, I'm afraid you're simply not allowed to go on holidays again... ever. I'm sorry, but just look what happens when you leave, and I'm sure you'll agree... look at it. "I saw it and it was okay but no great" - there's some intricate sentence structure from the supposed hub of technology-oriented web sites.
I generally hate people bitching over the state of Slashdot, but it's reaching a point where I'm embarassed to have non-nerds seeing this for fear of them assuming that all geeks are as poorly read as some of the posters at this site. The content itself is fine, but Slashdot collectively has to realize that this is the big leagues now - 'outsiders' use this site as an example of the nerdly public, and awful grammar, spelling or jeuvenile content is a black mark on all of us.
I don't (and won't) be retentive enough to post a comment specifically to correct someone's grammar, but when the web's flagship technology site becomes as poorly edited and childish as a Backstreet Boys fanpage, something must be said.
F*M = A does not apply to centripital accelleration.
" F*M=A " doesn't apply to any type of acceleration.
- B
It's sad when you can't be entertained anymore. Many of you have long since lost any imagination you might have had. C'mon, everything in a movie doesn't have to be scientifically plausible. If you haven't seen it don't believe what you're reading here. Mission To Mars was actually pretty good. Stretch those imaginations! There is more to life than Linux, guys!
er.. That's wrong. The direction of the force (towards the center of the circle) is perpendicular to the direction of velocity (tangential to the circle). Which implies that the work done, or energy required to keep the thing spinning is zero.
Hence the object can keep spinning forever, provided there's no friction to drain energy away.
Really, I do. Doesn't matter what the MP-fucking-AA does, I'm not boycotting them. They could execute that finnish kid, and I'd still pay to see Matrix. What joy is life w/o movies?
I'm just glad I saw it for free, at a sneak preview. Time is worth money, but time lost is less than time and money lost!
When everyone was getting up to leave, I heard a bunch of people saying "Wow, that sucked." thoughout the theater. And I agreed with them.
SDFS
pitch black was crap.
it is, coincidentially, much like MTM. It has great special effects, but besides that it's Mystery Science Theater 3000 material. The acting is lamentably, heart-breakingly bad, and its' mediocrity is beaten only by the absolute crap that the writers tried to pass for a script.
Was that critical enough? I'm thinking of becoming a movie critic. Am I snide or sarcastic enough? I'm not quite sure. Please let me know.
AnonyMouse
We really dont...nobody cares about story lines or character development...or even whether the plot was coherent, rational or logical.
We're the American theater-going public...and we demand BIGGER EXPLOSIONS, and LOUDER NOISES
...and we want 'em NOOOOOOWWW!!!
I wanted to like it i realy did. but.... I was reduced to rolled my eyes at least 20 times in this movie, thinking "oh brother"... i never do that. No one has mentioned the Patriotic BS in the movie. It Must have been funded by the US Government. Did anyone notice the first thing they did when they got to the fake ass looking wrecked base was put up the US Flag? I Give this movie a cheeze and Sap Factor of 10 And what is with this lame as Dramatic music every few sec. Were they over budget and couldnt aford a real musician? "Hey, Lets just use some of that fake as canned band music that Steve S. uses that'll save us a few bucks" I could go on.............and i did....... >:)
I am the author of the original "Evolution Response", and I believe that your point #2 was dealt with by another response by anomie.
However, I believe you may have misconstrued what you've referred to as point #6. I was speaking strictly as a potential employer and wanted to point out my suspicion as to the quality of a Kansas educational certificate (as contrasted with other American states or Canadian provinces or territories) if macroevolution is not emphasized in Kansas biology courses.
I'm not trying to force my ideology on anyone - I simply don't want to risk hiring someone with an inadequate education, regardless of whether that inadequacy is based on religious blinkers, political blinkers or just inadequate resources devoted to education in general.
There will always be exceptions ( I adopt Mark Twain's aphorism that schooling certainly gets in the way of ones education), but I'm responsible to my clients, and so I try to hire the best employee for my firm. Sorry if I was unclear.
However, I trust you will understand that I don't believe that anyone can positively state THE TRUTH about anything, scientifically or otherwise, and that at best all we have are ongoing theories - theories that we may be prepared to die for, but not THE TRUTH without doubt or uncertainty. However, I could be wrong, and if you can prove it I would certainly be glad to consider what you believe to be THE TRUTH. Thanks for the feedback.
. . . unless our heroic Magic Greenhouse astronaut is going to hike four thousand miles to scrape up ice in a bucket and drag it back every week.
I mean, to run a greenhouse of that size for a months would require big hulking blocks of ice, which presumably he'd have to store outside the Magic Greenhouse -- where the ice would immediately start sublimating into vapor and blowing away.
Unless, of course, the Magic Greenhouse is built right atop the Magic Martian Aquifer -- probably left over from the Magic Martian Canals.
This post brought to you by M&M (tm) brand Magic Candies.
Nothing noble, heroic, or poignant. Lots of stuff blew up though. You get to see Tim Robbins slumming it and that Sliders guy loose some blood. Remember to buy more M&Ms(tm) candy.
-Eric
(watching Contact tonight. The last good SF film IMHO.)
The visuals are the only redeeming factor in this movie. I, probably like a lot of people who checked the movie out on Friday night, thought hmm...De Palma, Tim Robbins, and Gary Sinese...this will at least be decent. It wasn't. Bad science aside, the acting was atrocious. Gary Sinese has some kind of wierd makeup thing going which makes him look like Eddie Izzard. And the scriptwriters need to make sure we're up to speed on everything in the movie through pedantic dialog makes the characters that much more annoying ("look, earth before the continents separated"...no shit!). There was a collective groan in the theatre when the alien tears up at seeing the reenactement of Mars getting hammered by an asteroid...you'd think she'd be over that by now. Awful movie.
And you are no David Spade.
>I don't know any of the conditions of the orbits or trajectories.
last year in physics I wrote a program for my physics teacher to simulate an orbit. The only thing that the program knows is that gravity varies with the inverse of the distance squared. I didn't tell it about anything else like keplers' laws, they just happen on their own.
http://members.tripod.com/r-sobin/O.BAS
http://members.tripod.com/r-sobin/O.EXE
sorry it was writen in qbasic, and ever sorrier it runs in dos, just whip out dosemu
this movie sucks even when your drunk. goddamit.
The only reason that I used THE TRUTH for my subject was in order to get attention so I could get some replies. I was curious to see what other people thought about the issue too.
The studio audience started laughing about half way through the clip. After which Jon Stewart made a joking whisper to the audience; "I don't think it's supposed to be a comedy".
Yeah this was a great movie! The only things that could have made it better would be: 1) if they tacked on a car chase 2) More Professional Wrestlers! 3) Ahhhnold or Stallone, walking around shooting a big gun, while spouting off some witty comeback lines and catch phrases. Other than that, it was perfect!
Thought the blatant film allusions (the alien looking like in Mars Attacks, naming the colony Sedonia like in Duck Soup but spelled different, breathing the water like in Abyss) were actually among the cooler things abt the movie. Somehow "it worked for me" ... Spaghetti Western music in space, finally, though the scene where Robbins died went on way too long and much else about it required suspending reality for a couple hours. I figured the alien wasn't "real" anyway, some sort of hologram that was left with the spaceship. But how did Sinise know it was a space ship??
First of all, the entire design was idiotic. Way too big. (Think glorified RV; that's what you're going to be living in.) Tons of unused headroom doing nothing but taking up space where the pressure hull can fail. Then there's the centrifuge. With a big honking pressure-tight slip coupling? And a diameter small enough that, when you stand up, gravity is 10% less at head level? It's been shown that spin rates over 1/minute cause nasty nausea-inducing coriolos effects when you try to move around.
All current designs split the ship into 2 halves, separate them with cables, and spin the lot like a dumbbell. Simple, cheap, low RPMs, and doesn't require any freaking 2 m diameter slip couplings. But I guess good engineering doesn't look cool enough.
For the lunar missions, they got away without it and hoped, but you surround a ship on a multi-month trip with shielding.
Micrometeoroids travel way faster than a bullet. When they hit something, they do not punch a hole. They explode into shrapnel. The same on hitting air. (Most that hit the earth's atmosphere explode, too, even though the air is pretty thin up there and they get to build up to it gradually.) Shielding takes advantage of that by having multiple layers of thin sheets in a quilt. Each layer breaks the pieces up smaller, and the gap gives them time to disperse before they hit the next layer. But a spaceship swaddled up like an everest explorer doesn't look sexy and techie.
Now, going outside to fix an air leak? Excuse me, but like submarines, the outer skin of spaceships does not hold pressure. It holds assorted plumbing together, and buried inside that is the actual pressure hull. It's not exposed, and doesn't enclose anything unnecessary. You sure as heck can't get to it from the outside so easily.
Then there's the jump. You don't measure distances in orbital mechanics in kilometers. Kilometers are irrelelvant. You measure them in terms of delta-V, kilometers per second. If you and a person you're trying to rescue are stationary relative to each other, you can rescue them. You just get 1 cm/sec velocity towards them and wait until you've reached them. Then reverse the process. Total momentum change, 6M cm/sec, where M is the mass of one person. (Or less; "1 cm/sec" is an arbitrary small value. Realistic rescues may have limited durations imposed on them by consumables.)
The point is that, if your spaceship is coming up to Mars, you're doing one hell of a clip relative to the planet. That's why you need the main motors, for that huge delta-V kick. You may be able to come arbitrarily close to something in orbit, but the velocities are such that if you hit it, you'd explode into a fine red mist. Unless you have some way of slowing down.
(A clever mission designer would have used the martian atmosphere for this, like into 2010. But starting on how the movie could have been improved is an even longer list than its flaws, so I'm not going to start.)
And as for freaking out at losing someone... excuse me, but we spent a long time coming to grips with this possibility before leaving. Yes, get upset. Yes, get mad at the scriptwriters because just a few m/s difference from a ship in a long-term stable orbit will not get you close enough to the atmosphere to have your orbit decay before your air runs out. But don't go and do something stupid.
Just so many things. Like a last-night-on-earth party. A martian astronaut would be in freaking quarantine for weeks before launch to make sure thy don't get sick up there. I know the scriptwriters saw Apollo 13; the entire party scene was stolen from there. Did they walk out before the scene about saying goodbye to the family from 10 m away?
Arrgh. I wish I'd read the review here before seeing it. The plot (now spot this reference) sucked like the vacuum of space itself.
The point is that no energy is required for the object to continue spinning. If the centripetal force exists which makes the circular motion possible, then the motion can continue indefinitely. The original poster seems to think that requiring a force => energy input is required to 'maintain' the force => cannot continue indefintely.
Of course you'd freeze and of course the nitrogen would be released, but would you blow to pieces, then freeze, or freeze first and outgass carefully enough to leave your body fairly intact?
Just a thought...
red mars is ok but blue and green suck in my opinion... KSR should have created new characters to portary each new generation rather then coming up with the genological treatment... the characters just got so boring after halfway though green mars
Maybe.
WARNING: THIS POST CONTAINS A LONG AND RAMBLING MONOSENTENCE DISCLAIMER WHICH IS TYPED ALL IN CAPS BECAUSE PART OF THE PURPOSE OF SAID MONOSENTENCE IS TO HAVE A SPECIFIC TRAIT OR CHARACTERISTIC BY WHICH TO REFER TO ITSELF IN ORDER TO HAVE SOMETHING TO WRITE ABOUT WHILE DRAWING OUT FOR THE LONGEST POSSIBLE TIME WHAT MY POINT COULD ACTUALLY BE.
memes are alive
Saw the movie: biggest disappointment in years. Movies/Books blatently robbed: Apollo 13, 2001, 2010, Armagedon, Contact. In minor defense: The "alien" the 3 Rambo astronauts made contact with was a hologram. The film did not want you to believe the alien was real. Although it somehow physically touched them, the alien was a generated avatar meant to greet the 3 American (could only be) astronauts.
I'm glad I'm not the only one who noticed how much like "Discovery" the "Mars 2" looked, but with a used apollo front end! Did anyone notice that in the 2020's nasa will go back to the "Retro" style 60's logo? I did think the visual effects were frequently great, as was the sound track. But the story was basically 2001 without the budget for guys in monkey suits... When they did the tank rupture in Apollo 13, didn't the air/fuel look like small ice crystals? and shouldn't the spilled fuel from mars 2 look the same? I'm not sure, just a thought.
He's got his physics plain wrong. I don't know how he got moderated up as "informative" in the first place.
Slashdot reports the stories about the RIAA, MPAA, DoubleClick, Amazon, whatever. They make comments about them. But I don't recall any of the Slashdot editors ever stating that they would boycott the MPAA or anyone else. They said it sucks, and that was about it. Same with DoubleClick. And Amazon. Both suck, but they're still supporting both of them. I would truly applaud Slashdot if one day they said "We cannot condone the actions of DoubleClick, and will no longer be clients of theirs until they straighten out." But that day will never come. And that is truly sad. But Andover is a business, and they have to make money. What I don't understand is why they are using doubleclick if CmdrTaco invented his own banner serving software, adfu. I guess we should just be grateful they report these stories at all despite the conflict of interest. I wonder, is Slashdot one of the sites that was going to use DoubleClick's offline database? Would they tell us if they were?
I wanna see a vote box for who thought, AHEAD OF TIME having seen only the commercial or trailer, did you think it would be bad? I did... another weak, weak movie from consumerland.
I'm surprised it hasn't been mentioned already but did anyone else notice the "repeat" scene? I couldn't help but laugh in the theater as Robbins' character named commands and what's his name, My Secret Identiy/Sliders guy just sat there and repeated them for the voice activated computer. I doubt I would have even noticed it but for the mockery Galaxy Quest made of it. This movie was disapointing to say the least.
F*M = A does not apply to centripital accelleration.
Um, everything I said in that post was true. You're the fudster if you think otherwise.
"Obviously I don't read the comments."
Please show me anywhere, on this entire site, where any of the Slashdot authors has stated his support for a boycott of DoubleClick.
I really don't know what you're yelling about here. I didn't say the editors couldn't say what they want, I said they make comments, as in "wow, doubleclick is bad," about doubleclick, but STILL SUPPORT DOUBLECLICK. JUST LIKE THEY SAY "MPAA IS BAD" AND THEN SUPPORT MPAA. THEY NEVER SAID THEY WERE GOING TO BOYCOTT ANYTHING AND THAT WAS MY POINT. WHAT WAS YOURS????
I was getting confused there for a minute.
Total Recall
While I can understand that you don't like Jamie or Michael for whatever reason, it makes no sense to get mad about "unknowns" posting stories. Everybody is unknown at first. For you to expect Rob and Hemos to sit around and post every story is stupid and naïve. Rob is big-time now and has more important things to do than sit around and post stories all the time. kuro5hin is good, but the last thing it needs is someone like you. And, unlike cmdrtaco's nothing-is-deleted policy for Slashdot, rusty has a anything-annoying-is-deleted policy. So you may waste his time, but you'll also be wasting yours.
Also, I don't know if you read slashdot often, but Jamie and Michael have been around for quite a while.
Thirdly, WHAT THE FUCK DOES IT MATTER *WHO* POSTS THE STORY?
Get the fuck out of here, you god damn idiot.
Going in I said to my coworkers, "I hope this is no Lack of Impact." It was. A very very bad movie indeed. Half way through I stopped watching the movie and started picking it completely apart and trying to spot as many scenes as I could from every other sci fi movie I have ever seen. damn! Don't see this movie. Luke needs us NOT to go to this movie. cheese ass stooopid!
Okay I am a physicist. The earth keeps spinning because of momentum. A body in motion tends to stay in motion unless acted on by an outside force. The earth started spinning billions of years ago when it was forming and will continue to spin until the sun goes nova. So the earth is a big top. Since there is no drag from space it just keeps spinning. The complication is the moon. The moon's gravity pulls on the earth as we orbit each other, we see this effect as the tides in the oceans. What all this means is without the moon the earth spins forever, with the moon the earth is being slowed down very slowly. Thats why the day length on earth is very slowly getting longer. New research using computer simulation has shown that without the moon the earth would spin in an unstable fashion. What I mean is; a top as it spins will wobble, this is called precesion. Without the moon the earths wobble would become wild, up to many tens of degrees of swing. So without a moon earth spins forever(until the sun novas) but is very unstable, with the moon the earth spins(until the sun novas) in a stable fasion but the tidal forces slow us down very slowly.
maybe you should get a physics textbook and learn something.
The natural state of motion is for things to travel in straight lines. A point at the edge of a rotating body is constantly changing its direction of motion, so a force IS required.
HOWEVER, the force in this case is perpendicular to the direction of motion of the point. Therefore this does NOT imply that just because a force is required, energy is required in order for the rotational motion to continue ( because work done is the force multiplied by the component of motion in the direction of the force, which is 0 in this case).
I'm from Alberta, and my first degree was in Anatomy with distinction, and I have 3 1/2 years of medical school before I went into law at Dalhousie. I now own my own law firm. I bring this up to show where I'm coming from regarding science, logic and expertise in twisting words and ideas like soft taffy. Mmm. Taffy.
The sense in which words are used in science and other technical disciplines differ from their everyday use. In particular, the words "Theory", "Law", "Proof" and "Evil, Scumsucking Lawyer", since in the last example the two adjectives are both redundant as they both unnecessarily modify the noun "Lawyer".
In science, there is never a final determination of all of the evidence, and new information can kill a theory of very long standing. For example, Einstein's Special Theory of Relativity gave better and more accurate predictions concerning the position of Mercury than had Newton's Theory of Gravity, and hence when we talk about Gravity, Einstein's Theory is preferred if we need better predictions. Usually, you can get away with Newton for the "back of the envelope" calculations. Remember, Einstein won his 1905 Nobel Prize in Physics not for either his Special or General Theories of Relativity, but instead for the Photoelectric effect (which until they went for infrasonic detectors were the basis for the doors openning automatically at your local Safeway grocery store).
So, in science, a "Theory" is something we use as the latest, best explanation for the facts we can observe, and any theory is always subject to being disproved by new evidence. In other words, all scientific explanations are tentative and none are beyond disproof. If I am a supposition, I hope to get to grow up to be an hypothesis, and if I am very, very lucky, eventually I may be a Theory. But that's as far as I can get, because inevitably the latest Theory will be supplanted by a better Theory that gives better predictive results. The use of what is called empiracism (testing results against Theory and shooting the head off of any defective Theory regardless of how much one likes the Theory) is what gets us away from mere logical speculation or Revealed Truth and all the catastrophes that follow from not being able to change your ideas despite the new evidence (we call such people raving loonies, Yes Dear or Your Lordship).
By way of contrast, creationism (God exists, She made us as Release 1.0 with no further upgrades planned, This is As Good As It Gets, evidence to the contrary should be ignored because it is either Satan leading us astray or God playing Her little practical joke on us, etc) is not a Theory because it is proposed not as a testable (and hence able if false to be demonstrated to be false) hypothesis that wants to grow up to be a Theory, but instead as Revealed Truth. And there's not much you can do about amending Revealed Truth, nor do people appreciate it when you try ( Shiite vs. Sunni vs. Ismahaili muslims vs. Baha'i, Roman Catholic vs. Eastern Orthodox vs. Protestant vs. Jews for Jesus vs. Jews vs. Baal worshipers vs. Mormons vs. 7th Day Adventists, the different sects of Hindu vs. Sikhs vs. Buddhists vs. Shintoists, and those with the most powerful (lack of) faith, Atheists (since you can never prove a negative, atheism requires the greatest faith of all)). Given my background in science, medicine, law and my readings and travels, I am tentatively agnostic awaiting better evidence.
As far as evolution being flawed, that's the whole point of science: being able to change the Theory based on better evidence. For example, Charles Darwin underestimated the effect on the rate of change and speciation of catastrophes creating small, isolated populations or of local populations intermittently cut off from one another creating new species in relatively short time periods without a lot of intermediate forms. At the time of his theory, the geologists had debated Gradualism vs. Catastrophism and the gradualists had won. Now, we realize it's a mix. The Harvard zoologist Stephen Jay Gould and friends came up with a better theory of evolution than the original by Darwin, and it's known as "punctuated equilibrium": most of the time, things happen gradually, but changes occur much more frequently after catastrophies kill off lots of members of a given population (so that due to sampling errors some things may become more frequent and other things may disappear altogether) or you get populations separated long enough that major changes occur in each subpopulation. It's not that change doesn't occur the rest of the time, or not even that most of the change that does occur doesn't occur gradually, but just that the rate of change goes off the scale after some major environmental shift.
I agree with you that evolution should be taught in science classes, and would suggest that we also start teaching logic and other branches of philosophy as a vaccine to fight some of the nastier memes out there ( White people are better than mud people, It's OK to kill people different than me, Only my team is right about anything, Everyone else should learn to agree with me and stop talking so funny ).
In summary, although both evolution and creationism should be taught, they should be taught in different classes, the one as a changing theory, the other as something to be contrasted from matters that are subject to empirical testing. The tragedy of Kansas is that the school children may not be taught the value of empiricism, logic and falsifiability of hypotheses in testing potential new theories. And that would mean that given a choice in a few years of hiring someone educated in Kansas as contrasted with, say, Idaho or Ontario, I'd be cautious about taking that Kansas certificate at face value.
I hope you found this response useful.
hahaha! you saw it with your mother! Damn you really are a nerd! ;-) Don't take it too serious! ;-) GermAnizer
When I read news, I want the facts, I don't want opinions and I certainly don't want people telling me both my opinions and what I should to based on "my" opinions. I realize that slashdot is far from this, but the bias can usually be ignored. The editors of slashdot may well boycott doubleclick, but atleast they are also professional enough to let people make that decision on their own.
If you want to be spoon-fed your opinions and your actions, there are many people/sites that are willing to do it, but don't think the fact that you have an alternative source makes you any less of a sheep.
mmmm... eggs....
"However, I thought the space travel and spaceship parts of the film were pretty darn good. And yes, I found the movie interesting personally."
Did anybody else notice the size of the engines they were using to get into Mars orbit? Ever seen the two tiny little Orbit Insertion Engines (or whatever they're called) on the Space Shuttle?
that MP3 was okay, but check out mp3.com/stev :) the same guy doin the music to parsec (www.parsec.org)...very hot trance stuff :)
"There is no spoon"-Neo, The Matrix
"SPOOOOOOOOON!"-The Tick, The Tick
Uruk has posted a truly insightful commentary, yet doesn't get the points because the moderators don't agree with him. Moderate on quality of content, not whether you agree with the poster or not.
That said, I'll pass on to you all something that was told to me by my best friend's wife after I ripped a movie to shreds (it was a good movie, even).
"WILL YOU SHUT THE HELL UP AND ENJOY THE MOVIE?!?!"
Moderate me as flaimbait, if you must, but I'm making a point. Uruk already made it, though, so why should I repeat it? Read his post again, and pay special attention to the all-caps sentence.
If you didn't like it, fine. But consider this: 2001 was the most boring, un-enlightening, confusing movie I had ever seen...until I read the book. A movie shouldn't be judged that way, though, so my initial judgement stands. Unless you know what's going on in advance, 2001 is a bad movie that looks really good. The same goes for Dune (but I think everybody agrees with me on that one). And now I'm rambling. G'nite :)
I don't know about you, but my servers run on the power of cotton candy and happy thoughts. -Anonymous Coward
But fortunately i say it at a matinee for half price.
..........sig...........
and what kind of ending was that? absolutely awefull
I just must say the only cool things in the movie were the computer voice, I thouhgt it was neat and second the computer system look cool'ish
..........sig...........
You can not have anything rotating circularly forever. This is because circular rotation requires an acceleration (even if it is not changing speeds, it is always changing directions), hence requiring a Force (Force = mass * acceleration).
Objects in space can move forever because there is no notion of zero velocity, no point of reference, so to speak. Travelling 400 miles per hour in space (constantly) feels like standing still here (accept of course, the changing background of the planets).
Well I have yet to see this movie. But I have to say "The Beach" which I saw last night was the most fucked up movie I have seen in my lifetime. Leo DiCaprio's movies usually suck, but this one was one of the suckiest sucks that ever sucked.
------
Oh my god. This movie was such shit, I can't even begin to warn you.
- -
Don't EVEN get me started on that steaming turd. I saw it about a week or two ago, and... I was STUNNED. It was like being unexpectedly punched in the face. I was numb and flailing about afterwards.
My expectations were low, sure. But nothing could have prepared me...
The corner of the theatre I was sitting in turned into a ad-hoc "Mystery Science Theatre 2000" show, so I was at least entertained by my friends.
There hasn't been this much product placement since "Mac and Me."
Things about M2M that utterly suck (partial list)
-----------------------------------------------
* The trailer and posters literally gave away the "surprise" ending
* The one-shot "exposition picnic" ("Gee, wonder what'll happen to the guy
going to Mars who's reading his kid 'Robinson Crusoe'?")
* The futuristic Yugo (or whatever the hell it was...)
* The Gen-X astronauts (it's 2020 remember?!) reminiscing about...Flash Gordon?
* The astronauts looking apathetically at the giant sand tornado about
to kill them
* Easter Island obelisk apparently couldn't be seen from earth, even though
three tiny graves nearby could be
* The big MultiNational Space Station with five people on it
* The etch-a-sketch computers
* Don Cheadle's "Help me, Captain Kirk!" scene
* The horrible, indecipherable scene where they come up with a rescue plan.
* "There's only three graves!" "No, there was just no one to bury him."
* The outer space ballroom-dancing scene
* Gratuitous, pointless "walking up the wall" 2001-ripoff spin-the-set scene.
* The Dead-Wife-On-Video-At-The-Party speech
* "Let's explain what DNA is with M&Ms because it's going to come up later."
* The "Monkey Jumping on an Organ" soundtrack
* The Dr. Pepper that saves the mission
* The DA-DAH! music cue when the fishing line runs out
* The bizzaro "take off my helmet" scene
* Don Cheadle's Sanford-and-Son afro.
* The greenhouse
* The ridiculous story about Cheadle digging a grave for the two bodies he
couldn't find, cuz it "just felt right"
* The "Solve the DNA Puzzle" alien test
* Mrs. Butterworth, the weeping alien who wants to hold your hand.
* The "2001 meets Epcot center" CGI climax
* "We've waited billions of years for you to show up... Well, gotta go."
* The fact that this highly evolved species decided to evacuate the planet
AFTER, not before, it was bombarded by a meteor
* Sinese's "Close Encounters" decision to go with the Aliens. (I hope in
the Special Edition we get to see the inside of the ship)
* The exchange: "Where's Sinese?" "He caught another flight! Har har!"
* The flashback ("Remember all these shitty moments...")
* Alien Shmalian...is there or isn't there water on Mars?
See the reviews on aint-it-cool-news for more.
STAY AWAY
I really enjoyed the film. One of my favorite films this year next to the matrix. Sure some of the physics may of been off but what movie has every thing CORRECT. Maybe 20 years later we disprove something who knows just enjoy it.
See, this movie would have been fine if it had done one thing: not purported itself to be real. Mission to Mars implied that "this is how it really is, no really", when in fact it's obviously a bunch of pseudoscience crap.
Star Wars, on the other hand, is fantasy, fairy tale... not science fiction. It says "what if the world were like this," and "just imagine." This affords a lot more suspension of disbelief.
Remember, in science fiction, the science is supposed to be "right," but everything else is made up. ;)
Don't think of it as a flame---it's more like an argument that does 3d6 fire damage
"Getting a sharp stick put in my eye would have been better."
"A poke in the eye with a sharp stick would have been better."
maybe they snuck in? that would be morally acceptable I guess. except that you'd be breaking the law. hmm, tough.
>It sucked. Bad. I've seen better things come out of my as$.
What do you expect from a movie who's target are Trekkies and PC gamers?
I'm putting my hopes on Titan AE. There might be a chance to show that the US can put something that can compete with Anime and Manga that not aimed at 3 year-olds. (I was goin to say Trekkies, but that would've ben an insult to the 3-year olds)
And Kung Fu!
And cute chicks in tight black leather!
And cool flashing computer lights!
And tonnes of awesome special effects!
The Matrix was easily the best movie of the 90s for the action/scifi/kungfu genre.
I haven't seen the movie (I don't intend to now either), and I haven't seen the scene, but... Surely the helix of M&Ms could have had zero angular momentum and the craft could have been rotating about the helix. If you were attached to the craft it would then look like the helix was rotating when in fact it was stationary and you were moving around it.
It was much worse than the reviewers said. In fact, I am embarassed for not having walked out on it. If you must see it, rent it.
-Derek
Hey, ya gotta love the Star Trek transporter system, if for no other reason that they get around the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle by, voila, using a Heisenberg Compensator
:^)
HINT: The Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle, as I understand it though IANAP, states that one cannot know where more than one particle (is this right?) is at any given moment. Magic, I say. I bet having a job on the writing staff at Paramount would be fun as shit.
Stating on Slashdot that I like cheese since 1997.
Bicentennial Man
Stating on Slashdot that I like cheese since 1997.
I hated the movie as well, but your first set of points don't seem to stand up to scrutiny.
When they had decided to mount a rescue mission, they were already in training for the second Mars mission. I believe the commander of the mission had said they were missing out on "8 months of training".
So they were leaving soon. Surely the ship was already built...they would need lots of time for shakedown before a mission like that.
The 1+ year transmit time was simply skipped. That's all. It was enough time for the first mission commander to go a little loopy, grow a big afro and beard, and grow lots of plants in a canvas greenhouse.
I could have told you MTM was going to suck. Just a feeling.
What tipped me off was the commercials where the actors were looking at the double helix on a computer screen and exclaiming "That looks like human DNA!" You've gotta wonder about the purpose of such a movie... :-)
* And remember, it's spelled N-e-t-s-c-a-p-e, but it's pronounced "Mozilla."
Watching paint dry can be fun if you're doing it in a small room with no ventilation... :-)
* And remember, it's spelled N-e-t-s-c-a-p-e, but it's pronounced "Mozilla."
The preview of 'Romeo Must Die'.
--mere mortal--
When your favorite part of a movie is Jerry O'conell (sp) you know something is messed up.
--[shangodee]
In a vacuum, various internal organs will rupture (eyes can too) but not explode as such. Blood tends to leak through the skin too like a giant love bite (erm, you yanks call 'em hickeys I believe) :)
Not pleasant, can be survived for a (very) short period but not recommended
Troc
Troc's dubious podcast and blog: http://www.trocnet.net
...with no problems in the science, I would be in my backyard building it.
If I came up with an interstellar starship design with just a few flaws in the design, I would write a sci-fi story and gloss over the holes in my science.
The idea of science-fiction is not to do science. It is to present interesting ideas. This film does many things right, including a very good depiction of space flight and some very accurate depictions of how really good astronauts react in emergency situations.
Thanks to Uruk for saying what needed to be said.
Eternal vigilance only works if you look in every direction.
but I could do a better job a showing rotation is possible than these pseudo-physicists could at showing it couldn't be done. Most of them don't even mention Coriolis effects in their discussion of the physics of a moving model inside a rotating space ship.
Then please do so.
Air friction will very quickly drag each individual M&M into the same inertial frame as the air itself, which had long since adjusted to the normal rotation. (Let's forget about random variations in the airflow caused by ventilation that absolutely must keep the air moving at all times, or cause harmful-or-deadly dust pockets to form; even if the model was connected by something, which people seem to imply it wasn't, the entire model would quickly migrate to other locations.)
I haven't seen the movie but I assume it actually held together, despite a lack of glue. Instead, even if the astronaut could magically (or through extensive practice) nullify the rotation of the spacecraft, in a matter of seconds, the M&M would take the velocity of the air around it and begin hiking back to the outside. The only effect of Coriolis "force" (which isn't, of course) would be if you wanted to compute where it was going to land.
Oh, great. We got a guy challenging me who's not only not seen the movie, he's not read the pseudo-physicists who I was criticizing (who didn't talk about air currents because they at least saw the movie before blasting it and they know the M&Ms were perturbed by air currents and that the rotating model wasn't shown for long enough to require long-term stability and that the astronauts did have a long time to practice).
OK, here's my explanation:
What the pseudo-physicists assumed (despite considerable evidence to the contrary) was that the entire ship was in weightlessness. In fact, as clearly shown in the movie, the only part of the ship which had very low gravity (allowing the M&M hobby to be possible) was the central axis.
Since even the central axis was rotating (and the astronauts were stationary with respect to the walls), any zero-g DNA model not only COULD be rotating, it would HAVE TO BE rotating. The next time I go to see the movie (it was THAT enjoyable) I will time the rotation to see if it matched the rotation of the ship.
Now, admittedly it did not look like this model was oriented along the axis of the ship. But there was nothing in the scene which would have precluded such an orientation.
As for the comments about air friction, the model was rotating slow enough (as it would have to be) that the amount of perturbation caused by air currents would certainly be close to that observed in the movie.
I never said anything about "Coriolis forces." I said "Coriolis effects" which would be significant in a rotating frame of reference like the one depicted and which would have been important considerations based on some of the assumptions which have been made in the pseudo-science rants in this review and in the discussion which followed.
This was a science-fiction movie about science and that's an accomplishment in itself.
Perhaps, but my professors don't think much of that argument. "Well, prof, I did the assignment! Even though it completely failed to meet any of the requirements, I don't think I deserve this flunking grade!"
And your professors would not only have received failing grades but they probably would have been fired if they flunked you without reading your assignment. The point is there was a lot of science and a lot of it was pretty good. Some of it was pretty subtle, too -- like the discussion of the "groups of three" in the discussion of the alien signal, which was never explained, but made sense scientifically. (This subtlety was probably why these pseudo-physicists didn't notice.)
There were some flaws in the science, but the fact that so many people in this discussion (including the reviewers) got more wrong than the movie suggests to me that it wasn't such a bad job. I would quote Teddy Roosevelt on "daring greatly" but I suspect it would be lost on this audience.
This movie sucked me right in, and I enjoyed it (in spite of the self-indulgent tracking shot it opens with). So shoot me.
Accurate != enjoyable, which too many geeks forget aometimes [sic]. But enjoyable != accurate, and for that matter, enjoyable != good. If you want to enjoy it, fine. But it doesn't make it accurate or good.
I never said enjoyable = accurate. I said the movie got many things right which have never been done before in a movie, and that many of the criticisms of its accuracy in this discussion were more inaccurate than the movie itself. And I said I enjoyed the movie even though I was expecting bad science to ruin it for me. I was wrong. But at least I didn't publish me pre-judgment as an indictment of the movie and those who liked it.
The zero-g pas-de-deux was brilliant, and there were a number of things I doubt any of these griping geeks could have done as well in a million years.
Of all the demographics I can think of to say that about, geeks, the culture where prestige is measured in accomplishments, are the last I would say that about.
When geek culture is at its best, prestige is in fact measured in accomplishments. When it is measured in the kind of phony one-up-manship exemplified by this review and the ensuing discussion, it is nothing more than a justification for geeks' reputation for a lack of social skills.
Eternal vigilance only works if you look in every direction.
...(that "crap like this" is the cause of scientific ignorance), but I would hope you are willing to entertain other ideas.
Not to do so would be a grave violence against science itself. I would suggest that a better explanation of why people are ignorant of how their world works: Those who (inaccurately) attack those they deem unscientific with rants like this review (please note that I am not including Katz in this, who was much more reasonable).
Instead of using public interest in things like the face on Mars to interest people in things scientific, we use them to ridicule people and call them "ignorant." And, indeed, there is nothing in this film which implies the face in the film is the one which got so much attention from the pseudo-scientists. They don't even look that much alike. And the one in the film is buried at the beginning of the movie.
Which raises an interesting question: If we expect the movie to be scientifically accurate, shouldn't we expect criticisms of its accuracy to be accurate themselves?
I never said I didn't mind the inaccuracies. I said I found them minor compared to the inaccuracies in the reviews and in the ensuing discussion. Please don't put words in my mouth.
Finally, I would like to comment on the final line of this post:
Wasn't this movie done before, and a hell of a lot better, in 2010?
This seems to me a much more interesting comment than most of the reviews and the discussion. Much of the film is very derivative: of "2001," of "Apollo 13," of "Touch of Evil," of "Contact" and the list goes on.
I enjoyed this movie a lot more than some of its predecessors. I think a lot of what it incorporated from "Apollo 13" made the "2001" aspects of it much more accurate. I believe it is the movie Kubrick was trying to make.
I would be very interested in knowing why you feel one way while I feel another way. But I doubt we could shed much light on it by making inaccurate statements about the movie or calling those who disagree with us "ignorant."
Eternal vigilance only works if you look in every direction.
..."Deep Impact"?
I should just rest my case there, but:
Remember Apollo 13? The director actually went through the trouble of using NASA's "Vomit Comet" aircraft in order to determine how things REALLY behave in microgravity. As I recall, didn't they actulally [sic] FILM a significant protion [sic] of Apollo 13 IN the "Vomit Comet"???
If the pas-de-deux in "Mission to Mars" was not filmed in the Vomit Comet, then it was a truly incredible piece of filmmaking, worthy of extra recognition for the brilliance of its special effects, especially in the use of those effects to portray science accurately.
This film can be appreciated for its accuracy. Some people just CHOSE not to.
Eternal vigilance only works if you look in every direction.
In my former life as a Civil Engineer, I was once required to watch a training film about the dangers of "confined space" entry.
In this film, one member of a construction team ventures into a deep, dark pit where a small gas line is venting odor-free gas. The worker is soon overcome, and drops (lifeless) to the ground.
His coworker is in the midst of asking him some question ("Hey Joe, did you see those Dodgers on Saturday?") and when his friend doesn't respond, he peers into the pit. Joe is lifeless! The worker scrambles down the ladder to render aid, and is also struck down by the lack of oxygen.
By the end of the 10-minute film (based on a true story), a pile of 5 bodies lay in the pit because they don't follow proper confined space entry procedure.
The sad part is that me and the group of jaded workers I was with laughed uproariously at the silly looks on the actors faces as the feigned asphyxia, and at the silly behavior of the last two workers (I mean, you see 3 guys down at the bottom, you must figure something is wrong!). ("Hmm. Joe, John, and Tony are all motionless at the bottom of the pit. Guess I'll climb down and see whats up!")
And as I watched "Mission to Mars" I felt the same way. Silly antics by usually good actors (doing their best to ruin my impression of their talents) in unrealistic situations acting unrealistically. ("Hmm. There are three bodies already down there on mars. Guess I'll just run willy-nilly down there and see what's up!")
I am generally a huge De Palma fan, and I must say I was extremely excited about this film. Still, I try to keep my expectations low these days as so many films are so bad. However, it has been a long time since I've seen a stinker like this actually make it to theatres (and not straight-to-video).
I may not be a fake-looking CG alien, but about the time he was shedding his sad alien tear over the loss of his homeworld, I was shedding some of my own. For the two hours of my life I'll never get back.
The Matrix isn't even remotely CP. CP is a child of the 80's -- moral/ethical issues about the environment, disparity of wealth and crime, corporate ethics and growing corporate/MNC power, the affects of globalization on culture, genetic engineering, affects of technology on socialization, etc.
Er, those are themes that cyberpunk novels have addressed, but cyberpunk ultimately is about punks in cyberspace, hence the name. The Matrix had punks. The punks were in cyberspace.
God, I sound pretentious.
Yes.
Hey, Blade Runner is one of my favorite films too, but it isn't "Gibsonian cyberpunk" -- it came out two years before Neuromancer was written and lacked the key feature of cyberpunk -- cyberspace!
That being said, I'm sure that Blade Runner, with its dark and mostly Asian-controlled future, was an influence on Gibson.
The bit about "filling in the two missing chromosomes" has to be the least accurate depiction of molecular biology ever to stink up a cinema. In comparsion, "Jurassic Park" looks like a documentary. Did these people ever think about doing *any* background research for their script?
Well, The Matrix had the advantage of being the first *good* cyberpunk movie. Sure, cyberpunk has been stale for ten years in written SF, but it has been hardly touched by cinematic SF. And really, the only scientific error you could say The Matrix made was that feeding the humans would take more energy than the computers could get out of them.
But "Mission to Mars" got nearly all of its physics and biology wrong, and really added nothing to the tired genre of space exploration movies
That's the best review of a movie that I've read in ages. From what they say, it's likely that the review is more entertaining than the movie. I laughed until I cried, and my stomach hurt.
When it was called Contact.
You may find this site a great help in determining exactly which movies you can boycott if you're at all worried about the whole DeCSS mess. It lists the mainstream movies that are currently playing in theaters, along with their respective studio affiliations and whether they're a plaintiff in the DeCSS lawsuit.
uh...that's Bradbury...and over 50 years old at that...and heck, the cheesy 70's TV Miniseries was probably better than this new film, and without product placements to boot...
"But remember, most lynch mobs aren't this nice." (H.Simpson)
-- Joe
"like a formula that had been put into a magic Hollywood computer"
Go look through the back page ads of Writer's Journal or similar. Lots of programs advertised to write everything from short stories, poems, to movie scripts. Most Mac only, for some odd reason... The endorsement blurbs are always good for a laugh; ever since I discovered the existance of such software I've had my doubts about Steven King.
OK, there's a pre-made translation table out there somewhere, but I'm too lazy to find a URL, so I'll just provide the English equivalent of the two phrases of ReviewSpeak you mentioned.
"instant popcorn classic" == The popcorn was more interesting.
"Really stays with you" == Nightmares. For years to come. Possibly requiring psychiatric and/or chemical therapy to eliminate.
(I'm sure we've all heard the how-the-heck-does-sound-travel-through-vacuum comments, so I won't reiterate them...)
--
I do not see how you think your argument makes any sense. You do realize that the cows food is grown on land and with resources that could be used to grow food for humans? Hence, a choice has been made to utilize these resources for the production of beef and dairy products, as opposed to more energy-efficient use.
I should rather think that *EVERYTHING* we eat takes more energy to feed(/grow) than we get.
Otherwise, there'd be excess energy created out of nothing.
'struth that, for plants, a lot of that energy is from the sun... but fact remains that the plant took in more energy than it's giving out to us.
S'what I think, anyway.
--
--
Don't like it? Respond with words, not karma.
Hmmm. I liked it. I thought it was closer to technically believable and accurate than most hollywood crap.
Cleary they didn't understand the concept of angular momemtum, though.
Clip
There's a smallish article in March's Scientific American about how Matthew Golombek, project scientist for Mars Pathfinder, was a science consultant for the 'Mission to Mars' film, along with two NASA astronauts.
The article isn't available online (although they've got lots of other fascinating stuff about Mars from the same issue), so I can't provide a link to it. Anyway, Golombek seems to have had doubts about many of the major plot points; but apparently he felt that 'the exaggerations do not detract from the real value of the film: to convey the sense of adventure in Mars exploration and, just maybe, to galvanise the public.'
Unfortunately, if the film's as bad as people are making out, perhaps we should expect massive funding cuts to anything Mars related in the immediate future...
Personally, I'd be embarrassed being involved in a science fiction film that ignores the science so much. One facet of good SF is the use of science to provide plot points and a rigid framework to work in - it's all the more enjoyable when there's that hint of plausibility in even the most fanatastical situations. Look at, say, Steven Baxter's 'Raft' and 'Flux' for examples of this.
I think I'll avoid the film when it eventually makes its way over the Atlantic...
Tedious Bloggy Stuff - hooray?
Any other mysteries?
P.S. - there was one line Tim Robbins said that blew the whole movie for me, but I can't remember what it was - he was standing there arguing that they needed to rescue the stranded astronaut, and the line was just so lame!
It was nice eye-candy, but I have no reason to see it again...
Ken
This is quite in line with the previous message. So, therefore, it's not offtopic.
I'm sorry. What I meant to say was 'please excuse me.'
what came out of my mouth was 'Move or I'll kill you!'
Paul VerHoeven did the same thing to "Starship Troopers," written by Robert Heinlein as a polemic against Communism/Fascism (he had practical experience as a Naval Officer in World War II). Additionally, the book contained a _very_ moving theme about why soldiers _really_ fight (HINT: it ain't '...for the greater good'), ending the book with "...his name is Zim," that always brought a lump to my throat.
I have to agree. Starship Troopers had only one thing going for it: Denise Richards. Tell me I'm wrong.
I'm sorry. What I meant to say was 'please excuse me.'
what came out of my mouth was 'Move or I'll kill you!'
My family has a ranch in Oklahoma, USA. They keep 100 cows on about 300 acres (1.2km^2) of praire grassland. The soil is mostly clay, difficult to work, and there's no irrigation. We grow alfalfa, bermuda, and winter wheat as fodder. The cows walk around, munch grass for several years, then get turned into hamburgers and steaks.
Other lands are more appropriate for crops. The sandy alluvial soils in the Arkansas river floodplain grow a lot of soy beans, for example.
Silliness: http://www.theonion.com/onion3420/animal_rights.h
When the three martianauts and the alien were holding hands, you forgot to mention they were singing, Kumbaya My Lord!, Kumbaya. Well, at least I was, and then the whole theatre started singing. What a riot.
Elijah Chancey www.elijahsadventure.com nomadic IT consultant, bicycling across america "all that you touch / and all
Hmmm, plot points are Off Topic? The moderation is more entertaining to me than the content sometimes.
Yeah but did he determine that it looked like KtF because of the non-fractal bi-lateral symmetry or just general morphism? The people who postulated the "Artificial Cydonia" hypothesis did so based on serious research findings, not because they felt "fed up" or they found something that "looked like" something else.
:)
This is not intended to flame you. Or to throw my support behind any particular hypothesis. I'm just pointing out an alternative point of view
Yes, we know that many aspects of the film were unrealistic. But then again, so was Star Wars, and you folks dedicate an entire Slashdot topic to that. I can't seem to recall you ever complaining about how light-sabers were scientifically impossible.
Instead, you just enjoyed what Star Wars had to offer, which is what you should have done with m2m.
Mission to Mars was a movie with enormous potential, but didn't use all of it. I, for one, had been waiting since November to see the movie, especially with my interest in space travel. The only parts that really got to me started right after meeting the alien. Up until that point, every was within my boundaries of corniness.
Yeah, I could have blasted every aspect of it like you guys did, but why bother? I just watched the damn movie and happened to enjoy it.
-Andrew
--------------------------
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"They misunderestimated me." --George W Bush, Nov. 6, 2000
I actually liked that music. Yeah, it was different, but it somewhat showed the stress of the situation. I thought it was cool.
----------
"They misunderestimated me." --George W Bush, Nov. 6, 2000
I think the difference is that "The Matrix" is a cartoon, everybody knows it's a cartoon, and nobody pretends it's any more realistic than, say, "Star Wars" - including the directors. It's just a romp with the occasional sci-fi ray guns and spaceships in between the kung fu.
"Mission to Mars" actually sounds like it's trying to be serious on occasion. I know I'm not planning to see it to find out...
Ita erat quando hic adveni.
Ok so the guy getting spun into a million pieces was cool. But other than, THE ALIEN FREAKING CRIED!
I think this review hits about the 90 bad things about this movie.
--"Karma is justice without the satisfaction"
Am I the only one who doesn't plan to go to this movie because of bad associations with a crappy Disneyland ride of the same name? It wasn't even a ride, actually. It was this thing where you sat in an auditorium with some gimmick (I forget what it was... it wasn't like Captain EO, and it wasn't IMAX, and it wasn't one of those things where the chairs jerk you around) and watched an antiquated (ca. 1950s) movie about a mission to Mars. It was worse than the Tiki Tiki Room.
That, and my friend saw the movie, and said "I've come to the conclusion that in most American popular space flicks, there are two types of heroes: 1. the loud, macho, glory-seeking type and 2. Gary Sinise."
In the US, farming is more profitable than ranching. If they could grow anything edible on those ranchlands, they would.
Drive around the country a bit, you'll see. Inevitably, where there is farming in arid areas, it's only because of a boondogle federal irrigation project. (This is not to say that ranchlands are managed very effectively -- in general, they're not. Only that you can't farm there.)
--
Business. Numbers. Money. People. Computer World.
Those of you who gasp at the scientific impossiblities are the same ones who think that the "Star Wars" trillogy was a profound set of workmanship. It's a movie, not a life changing event. It's a story, much like "Star Wars", meant to make us wonder what our origins may have been, or why there was a sudden explosion of life several hundred million years ago. I often go to movies just for the pretty colours. I enjoy science-fiction... and that's exactly what this was.... (and I don't think they'd deny it)...
Movies were meant for entertainment. If you want an educational experience, pick up an encyclopedia. If you go to a movie for anything but ENTERTAINMENT, you're wasting your time. You're just like those guys who buy their Italian Sport-Race cars, and then leave them in their garages for the entire year (minus one friday night).
Maybe, just maybe, I'm wrong here, and what you call "Hollywood" is not in the entertainment business. E! is no longer Entertainment News... it's Educational [movie] News. They're renaming Entertainment tonight... it's now "How the laws of physics are being portrayed in movies, and how it harms our children".
I like the movie quite a bit. I was GREATLY entertained. I got to see it on one of the extremely rare digital projection cinemas... now, it's time they bring the Matrix back out, just for this theater.
Toodles,
CK
Did we see the same movie?
If we did, I can only assume that either a) you are a close personal friend of Mr. de Palma, or b) Disney corp. has pictures of you naked with a moose.
Wow - I never flamed anyone on Slashdot before!
I'm not usually a geek about movies - so let me complain about this movie based on film critic grounds, not physics:
OK, so what's with the score? We find ourselves in a life-or-death sitaution where crew are desperately trying to plug a leak (never mind the 'no time for helmets' stuff - I said I'd ignore the physics), but what does the music do? It goes off in to something like a sleep-rate heart beat, and some little cheesy fanfares like you'd get from the old Tomorrow Land rides (hey! A connection?) That and the naseous voice of the computer removed all tension for me. Also that scene was SLOW. All the scenes were slow and sterile, except for the dune/mummy sand worm 'eat the astronauts' scene, which was pretty cool.
Again, with the score - Tim Robbins takes his own life, and what does the music do? It plods, it yawns. It does not say "Wakeup! important scene!" which I needed because I was inspecting my nails while I waited for them to decide whether to commit suicide by re-entering outside or inside the supply ship (There I go again with the physics.), and thus missed him taking his helmet off, which is good because if I'd been paying attention I would have laughed.
Character: we are begged, pleaded with to start off sobbing for poor Gary Sinise's character. Long before any plot we are dragged through a 15 minute party scene in which each character is painted in big wide crayola for us. Sinise's wife apparently thinks impassioned overblown speeches about Mars needing a hug are party conversation.
Dialog: "We're them. They're us." etc. Unbelievable. It doesn't cout as dialog - it's two hours of platitudes.
Pacing: Clearly an homage to 2001. it goes so very slow, but with the awful music, boring characters, and wandering plot, there's no tension, so the tense waiting of 2001 becomes a chance to buy popcorn, visit the bathroom, look at the posters in the lobby, etc.
I could go on. I want to say I feel very sorry for Robbins and Sinise, and I hope they can quickly forget this experience...
- The proper action in case of a failed login is to kill the user.
- Even if only four people can access a computer, and all of them are granted ultimate privilege and ultimate trust, the computer still needs a voice-print authentication system.
- Mission-critical systems need not be tested for fault tolerance if they are too expensive.
But let's face it: whoever did the CGI of that martian crying should have their head placed on a pike as a warning to the next ten generations.--
The dog ate my
Nothing can compare?
I, and 5 of my friends saw "The Ninth Gate" this weekend, which had such a stupid ending the whole audience had a big "WTF?!?!" expression on their face.
If Mission to Mars is worse the 9th Gate, I think all of Hollywood should be taken outside and beaten sensless
-Zebulun
(sorry, slightly off topic, but i wanna know if MTM is worse than 9th Gate, which is utter horse dung)
I'm afraid. I'm afraid, Dave. Dave, my mind is going. I can feel it. I can feel it. My mind is going.
This is undoubtedly much too far down the discussion to get noticed, and I'm sure anyone who did get down here would be tired of all the nitpicking, but I have to throw one last bit in.
When the meteorites struck the exposed fuel line (ridiculous in and of itself), the fuel exploded when the rocket was fired. That situation is incredibly implausible. I've never seen a liquid fuel engine model that mixed the fuel and oxidizer -before- very point of ignition. The chain of floating fuel wouldn't have even burned up, in all likelihood.
Oh, and it seems to me that intuition would show that it is incredibly unlikely that the entire ship's atmosphere could be sucked out of two marble-sized holes in minutes when the Dr.Pepper brand carbonated soda barely trickled through. And speaking of the Dr. Pepper, would it not have sealed the hole as it froze? After all, Robbins's character had to break it off in order to properly seal it.
Oh well. Maybe the next Mars movie will actually get stuff right. That, or be much more like 'real' sci-fi and not even try but rather concentrate on the storyline.
1. Heinlein had TB, before it was treatable. That's what got him out of the Navy and into writing (a lunger wasn't healthy enough to do rigorous work).
2. Here's the definition of fascism from dictionary.com:
"A system of government marked by centralization of authority under a dictator, stringent socioeconomic controls, suppression of the opposition through terror and censorship, and typically a policy of belligerent nationalism and racism."
The political system in ST was just like today's 20th Century America, with one crucial difference: you had to complete at least two years of public service before you could vote or hold public office. People who were still in public service could NOT vote or hold public office.
Public service included military service, but was not limited to it. For example, Juan's best friend is a researcher on Pluto. The recruiter mentions that if someone who was completely physically incapable wanted to join the public service, he could get two years of counting the hairs on a catapiller by touch.
Public service was completely voluntary; there was no draft. You could quit public service at any time if you weren't in the military, and in the military you could quit any time that you weren't in active combat. Once you quit, however, you could never reapply.
Now how the fsck does ANY of this come off as fascist? Heinlein was suggesting two things: (1) Only people who had given something (ANYTHING!) to their country should have a say in how it is run and (2) People who are currently on the dole (and to all those government employees out there, you're on the dole) shouldn't be allowed to vote for their own bread and circuses.
Originally, only landowners were allowed to vote in the US. Women didn't get the vote (with a few exceptions, like Wyoming) until 1920. American blacks weren't able to vote freely in large portions of the country until the 1960's. Was the US fascist? The biases in who was allowed to vote in the US seems to disenfranchise a heck of a lot more people than the system Heinlein proposes in ST. It would be a lot easier for someone to enter public service than for a woman to become a man or a black person to become white.
I've refused to see the movie because it completely perverts the point of the book. Apparently, some people who are incapable of reading are using the movie as Cliff's Notes for the book. What a shame.
-jon
Remember Amalek.
I thought the movie was great! Sure it had alot of inaccuracies and can be picked apart to death, but if taken with a grain of salt, it was actually enjoyable. Finally a movie about space that isn't full of blood, gore and aliens out to anihilate earth. At least this wasn't another 'Event Horizon'
There's a lot of good books out there waiting to be made into movies. Just hope they don't fuck them up like they did with Starship Troopers. How about "Moon Is A Harsh Mistress" or "Ringworld" or "Footfall". Hell, Brunner's "Shockwave Rider" and "Stand on Zanzibar" are great. Last decent S/F movie I saw was Gattica!
I drank what? -- Socrates
_________________
rooooar
_________________
rooooar
I'm not a physics person, but as I understand it, rotation does not "require" acceleration, but produces it. The edge moves at a velocity v and the acceleration is toward the center, perpendicular to the velocity. If the velocity remains constant (which even you said is true in space) shouldn't it continue spinning forever?
If not, please answer my question: what keeps the earth spinning?
<disclaimer>I have not taken physics since high school, so this may all be wrong.</disclaimer>
_________________
rooooar
Reading these reviews, I can definitely agree with the technical flaws inherent in Mission to Mars. And it's true, the plot was no Pulitzer Prize winner. But it was a fun SF flick.
I've been going to science fiction films semi-religiously for a long time now. I especially like movies involving space travel or exploration in some way, since space is something that I'm fascinated with. I saw Wing Commander. Sure it was bad when you compare it to the games. But I never had a chance to play the games. So it was a fun movie for me.
Mission to Mars was also a fun movie. I have believed for a long time that space exploration is very important, especially exploring colonization options in our own solar system. So, it was nice to see a movie explore colonization of Mars - a very real prospect in 2020. Plus, the visual effects were stunning, despite the physics flaws.
I try not to over-analyze movies until my second viewing of them. The first time I see a movie, I want to enjoy it for what it is. Then I'll go rent it and tear it apart. Try it...you might like it.
ErnieD
ErnieD's Dungeon
I agree that you can't often trust a positive movie review.
Those reviews you can never trust? Press junkets. A press junket is where they invite people from newpapers all over, who have these crappy underpaid jobs, to some nice and luxurious place. They get nice food, maybe get to go swimming and sunbathe, and meet some movie stars for 5 to 15 minutes, and it looks good for your local paper. It's an invite-only thing, so if you give a bad review, you might not be invited back for Toy Story 4 or whatever.
I am not the most familiar with Newtons laws of motion and whatnot so I didnt have a problem with the majority of the movie. I was a bit confused about the mars tent but I got over that fairly quickly.
The computers where they have no computers: I can ignore it. I guess they did not run linux and could not be configured for navigation. I got over that.
My biggest problem was how the movie changed from an space action movie about rescuing someone from mars to a "sci-fi" movie about our origins of a species. I would have been content with the movie had the projector broken immediatly after they entered the face.
In short: The majority of the movie was good but the end was as lame as possible.
Lowest Point: A crying smiling alien.
Highest Point: The preview for Mission Impossible!
One would have to say the Mars trilogy by Kim Stanley Robinson, which of course is far too complex to be turned into a movie (though perhaps a miniseries could be made of the first book, ala The Stand by King). You might argue that Bova's Mars is more readable and enjoyable than KSR's Mars series but at least KSR doesn't conjure up a deus ex machine martian, and his terraforming plans would actually work.
--
Full Time Idiot and Miserable Sod
Full Time Idiot and Miserable Sod
Nothing is real but the pain
The ancestor post is embarrassing!
Yeh, the ending was lame, but by then you wern't really carring anyway. But it was not carring in a good way. If you take it as the elegant joke that it is... it works very well.
ReadThe ReflectionEngine, a cyberpunk style n
90% of the population thinks everyone is stupid - do the math, someone's gotta be wrong.
Hrm... could it just be that the vast majority of people on earth is simply stupid? I think it could.
ReadThe ReflectionEngine, a cyberpunk style n
Your forgetting the Special form of fusion that was also used.
ReadThe ReflectionEngine, a cyberpunk style n
not really... although it dosn't really answer the question.
The magnitude of acceleration on the x, y, and z axies varys sinusiodaly(if the position varys sinusiodaly, then the velocity does, if the velocity does, then the acceleration does). And no energy is uses, so it is conserved.
ReadThe ReflectionEngine, a cyberpunk style n
For the love of God, no! Do not waste your time or money!
When I arrived at the theater, some people from Buena Vista were there handing out review forms. *Yes, yes, no, 8hours a week, mainly for porno.* I had an awful feeling of dread, like I haven't had in a long time. When the nine-foot, red playdough alien shed the tear and the horrendously overdone music swelled, EVERYONE in the theater groaned. I was just lucky enough to be seated with a few friends. I swear it was Mike, Tom, and Crow all over again.
That is what this movie is good for: a bargain rental accompanied by a six pack and a few friends. Don't expect anything more from this movie.
The party's over
Looks like DePalma took a really good premise and used it for his own political/social ends. But what do we expect from the Money Machine? Until we stop voting with our pocketbooks, they'll continue to pander to the lowest, most ignorant, Luddite common denominator.
What do you suggest, people should make movies for the good of all mankind, with their political and social agendas screened by some committee for ideological purity? You think people are too stpuid to be allowed to spend their money on what they want? Fucking elitist commie! That so called "Money Machine" is the only thing that keeps you lazy peaceniks alive.
My favorite quote so far was off of aint-it-cool-news.com, where one early veiwer said that the plot was "Porn-movie-bad".
Now, that's bad.
yea, I saw the Russians getting an early grave. Anyone notice the Iwo Jima imagery as they first uncovered and then implanted the beautiful American flag, bringing peace and harmony to an otherwise alien landscape? Of course, what would a space movie be with the older, grizzled east german scientist, with just a hint of Einstein to give him that "credible" look.
The single good (i.e. interesting) effect in the whole movie was the guy getting spun apart by that oh-so-unexplainable, incredibly terminal, twister defence system the Martians set up to protect the Face from the only other inhabitants for 6o million light-years....themselves with a few million years of evolution.
--
ba-bu-ba-ba-baaa, da-da-dum. Re-boot the ser-ver.
ba-bu-ba-ba-baaa, da-da-dum. Re-boot the ser-ver.
+&x
Because this goes against the Conservation of Angular Momentum.
Which, according to the fourth edition of Fundamentals of Physics is true.
-- "Well, Hello, Mr. Fancy-pants. I've got news for you pal, you ain't in control but two things right now, Jack and s
The higher the air pressure, the higher the temperature at which water boils. The lower the air pressure, the lower the temperature at which it boils. Therefore the relationship is directly proportional, not inversely.
Lee
Muslim community leaders warn of backlash from tomorrow morning's terrorist attack.
Tiatn AE is an excellent story and it must be a sign of recent movies that the upcoming motion picture makes me nervous .
I truly do hope that the movie doesn't bum me out like some really have . On the other hand I have been particularly impressed with Pitch Black and Fight Club . I guess someone has to get things right from time to time .
Hey, I worked many summers as a painter. Watching paint dry is very fun, as it lets you know you can get the second coat done and start the trim work!
Umm, second? (probably not)
"Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives" should be a convenience store, not a government agency.
Might I ask you to provide these so called glaring flaws in the Matrix? I am sure there a few, but nevertheless, orders of magnitude less than this crap.
Has anyone noticed that the premise of M2M is ripped off of the old sixties British movie called Five Millon Years to Earth? Workers excavating a subway tunnel find a martian space ship that crashed there 5 meg years ago. The film plays like an old horror movie more than a sci-fi but the central idea of earth species comming from mars is the same as M2M.
They spent $100 million on this movie, don't you think they could have spend a million or so on the rights to a decent science fiction novel? Oh well.
Okay, there were computer graphics, right? Well, who did those graphics? I mean, even the lighting guy must've thought, "Hey, wait a minute..." What, the catering truck driver couldn't have gone up to De Palma, "Excuse me, Mr. De Palma, but this movie is going to suck huge doodies, if you do that..."?
Don't tell me the only person on that set that knew anything about physics was De Palma. Are the only people working on movies art school types who have no clue about math, physics or biology? I mean I know a lot of art school types, and even they know better than some of this junk.
It seems to me that if you were working on the movie, you'd at least laugh out loud on the set. What about Sinise and Robbins, surely they're respected enough that they could open their mouths and say, "Uh, about this dialog, either re-write, or give me another million, because this is humiliating!"
What the hell is wrong with Hollywood?! Are we never going to see another decent SF movie again? I mean that takes place in space. In a galaxy, close, close, right here.
A quote from De Palma from the website:
"I'd never directed science fiction before, so the problem of shooting outer space and shooting a planet nobody's ever seen before gave me a whole new canvas with which to work. I tried to avoid all the cliches of science fiction movies and to give a whole new look and approach to this fantastic story."
http://studio.go.com/m2m/html/genesis.html
I guess nobody told the poor schmuck. NASA probably made the whole thing up.
john
-- john
I saw it with three friends on the day it opened, at a Sony Theatre in New York. To get to NYC, I we had all taken off our once-in-3-weeks day off from our jobs as camp counselors in Lancaster, PA to drive there. The friend who sat next to me and I started laughing almost from the first minute, and we didn't understand why the people around us weren't also laughing. We met up with the other two friends, who said "Hey, that was pretty good, eh?" Our shock was magnified when we realized those two didn't find anything bothersome about the nutty, nutty plot points which were not incidental but *vital* to the outcome.
Funny how that stuff works.
timothy
jrnl: http://tinyurl.com/c2l8yr / foes: http://tinyurl.com/ckjno5
duh. and after the race escaped to a distant galaxy aboard gold coloured spinning spaceships trailing blue exhaust. The worst thing about this movie was probably the crappy acting and completely unrealistic scenarios - nicely summarised above BTW. and it was such a *waste* -- it could have been a perfectly good plot instead of this *bullshit* that keeps coming out of hollywood.
no ..i thought plan 9 was a helluva lot better - burning hub caps stuck together to form a UFO or not...it was probably more realistic. this thing just plain sucks - its worse than a B movie.
it does deserve the reviews and the director deserves to be shot. unfortunately the movie industry is feeding the general public with absolute *garbage* and converting everything into mindless trash. horrible acting is now being promoted in movies in the hope that the audience wont notice it under the cover of special effects. and to think i actually paid to see this piece of shit.
yes, i agree that the movie was definitly lacking in all of the areas that make a movie good, yet it still had one moment which made it all worthwhile for me. towards the very end, when they were getting ready to leave the white room, but the one guy (can't remember his name... i always take that to be a sign of a bad movie when i cant remember character names) decided to stay behind because of some sort of count down to a launching? well did anyone other than my roommate and me see the large circles and lines on the floor which were very obviously counting in binary??? ya, that made the whole movie for me...
Orbital mechanics is just the balance of kinetic and potential energy. Yes, if you apply a little bit of thrust you will "move forever," but because there is another force pulling you down to Mars or wherever you won't go in that straight line because you only have a finite amount of energy to exchange.
I could do the math, but if they were at an eccentric orbit (more than likely with their trajectory) and 100m away (which is likely because of their velocity away from it) it would take a large amount of delta-v to get back to the REMO AND get into a circular orbit to rendezvous with it.
So a small amount of force wouldn't get them back to the REMO just because of momentum.
But you are right that everything else would cause this rendezvous to be impossible (with their assumptions).
IANAL, but I play one on
This would also be a reason why it didn't look like was moving away from the REMO; if he slammed against it, that would have imparted some of its momentum in a different direction. This would cause him to be in almost a similar orbit, but more elliptical.
All this is theoretical because I don't know any of the conditions of the orbits or trajectories.
IANAL, but I play one on
Maybe they curve a bit, but I'll pay you a jillion dollars to throw a baseball in a circle.
BTW, are you suggesting that each M&M was given just the right amount of spin to make it move in a circle of just the right radius?
--
Patrick Doyle
Patrick Doyle
I mod down every jackass who puts his moderation policy in his sig. Oh, wait a sec....
Don't forget South Park!
Besides, Heavy Metal was just boobs.
--
Patrick Doyle
Patrick Doyle
I mod down every jackass who puts his moderation policy in his sig. Oh, wait a sec....
The temperature at which water boils is directly proportional to air pressure.
Uh.. that's inversely proportional.. but yeah.
Nope, it's directly, I think. Double the pressure, double the boiling temperature.
--
Patrick Doyle
Patrick Doyle
I mod down every jackass who puts his moderation policy in his sig. Oh, wait a sec....
I know it's off-topic, but here's my review ot Titus...
Review of Titus
Patrick Doyle
Rating: 3/10
If you have ever wanted to see what would happen if Shakespeare dropped acid and decided to remake his play Titus Andronicus in the style of Spawn, then this is the movie for you. Otherwise, save your money; this one's a yawner.
The Oscar-level acting performances by nearly every member of the cast are the only saving grace of this cumbersome adaptation of the Shakespearean classic--a term I associate quite loosely with this, clearly not the greatest of the Great Bard's achievements.
Of course, Shakespeare is not renowned for the subtlety of his plot lines at the best of times; a fact which is only exacerbated by his use of monologues which tend to expose character traits already apparent. Yet, as if this were not enough, this film piles on ham-handed imagery and anachronism to drive home messages that had already left the ballpark long ago.
The obvious comparisons to Quentin Tarantino's work, particularly Pulp Fiction, do him no justice. The most comparable of his work could be From Dusk Till Dawn; however, I found Titus had less plot and more violence (which will be truly significant to anyone who has seen Tarantino's vampire slaughter spectacle). Not only would he never write such a straightforward story or tell it so bluntly; I imagine he would laugh (as did the audience watching the movie with me) at the humourously ineffective use of music.
However, it bears repeating that the performances of actors such as Anthony Hopkins (Titus), Jessica Lange (Tamora), and Alan Cumming (Saturninus), were riveting despite the disaster of a motion picture that surrounded them. (Hopkins' one apparent lapse into the Hannibal Lecter role could, perhaps, be attributed to poor direction.) And the daunting task of making this story's macabre plot developments seem feasible was carried out brilliantly by Matthew Rhys and Jonathan Rhys-Myers, whose wholly convincing portrayals of the psychotic brothers Demetrius and Chiron were riveting.
In addition, the direction was not without occasional merit. <SPOILER> For example, the use of carnival-like music and characters to reveal to Titus the severed heads of his sons was quite effective in its augmented shock value. </SPOILER> However, for the most part, I found the devices employed to be obvious and tiresome.
All in all, this movie involved a lot of very talented people, and managed to bore despite them.
--
Patrick Doyle
Patrick Doyle
I mod down every jackass who puts his moderation policy in his sig. Oh, wait a sec....
No, a movie director should get a severe ass whupping for taking a good book, removing the content, and turning it into an action movie.
-- The act of censorship is always worse than whatever is being censored. Always.
...is that it ruins the genre for all the other movies out there. What producer is gonna take a space movie seriously for a while? Or, even worse, what producer will do a sci-fi movie that relies on *gasp* actual character development instead of computer graphics?
The answer is that they won't, and this movie is to blame. That's truly the depressing thing about this movie.
The only movie that sounds as hokey as this Mission to Mars movie is Armaggeddon. Man, that was the hokiest thing on earth.
It's 10 PM. Do you know if you're un-American?
OK, the spinning is artistic license. Woody isn't spinning because a prolonged spin while doing a dramatic death scene just doesn't work in a movie.
But the way it took fuel use to keep moving isn't as wrong as it looks. This isn't space motion, this is orbital motion relative to other orbiting objects. As such, you aren't using fuel to move, you are using fuel to move from one orbit to another.
The complaint is, more or less, that Woody's wife should have been able to coast and catch up with him. That would work in space, but not in orbit. Woody was in an orbit a bit different from the rest of the group. And they didn't have enough fuel to match his orbit. You can't coast from one orbit to another - coasting is what an orbit is.
What was wrong was the psychology: all these "can-do" characters gave up way too soon. These guys are in the middle of doing all this "out of the box" thinking stuff, and the guy doesn't even attempt to throw some random piece of gear as a reaction mass or puncture his suit or anything.
Our secret is gamma-irradiated cow manure
Mitsubishi ad
We apologize for the inconvenience.
Yes, the practice of feeding chickens and pigs (and I suppose they probably do it with cows too) the waste products of their butchered brethren is commonplace in North America (other contintents too???), and its a wonderful method of spreading certain diseases throughout the population.
Intolerant people should be shot.
I have steadfastly avoided mainstream cinema since this whole thing started, but I find it rather hypocritical that the same people who told us about this whole thing are also encouraging moviegoers to continue.
Some people here will say this is why we will never win; because people don't care enough about corporations' actions to take action against them. I disagree. I think that it's not too late to fix things. We must boycott the MPAA.
I second that!
'The Iron Giant' is a great movie!
Later
Erik Z
Democrats or Republicans. They are both taking us to the same place and they are not afraid of us anymore.
not to nitpick your nitpicking, but some of us geneticists do use those big color displays with rotating 3D models of a DNA strand...i'm writing my thesis on it...sometimes it can be quite helpful
Regarding your point #2...
Many of the points of scientific creationism have been put to a scientific test, and failed miserably; people like Dwayne Gish and Henry Morris (of the Creation Research Institute), however, usually just tend to ignore the real science thats going on and focus on their own brand of rhetorical pseudoscience. Critical creationist "facts" such as the age of the earth and the Deluvian creation of the Grand Canyon truly do not stand up to serious geological investigation...the creationists are very fond of using data manipulation and a selective ignorance of findings to support their cause. They tend to make reference to older hypothesis and methods which, while they did have some scientific basis twenty years ago, have since been either disproven entirely or ammended (of course, the creationists never bother to mention this, and go on to use them to back up all of their claims). So yes, creationism can be viewed as a scientific theory, but when it does so, it fails miserably...
2001 did an EXCELLENT job of a realistic near-future space expidition. Aside from overly optimistic predictions of our progress by the year 2001, that is. Oh, and the sentient computer turning on its masters as well. (Both of these flaws can be forgiven tho I think, as they were very common themes in 1960's SciFi.)
Actually, one of the big things about 2001 when it came out was the fact that it was the first work of science fiction that blatantly broke Asimov's Laws of Robotics...sure, there had been killer robots around before, but none that were doing so of their own volition..
I *loved* The Matrix
biggest tech flaw i saw, they have to 'get close to the surface' to "hack" into the matrix. that implies wireless. but then they have to have a 'hard line' to get back?? WTF?
The Matrix was not a techno-thriller, or whatever you want to call it. It was the same old story, rehashed for public consumption in 1999. "Free your mind"..."illusions"... The story has been told over and over again, each time molded into a story that is relevent for the times.
required reading list for The Matrix:
The Bible
The works of Alister Crowley
The works of RAW
The works of Richard Bach
Selected works of Robert Heinlein
Selected works of Clive Barker
I still cant figgure out the 'hard line' thing.
:)
Is that this review wasn't published before I saw the movie. This moive SUCKED. In so many ways I can hardly count them all (but I'll try).
1) I have never seen Tim Robbins in a movie where his acting wasn't convicing. This is the first. He looked like he was embarrased to be a part of Mission to Mars, & he should have been.
2) Yes, TOO MANY PRODUCT PLUGS! The only one I thought was interesting was the square Budweiser "cans". It was awful.
3) The "Green House" on Mars was A JOKE.
4) The CG was, A JOKE. About the same quality of The Mummy, but more cartoony.
5) It was completely overdramatic. Very overdone. I can't emphasis that enough.
6) Ok, I feel bad paying $4.75 for the matinee, I can't imagine how the people who paid $7.00+!!
7) I could go on, but I've wasted enough of my time on this movie.
--Remove chicken to e-mail
This sounds like a troll to me. Paul Verhoeven was in the Netherlands during the Nazi occupation. He and his family were up against walls.
The movie is a parody of the ridiculous book. Yes, I read it. No, I don't like Heinlein. He was a blowhard.
Verhoeven has much more talent than Heinlein ever did -- but it's harder to see that talent, because you have to actually think when you watch his movies, rather than sitting there, thinking "rah rah our side" or "rah rah oooooh a sex scene" as you read Heinlein.
I wouldn't get my hopes up about it competing with anime. America just doesn't have the culture necessary to create good anime(currently). One of the reasons Anime has been able to take off is the OAV format. Writers and directors have some 6 hours or more of time to tell a story and flesh out a plot. Most good anime was originally an OVA, or TV series. Of course there are exceptions such as Ninja Scroll, but I feel the only way we could pull off an Anime quality movie in America is if that was the original intention, to copy the japanese.
Non gratis rodentus anus
After two and half hours it just stopped. The entire audience let out a groan of disbelief that it just stopped. Until Ninth Gate came out, I'd never seen a movie that was so interesting just flop at the end.
I am SO looking forward to this movie.
These reviews & comments are GREAT! The more I read, the more I want to see this movie. It sounds like a real hoot. I love cheesey movies with great special effects - especially if I can see them on the cheap.
Other great cheesey movies with great sfx:
Starship Troopers
Lost in Space
Waterworld (best value for $1)
no sig please, I'm agnostic
*sigh* Takes all kinds, I guess... Right back at you.
I always ignore anything that comes out of the so-called "experts'" mouths... Most reviewers see far too many movies, and therefore are too critical in their evaluations.... LOVED "The Matrix" as well. Actually, the guys at work all call me Neo (couldn't use the nick here, already taken :( ). I got so into the movie (That and I got imported shades from Germany to match Neo's, and a custom-made trenchcoat, too :) )...
If only the creators had seen "The Abyss", then they too would realize how to make this movie. "The Abyss" had the danger, the problems to solve, the untested solutions to the problems, AND it even had character development!!
See? you can have it all. Beyond all the reality issues, there was one more significant problem that nobody has really included, and that is the pace of the film.
-- Beginning takes about 20 or so minutes
-- First journey's failure: about 20 more minutes
-- Sedond journey's failure: about 40 minutes
-- Solving the problem: about 25 minutes
-- Entire end of movie: 15 minutes
and here I always thought that the most important aspect of a film should take at least as long as any one of the unimportant parts.
I had a lady behind me saying "I Loved that movie, I am going to buy it most definitely" over and over again, so I guess somebody out there liked it for some reason thats beyond me.
Tickets here in SouthEastern Connecticut are running $6.00 for a matinee, and $8.00 for an evening showing.
It Must have been funded by the US Government.
Well NASA were consultants on the movie. They had approval power over everythnig. But also Bruce DePalma Brian's brother was seen MANY times on the set. More than likely much of the Physics stuff Bruce had some say in possbily. But right after the press viewings Brian Depalma just dissapeared, and wouldn't talk to anyone. Now we know why! He was burying his head in the sand for making such a piece of Cr** movie!
Gabril/TSS!
The Truth is a Virus!!!
The computers in the Matrix may just prefer the warm, stable taste of a human, as opposed to greasy, hot petroleum.
We humans eat cows, even though it takes more energy to feed them than we get. The reason is that we consider more issues than pure energy-efficiency to when we acquire nutrition.
I just wish it had been here sooner. I checked out a couple other reviews, but I wish I had read this one first. It's right on the mark. I caught the blatant bad stuff (like trying to intercept the other ship during the doomed orbital burn), but missed some of the other things (though I was wondering how a green house with Earth atmosphere could exist in a tent blowing in the wind with Mars atmosphere outside). And who ends a movie with The End. Does that really leave any room for a sequel (assuming there will be one, though I don't know why)? When I saw that, it took the cake. I usually wait through the credits a bit but I was out of my seat almost before the credits rolled. I may have left before they got to the rest of the crew realizing they were going to starve. I just wish I hadn't wasted 2 hours of my life watching this movie. Wait for it to come to TV. If you don't want to wait for that, just make sure you don't pay for it, make someone else do that :)
Not at all. Obviously, my point was too vague to be caught by yourself and whatever moderator agreed with you. Sad, really, that stupid people are given even the slightest power.
And next time you're going to post something, at least put your name, and karma, on the line for it. Oh, wait, Annonymous Coward...I get it. Maybe I should just revert to AC status and be consequence-free...
Yes, this one is a bit flamey, but in light of my previous post being unfairly moderated, I ask that moderators forego moderating this one down. Or, if you've got the points, fix the moderation on the other post and moderate this one down. I can accept being moderated down, but not unfairly.
I don't know about you, but my servers run on the power of cotton candy and happy thoughts. -Anonymous Coward
Ok did anybody else notice the liquid freezing when it exited the spacecraft? Forgive me if I am wrong, but my _elementary_ chemistry teacher taught me that with about zero pressure liquids boil at about absolute zero.. so wouldn't the liquid just boil off and evaporate as soon as it exited the spacecraft? Thus wouldn't the shot of the frozen sticks of fuel floating around be yet another inaccuracy? God damn, if this is a `realistic' sci-fi film, I'd hate to see what de Palma comes up with when he makes unrealistic ones. Man, (and I know this will be the subject of many flames at my expense) even Star Trek is better than this one. Sure, they've got funky stuff like photon torpedos which some how cause explosions from EM photons? But.. they never claim to be the most accurate, and in many ways the theories they use to describe space travel are decently sound (one could, conceivably, curve space to create a shorter route from point A to point B and thus travel faster than light in a global sense). So I know you'll all scream at me for saying this, and yes I am a slight Trekkie, but give be ST any day compared to this crap. Sure it's being glorified now with Pat Stewart and all them, but damn MtM sucked! Finally, I really don't know why Titan AE is supposed to be the greatest thing since sliced bread. Perhaps somebody could explain it to me, because from what I've heard so far we (humans) pile on to some huge-ass space ship and search fer a new planet because Earth is threatened. Gee.. no room for scientific errors there (like the transport of a _huge_ number of people across stellar distances). Hoh well.. somebody please explain for the benefit of myself and everybody else like me who has only seen a few trailers, why will Titan AE rock my world?
"Caffeine is not an option. Caffeine is a way of life."
The temperature at which water boils is directly proportional to air pressure.
Uh.. that's inversely proportional.. but yeah.
"Caffeine is not an option. Caffeine is a way of life."
I'd like to add my own nerdy little nitpick. However, I'm afraid that the unwitting reader may get the impression, from the preponderance here of such nitpicks, that Mission to Mars is a movie that's perfectly enjoyable if you're just willing to suspend disbelief, kick back, and not think too much. So, let me reiterate: the characters are uncovincing; the plot is boring; the movie takes itself much too seriously; despite strenuous efforts your hearstrings will not be tugged; etc. There are, as Jon Katz remarks, a few space scenes with a certain 2001-like elegance. Space-movie buffs will want to see Mission to Mars on the big screen just for that. Anybody else should probably skip it.
Anyway, on with my own little nitpick.
Why is it that the computer displays in movies are always so obviously designed not for the characters who are supposedly using the displays, but for the audience of the movie? Why is it that every single time biologists in movies discuss genetics, they always conveniently happen to be sitting in front of a big color display with a rotating 3D model of a DNA strand? I am in fact sitting right now in a room with two other computer-using geneticists, and both are busily analyzing data. Let's look around. Well, from a few feet away, to be quite honest, they might as well be word-processing. If I look a little closer ('scuse me Gillermo) I can tell there's way too many T's, C's, G's, and A's on the screen, and ok, Sara over there's got a few neat looking graphs up. No animated 3D, though.
Anyway, my favorite moment of graphic display insanity, beside the obligatory double-helix, occurs during the supposedly-tragic moment when a character loses her husband in space. (Of course the movie tries so darned hard to point out how TRAGIC this is that it leaves you numb. But I digress.) Wife makes a foolhardy attempt to jet out to Husband. Her fuel is running low. To make this completely clear to us, she has a little graphic display on her wrist that shows her fuel running down from 70 percent to 60 percent to 55 percent.... OK, I'm willing to accept that there might be such a display, and I'm willing to let the filmmakers exaggerate it a bit so we can see it; I'm even willing to forgive them for the fact that her fuel use appears to be proportional to her change in position instead of her change in velocity. But why, oh why, when the fuel gauge hits 52 percent, must "POINT OF NO RETURN" appear on her wrist-display in big, flashing letters? It wasn't just me, either---the whole theater cracked up.
Oof.
--Bruce Fields
I can't believe the blatant factual errors in this movie. For example: anyone with the slightest knowledge of biology realizes that DNA doesn't contain chromosomes. What the DNA strand was missing were AMINO ACIDS. Chromosomes are composed of DNA, not the other way around.
Actually, it was explained (breifly and rather lame)... they were pulled off course by the gravity of a comet. The opening sequence of the movie shows them flying into it's tail -- that's where the rocks come flying through the ship.
You'd have to admit, they are some _really_ damned unlucky people to -- in the vastness of space -- pass close enough to a comet to be pulled off course... One would assume 1) the ship has a navigation computer and 2) the hull is made of something a little stronger than tin foil.
Well, if it wasn't on the day of the happens-once-every-22-years eclipse, then there wouldn't really be a movie now would there?
PS: Eclipses (at least on earth) occur in minutes, not seconds like Pitch Black.
PPS: Isn't it odd to think that such creatures would have evolved thusly on such a planet???
They don't call it "explosive decompression" for nothing.
I've never seen any actual scientific research on the effects of vacuum exposure or rapid decompression. HOWEVER, Hollywood had presented many "possibilities"... and yes, in one Outer Limits, a kid survived going inside an air lock and being decompressed to outer space. (Maybe he had read HHGTTG?)
How many space probes have we lost to asteroids? Probes: none, but we have had several satelites damaged by micro-meteoroids (read: space trash.) And, in fact, one tiny spec of trash when 3/4 the way through a shuttle window! It was at that point, NASA began funding projects for tracking all the trash in orbit with us. What are the odds of a space craft being hit by a meteor? Better than that of a 1976 Buick -- I've seen old pictures of a Buick that had its rear bumper removed by a meteoroid. (The Earth is hit by stuff _alot_. Most of it burns up in the atmosphere.)
Now, back to the movie... The part of the ship that was so elaborately hit, was also the part designed for landing? Hello, nobody's stupid enough to try reentry (even to mars) in a cardboard box. I'm not suggesting borg amourment, but something a little stronger that the zinc used in the average 10$ PC case would be advisable.
My bigest problem was the whole you-have-to-run-your-thrusters-or-you-don't-move inertial physics model. And what was that blue shit? (Penzoil rocket fuel?)
...they can look at the graphic which shows human DNA at the atomic level, recognize that two chromosomes [sic] are missing, and [...] enter the missing atomic structure of the chromosomes that were left out.
It's DNA...I know this!The real genius of the movie is its subtle political commentary:
NASA is waisting billions of OUR money on some stupid space station when all they need to do is go to REI and get some of those magic tents!
Stupid NASA - movie people types have to show you how to do your job right and stuff!
By the way, is anyone else amazed that they had computers on their wrists which could tell them random quantities like "POINT OF NO RETURN" but the ships computer couldn't tell them simple things like "I THINK THE FUEL LINE HAS BEEN CUT IN HALF AND IF YOU TRY TO START THE ENGINE I'M GONNA BLOW UP"?
Of course, none of this water is likely vapor or liquid -- it's all solid water ice.
[
Or that the hook wasn't that heavy.
Doesn't matter. Momentum is mass times velocity. If Robbins impacted with that spacecraft at 32 m/s, the hook was traveling faster than that, maybe twice that. She wouldn't move back too fast--maybe 5, 10 m/s--but it would have made a difference giving the circumstances.
And science aside, the movie was still bad. Bad dialouge, bad story (took them forever to get to the point of the movie), and did anyone else notice the score? It sounded downright awful in some places.
- The whole greenhouse thing has been slammed by several people, so I'll pass on that.
- When Tim Robbins removed his helmet. Ummm... no. His face wouldn't freeze immediately. It wouldn't freeze at all. See, space isn't "cold." It doesn't have a temperature; what we consider heat is a function of moving particles. Space doesn't have any particles to move, so no temperature. It's called a heat sink. Anyway, his death wouldn't be instant, it would be plain death by of asphyxiation. Guess that would have been too gruesome for a PG movie sanctioned by NASA.
- I'm no expert, but I think a freaking hull breach would immediately compromise the ship, not some slowly draining thing. That seemed too damned slow and leisurely.
- Liquids don't freeze when they go out into space. They boil. We think of boiling as happening at high temperatures, but what is really going on is that the particles are moving fast enough to escape the air pressure keeping them in liquid form. If there is no air pressure, you boil at any temperature. After boiling, it would immediately sublimate, so you'd get a cloud of crystaline particles. Or something close to that.
- When Tim Robbin's wife tried to save him by shooting her handy-dandy grappling hook thingy. Violates the law of convservation of momentum. Both her and the hook are stationary. Momenum = 0. She is stationary, hook is moving. Momentum = greater than zero. Not possible. What would happen is that the hook would move at a certain velocity, and then she would move backwards at a lesser velocity. Consider one velocity negative, the other positive (doesn't matter which way it goes), and the total momentum would be zero. Momentum would then be convserved. (The hook's mass times the hook's velocity plus her mass times her volicty.)
- They spun the other half the ship so they could have what passes for gravity. Fine. But they stop that spinning at one point. If they stopped that spinning, conservation of angular momentum would come into play, and the entire ship would start spinning, ableit slower than the part.
That's about all I could catch. Anyone else?Know what though? Doesn't do shit for me now. This movie wasn't aimed at ten-year-olds either. I paid $8.50 for it, and it most certainly wasn't worth that or my time.
You must have missed the "180 days later" text at the bottom of the screen.
What really bugs me about this movie it that Tim Robbins death was done so stupidly. With the detailed view of what happens when you're spun until your body rips apart, why were'nt we given an acurate representation of what would have happened in a vacuum.
He should have turned beet red, after about 10-20 seconds begin bleeding from the mouth, nose, eyes,ears, etc.. then there would have been a reather large ripping of flesh as any air in his lungs would have ripped out of his body and then after about a minute and a half of depressurization, he dies. A slow, agonizing and rather grusome death.
It's Science Fiction if, presuming technical competence on the part of the writer, he genuinely believes it could happen. Otherwise, it's Fantasy.
John W. Campbell, Jr. 1937
The fact that even the most basic research would reveal that the 'Face on Mars' is a hill seems to indicate less of a 'Lets make a thought provoking science fiction film' and more of a :
'Look - James Cameron is thinking about a Mars Mini series! These three books, all with Mars in their title are selling lots! They landed this robot thing on Mars, and lots of people watched! Something on Mars is swallowing our space probes. Hey, people are researching DNA! Let's make a movie about it! More Drinks !
Just think. For the cost of this film and it's associated advertising budget, NASA could have launched 2 more probes. It's not Science Fiction. It's a tragedy.
And to everyone who has seen the movie, I learned something that night: people with beards are crazy -- at least until they shave them off.
This film shows that just because you can do something, doesn't mean you should.
That proves it. GPL all the way.
The message on the other side of this sig is false.
Obviously you don't read the comments.
/.
Obviously you don't grok
The editors could say what they fucking want. I'm here for the comments and the story behind the links.
I make my own decisions. Frankly, I should quit falling for flamers like you.
The message on the other side of this sig is false.
If you haven't seen Robocop (by the same director) with the director's commentary enabled )DVD-style, for all of you not boycotting), it's hard to quite get the extent to which the movie is ironic. My reccomendation is to see Robocop all the way through with the commentary, then go see Starship troopers again. The movie seems much much different.
You forgot to mention that Pitch Black was driven by coincidences.
They just "happen" to be knocked off course (reason is never explained), they just "happen" to crash into this planet, they just "happen" to crash near the settlement, and it just "happens" to be on the day of the eclipse!
Wow. Talk about bad luck.
Barbie of Borg - She doesn't just Assimilate, She Accessorizes too!
Actually, talking about the creatures on the planet, they reminded me a lot of the Zerg in StarCraft. Anybody else?
Barbie of Borg - She doesn't just Assimilate, She Accessorizes too!
Which was worse, the tepid "acting", the hackneyed Von Daniken(sp?) plot, the bad science or the endless fscking product placements?
The closest to a fully developed character was Gary Sinise's, and that was only two dimensional (grieving over his dead wife, or in awe of the Martian dog and pony show).
The "plot" was familiar to anyone who's read (or even heard of) Chariot of the Gods; i.e. mankind was "seeded" on Earth by an alien race. Even if the trailers hadn't given that away, it would still have been a complete non-surprise.
Oh the science. This was painful. At times it looked like they had thought things through (this is the only Mars movie aside from 2001 that I can think of that actually aknowledged the 4 to 20 minute time-lag on radio transmissions). But most of the time they just blew things off for the sake of transparent drama:
There's many more of those, but they've been touched on by other posts...
Are product placements really necassary? I thought The Truman Show would have embarrassed Hollywood enough to take it easy on these for at least a couple years.
In summary, the pretty pictures are featured prominently in the trailers; the rest of the film just isn't worth it...
(I had to go straight home from the theater and plug in 2001 just to get the metaphorical bad taste out of my mouth.)
"I'm a scientist! I don't think, I observe!" - Dr. Clayton Forrester
The first mission didn't take food for the return trip? Assuming they did, conveniently enough people on the rescue mission died so that there was enough food to go around for the trip back. Luckily, the guy living in the canvas greenhouse didn't eat it all, with all the delicious leafy green plants and that big bowl of italian dressing....
--
Why Ah Must Scribble GNU
Even the cell phones, which were clearly Nokias, lacked the Nokia name on them. Uh, i'm sure that you can see the Nokia name quite clearly, as i remember freeze framing it on my dvd to see what model it is. I think its the 8660 but not silvery looking.
Shine on, you crazy diamond.
Oh well, guess I'll have to go back and watch Pitch Black again, seeing as its the essence of everything that is good in a sci-fi movie.
Ok yes that is b.s. Pitch Black looked like it was made for the Sci-Fi channel.
Dialog: bad
Characters: fake
Special Effects: The first half was shot through filters so off-color you were wondering if it was made for 3d glasses. And the 2nd half, well, it was *pitch black*, but those looming ominous objects certainly looked...like you couldn't see them.
Action: wow, I hear aliens ripping humans apart! Too bad its so *pitch black* that I can't see it.
Emotions Invoked: what's playing in the theater next door?
...and step away from it....
Now re-read my post.
You're forgiven.
As to the 'Money Machine,' I believe their quasi-science is what gets us into impossible discussions/rants like the earlier 'Joy Manifesto' thread. I don't want screening for purity...just accuracy and faithfulness to the author (if based on a book) or at least to the audience as somewhat intelligent adults.
Remember guys, this is Amerika. Just because you have the most votes, doesn't mean you get to win.--Fox Mulder
Based on other people's opinions, I have a pretty low standard for movies. And this movie sucked. Well, that's not entirely fair. The majority of the movie was good. The last 20 minutes was piss-poor. As my friend put it, "about $6, $6.50 of that $8 ticket was well-spent."
But only because in my little backwards town it cost's $2.50 to go to the movies and thats food included.
Hey, it's something to do...
I've never seen so many HORRIBLE movies lately!! And slashdot has been covering them as well, for whatever reason. Scream 3? Mission to Mars? I don't even want to go into any more of them, the movies have just plain sucked lately. This movie was truly pathetic. Any component of the movie (plot/setting/theme/characters/acting/action/whate ver).. SUCKED!
Mike Roberto
- roberto@soul.apk.net
-- AOL IM: MicroBerto
Berto
and some more complaints... If these stupid aliens were so advanced, why did they have to come to earth as molecules... I mean, they had these cool looking spaceships coming out of mars when the big meteor hit... and speaking of the meteor... if these aliens could make spaceships that flew to places all over the galaxy, then they should have had a friggin "laser" to blast that thing out of the sky... or at least they could've drilled a friggin hole into it so it would split in two and miss mars on either side by 400 miles!...
Best part of the movie: the 12 oz. boxes of Budweiser, the 2020 eco-friendly replacement for aluminum cans. (I assume that it was ounces--given the success rate of the Mars missions in the flick, I don't think NASA had learned from its past unit of conversion errors yet and gone all metric.)
- ERV The Earth Return Vehicle. This ship is sent to Mars ahead of Mars 1 to land on the planet and begin producing consumables and fuel for the return trip. This contains the Oxygen Generator (yes, it's real ; they've done it), some chemical subsystems, and a light craft (roughly half the size of the lander) designed to return the crew to Earth.
- Landing Module This is the core of the mission, it carries the astronauts to Mars and serves as their base of operations. Although Zubrin's original plan did no include the artificial gravity deck, it is entirely likely that something akin to this would be placed on the mission.
- Resupply Module Honestly, I'm somewhat dumbfounded. My best guess would be that this is the ERV for Mars 2 ; you see, the plan was that their would be a slight overlap of the missions, so that the ERV for Mars 2 would arrive near the end of the mission for Mars 1, so that if Mars 1 encountered trouble (as it did), the ERV could simply land with new supplies.
One more thing : I believe the reviewers confused the two plans under consideration by NASA (Mars Direct and Mars Semi-Direct). When they say that the astronauts leaving Mars at the end of the film will have no water of food, they are assuming that the vessel they inhabit is the MAV (Mars Ascent Verhicle), when it is in fact (as indicated in the film) the ERV. In Zubrin's original plan, the astronauts would go directly from the surface of Mars to Earth aboard the ERV, which is what occurs at the end of the film. The ERV contains sufficient supplies to sustain the astronauts during their voyage. As mentioned above, what the reviewers refer to is the MAV. After NASA reviewed Zubrin's plan, they recommended that a second craft (the ERV, or, in the movie, the resupply module) be placed into orbit around Mars, and that the MAV be used only to lift the astronauts into orbit, where they could dock with the ERV and return to Earth. The filmmakers obviously opted for the more Zubrin-centric approach, thus ensuring the survival of the departing crew members.- Dave "It's better to be a pirate than to join the Navy" - Steve Jobs
Duh, the matrix was full of guns and fights. That alone makes it worth watching.
--Have a Johsonville brat.
I haven't seen the movie myself, but I've heard from many people it sucked. Did anyone actually like it?
I like special effects as much as the next guy, but I try to judge a movie based on it's dialog. The movie had the worst dialog I have ever seen. It looked at though the screenwritters just fired up Word and cut and pasted parts of a bunch of other movies. I could almost predict the response of each line in the movie. Oh well. At least it let you know right away not to expect a good ending unlike Johnny Depp's "The Ninth Gate".
Hollow words will burn and hollow men will burn.
While I agree with most of your reasoning the following is absolute crap.
The ship is pelted by fragments of rock. Also, the ship is conveniently NOT plated with any sort of protective layer thick enough to prevent cosmic pebbles from penetrating the ship, the magic SGI display, and neatly through someone's hand. No matter, we'll patch it up with our Magic Goo(tm).
Lets start with space rocks. How fast do things in space move? Answer: really goddamm fast. We are talking about huge velocities, thousands of mph. Those little chunks of rock make a bullet look downright pokey and some of them could potentially be the size of a spacecraft. Thats a lot of kinetic energy and a lot of momentum. The good side of it is that such rocks should be very far apart because space is big.
Now we also have the inherent problems of space flight. (1) Every lb. in space cost $. Lots of $. (2) Any armor that would stop even the tiny asteroids mentioned above would be incredibly heavy. (3) The heavier the ship, the longer the flight, the more supplies you need, etc, etc. This, coupled with the unlikelihood of getting hit by asteroids, makes armor a losing proposition.
So if you were going to build an interplanetary ship, how would you build it? (1) As little superfluous weight as possible, so the trip is faster or the payload of useful equipment is bigger. (2) No armor because it won't do any good anyway. (3) Magic goo/patches/spare parts to fix any problems with the ship.
Why? Because its more cost and weight effective. The big rocks will just kill you, period. The little rocks will fly straight through your ship like ice picks. They will trash anything they come in contact with, but they're small so they won't come into contact with much, especially considering the flimsy construction of a space vehicle optimized for low weight. So you replace whatever was damaged with spare parts, patch the small holes in the ship, keep going. Or you die if you can't. Its that simple.
Note: I have not seen the movie. I'm just giving good engineering logic. How many space probes have we lost to asteroids? None? So they shouldn't be considered a huge design issue then should they?
Also note: While this is definitely not as good a movie as 2001, I would wager many of the the same criticisms could be made about 2001 as were made about Mission to Mars.
So far I've gotten all my Karma from telling people they are wrong... :)
Wow! That's the best Verhoeven imitation I've seen all year!
If I have a rotating electric dipole, it obviously radiates electromagnetically. I guess two masses would not emit gravitational dipole waves, but couldn't they lose energy through higher multipoles? Also, could the system put angular momentum into the field this way? Of course this is not important for earth-moon, I am just curious...
My guess on the 'hard line' thing is that there are thousands or millions of these cables, scattered all over the earth, but they only go so deep. The machines seem to stay on or near the surface, the humans always underground.
Maybe the machines stay above because they still see humans as a large threat. Maybe the machines are waiting for the skies to clear, so they have solar power again.
In any case, they 'get close to the surface', troll around looking for hard lines, hack in, the ais notice them, start a trace, find the line, and my the time the robo-squids get there, the humans are gone... usually.
I noticed the part about consevation of energy, too - I wonder how that 'special form of fusion' worked so that the machines had to use humans as a sort of ac-to-dc converter... I like the fact that they didn't give any details. When they give details, they better get them right, because I'll be looking for mistakes. When they don't, it's easier to focus on the story and the people.
At first I didn't get Tank's line about Zion being 'close to the core, where it's still warm.' Maybe he meant deep in the crust, close to the mantle, and humans use geothermal power? It's a misleading line, but a believable one.
Now that I think about it, I didn't notice any real scientific errors. Any apparant ones can be explained away.
Wow, granted that this movie would be good for having high school physics students figure out all physical impossibilities...but it was a FREAKIN' MOVIE!
I left the movie theater thinking that it was a bit overdramatic at times, but other than that it was fine, I quite enjoyed it. It is bound to spark the interest of average non-scientist (nerds) when they realize that there have been theories that earth's life started from a martian bacteria traveling on a comet (alh84001 or something). They will find it interesting to see how artificial gravity is created on the space craft (the space craft's gravity is shut off by stopping it form rotating). It will be facinating for people to wonder, those who have wondered before, what would they do if they were in gary senise's shoes. etc., etc., etc.
THOSE WHO HAVE NOT SEEN IT YET: It may not be one of the all time best, but it's not exactly a waste of 120 or so minutes either.
Ok, I can understand the M&M thing. They sure put that bag all nice and close to the camera didn't they!
But, the stickers being on the side of the lander, is actually quite accurate. Considering the enormous cost just to send a mission to Mars, NASA has conceived of using advertisements to fund the mission.
If you were Penzoil, how much would you pay to have your logo on the side of the Mars lander when the entire world watches it land? I would pay alot and that is what will probably fund most of the space exploration of the 21st century.
Ok i admit Brian De Palma is a good director. I would even put him in maybe the top twenty. But no this movie was not directed well. Yes the first scene was cool, 5 min. without an edit is always a quick signature for a De Palma film but there is a diffrence between a good director and a good movie. It looks to me that Brian was doing his typical filming for about the first 20 min and then he turned the camera over to a soap opera director. I mean i love a good sci-fi movie but this one does not cut it! But hey I guess not everyone can be a Bava or an Argento or even Ridley Scott ....
I haven't had so much fun with a movie in a long time! Between me and my friends who went and saw it, it's been all we talked about. We talk about all the different ways we can stop people from going to the movie, registering nomissiontomars.com, writing warnings on dryerase boards at work etc. Some of my favorite things about the movie were:
Thank god NASA had the forsight to bring Dr. Pepper (In handy zero-G baggies).
The amazing synthesized voice of from the computers. I think the sound guy was just having a field day, inviting his stoned roomate from collage over to the studio to help out.
NOTHING BEATS THIS: There's some sort of test made by aliens that we have to pass to make sure we're human by transmitting a signal containing the code for a complete human dna ('hey, that looks human!') So what do they do??????
THEY SEND A ROBOT!!!!!! WOOO HOOOOO!!!!!!!
Best eight dollars i ever spent!!!!!!!
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH!!!!!!!!!
-WG
"America, I smoke marijuana every chance I get."
Deep Impact didn't suck too bad. At least the science didn't make me gag. And I could understand why characters were doing the things that they were doing.
Contact didn't work for me, but lots of my science-literate friends were not too upset with it.
I saw the movie with my mother who is an author, and we both agreed that the ending of the movie is a complete cop out just like the famous ending: " ...and then they all died. The End."
--Justin
You're kidding right?! I went to see this film with an open mind on sunday afternoon. It was a joke! My girlfriend spend 1/2 of the film laughing. That's how bad it was! The script was bad, the acting was bad, the "physics" in the movie were terrible (made worse by the supposed interaction with NASA).
I can't believe Sinise and Robbins starrred in this film. And as for this being Sinise's role to propel him to stardom, no way! His acting was that bad that you wonder whether he spent the whole time in disbelief at the bad script and plot! Oh and the scenes definitely stuck more to science fiction that science fact.
I never want to see the film again. It was the 2nd worst film Ive ever seen, the worst being Starship Troopers. It was a sheer waste of money.
Go see Pitch Black.
Pitch Black looked like a bad bad Aliens clone... but I was REALLY surprised. It rocked!
2001 (shit.. i mean Mission to Mars) sucked dick. It was just terrible. Absolutely terrible.
the real shiftaling has user number 5134
Karma: -43 and DROPPING!!!
didn't you post this earlier today?!! I checked /., went to the movie, then when I get back this story is posted. Argh, waste of $10.
This might sound like flame-bait, but it my opion and I think it's an important point. Does anyone else get the impression of "Earth is All-American" from this movie? I mean, USA is a nice country and all, but there is a very large portion of the Earth's population that isn't from the United States. Considering this, why is it that everytime earthlings go ANYWHERE, they're erecting American flags all over the place? Why can't they come up with some sort of Earth-flag to put on other planets? I mean, Earth is not just American, nor is space; it would be nice if Hollywood would remember that once in a while.
Yes the M&M DNA was extremely lame.. BUT what bothered me the most was Tim Robbin's death. They destroyed Newtons laws of motion just to kill off the coolest character in the movie. That's messed.
Fight or flight its all the same
Live to die another day
--Ryan
I saw the film on opening night, and it was different than what I expected. It did have some good points, nice space sequences, and it gave a real feel of being in space. I admit that it had many scientific inconsistencies, but so what? The reviewers are probably the same kind of people who annoy everyone when they are watching some star trek episode going, "that can't be, the enterprise's quatam phase array only has capacitence for 4K kilojules.." or some other shit. Lighten up, I say, and watch the movie. People go to movies to escape real life, and thusly you can forgive 'unreal' things. If you want to escape, go see a movie, if you want real life, sit on your chair and keep playing quake where one man kills armies and armies of trained warriors.
Though the review mentioned Barq's root beer, I didn't see it anywhere.. On the other hand, I counted 10 products that were used at least once:
1) Isuzu (concept car in the beginning)
2) Dr. Pepper (kid's play-house, saved the mission)
3) Sunkist (right next to the Dr. Pepper in the kid's play-house, logo partially obscured)
4) Budweiser (at the party)
5) Iomega Clik! disks (in the background of many scenes on the WSS and Mars 2)
6) M&M's (twice as DNA models)
7) SGI (flat panel displays on the WSS and Mars 2)
8) Sony Walkman Earphones (behind Gary Senise during the "this is your life" video)
9) Kawasaki (on the Mars Rover)
10) Pennzoil (on the Mars Rover)
8 is a bit of a stretch as they weren't clearly identified as Sony Walkman Earphones (tm), but if you looked closely they were. I was dragged along a second time this afternoon so I had nothing better to do than spot the product placement.
Did anyone else think that they replaced the actress who played Terri (the wife of the husband and wife team) in the beginning? On earth she had blond/brown hair, but in space all of the sudden she had black hair and seemed younger to me. Maybe they just changed her hair for some weird reason.
It's so sad to see a film that schmoes out, overyanks the wonder-teat .
You start to wonder about the unholy cabal that influences Lucas (the blue elephant in the bar in Revenge, the fuzzEwoks, Jar-whose-name-shall-not-be-spoken.)
Did they get to DePalma? Are they also choosing films for Robin Williams? Go see Titus. American Beauty. Two movies that won't fail you; guaranteed to restore your faith in movies, (although not sci-fi.)
The Matrix follows more along the lines of a science-fantasy heroic epic (ala Star Wars) that revolves around (admittedly dumbed-down) basic philosophical questions. It's cool, but it ain't cyberpunk. I'm sorry, but it takes more than a bunch of guns and black leather to qualify for the genre. To qualify as potential dating/masturbatory material, yes, to qualify as cyberpunk, no.
And really, the only scientific error you could say The Matrix made was that feeding the humans would take more energy than the computers could get out of them.
--
"Caricatures shown not intended to depict Artemia salina"
ok, here's the deal. you take Apollo 13, Contact, and 2001: A Space Odyssey [some would even dare to add a little Stand by Me], cram it all together and stamp a huge disney logo on it to get Mission to Mars.
Contact:
Mathematical patterns hidden in sounds. Contact with friendly aliens. Aliens want us to join them so they can explain crap, etc. etc.
Apollo 13:
Gas leak, explosion, crippled spacecraft, had to abandon it...
2001:
the spacesuits. completely ripped off of 2001. the spinning spacecraft. the monolyth-shape that they entered.
stand by me:
This was the most enjoyable reference to another movie. The guy from Sliders, who played Verno in Stand By Me, was a whiney loser who constantly ate. There would be this intense moment with everyone standing around watching a screen, and he'd be sitting there with a pack of food. They'd leave the room, and he'd be standing there with a whiney look on his face. He constantly said stupid things. HE MADE A DOUBLE HELIX OUT OF M&MS. Every time he did something goofy or stupid or whiney or food-related, I yelled (to myself, so as not to be rude) "Verrrrnoooo", which was more often than you might think! It was hilarious.
plot was depressingly predictable. Obvious foreshadowing, irony, and stupid conversation to give away plot elements: Here's the virtual opening of the movie:
"Too bad your wife, who was a Mars expert, died and now you won't get to go to Mars, ever."
"Yea, it's too bad but I bet nothing will ever happen to you up there anyway and I'll never get to go to Mars."
"There's probably some real intelligent life on Mars"
"No way, you're drunk."
Maybe she's right.
"Because we have landed on the Martian surface and are now millions of miles away from you, there is nothing you can do to stop us from celebrating a birthday."
Oh, so that's where there are. Wow I hope this moment of happiness won't soon be contrasted with a disaster. Or will it?
being a disney movie, there was no nudity, cursing, or guns (except for a grappling-hook type thing). only 2 people were seen to have died, one being violently torn apart by a tornado (PG!?!), the other freezing.
Corporate promotion: It seems the producer sold advertising space in the movie to make up for the forthcoming lack of ticket sales. Among names displayed in prominence, Kawasaki, Penzoil, M&Ms, Isuzu, SGI. If Disney had just gone ahead and used MTM to promote some upcoming film, by having the characters of the future refer to how good it was or something, it wouldn't have surprised me at all.
Howabout the lack of technical advances in the year 2020: We saw one futuristic object, a car from Isuzu no less, while everything else appears to be from 1999, I wonder when they started filming. The scientific jargon typical of NASA has been toned by substantially by the apparant 20 years of advances. Astronauts are visually informed when they have reached "the point of no return." Spacecraft are named Mars-1 Mars-2 and Mars-Supply. Also, it appears that in a disaster situation everyone is supposed to panic and deviate from procedure by trying untested methods of recovery.
The computer that controlled everything on the spaceship seems very easily crashed -- easier than a windows machine. also when the spaceship was losing air, it seemed to be killing the computer too. as the computer died its voice started cracking like an adolescent teenager. it was great.
special effects were pretty good in general with some wacky camera motions that were kinda odd, but the CGI sucked bigtime. the thing i enjoyed the most was the ease of fun-making ala MST3k. that movie was a goldmine for funny commentary; i might go see it again just to make sure i didn't miss any.
aside from all that i mentioned, i'm glad i went. i needed the laugh. go to the matinee but don't spend $8 on it.
-Hi
what do you think about the plausibility that life on Earth originated on Mars though?
This was the only thing that bugged me about the movie...why were they wasting time trying to get power out of humans - the human brain must have a pretty decent amount of proccessing power, so wouldn't the Matrix make a much better supercomputer? (Seems like 7 billion brains all networked using an interface that can carry "too much data for the visual processors to handle" would make one hell of a beowulf cluster anyway). *And* then they could say that the Matrix simulation was a mind-trap to keep people dumb, leaving more 'cycles' for the machines programs. -Spoony I'm too spoony for my shiry...
"The time for action is past! Now is the time for senseless bickering!" -Ashleigh Brilliant
Come on. Brian De-freaking-Palma. In my opinion, one of the best directors out there today. Look at his list of movies.
Even if MTM is a little lacking in plot and dialogue, it more than makes up for it in the visual department.
--
These aren't the droids you're looking for.
The scientific flaws weren't the problem, but they do provide a clear illustration of the problem with the movie. If scientific flaws were all it took to destroy a science fiction film, what about Star Wars? (light speed, "the force", light sabers, and lasers that you can see..) Star Trek? With warp drive, inertial dampeners, transporters, etc? Or maybe Babylon 5's jump gates and all the humanoid, bi-pedal aliens?
The problem with the movie was that it didn't stay self-consistant with how it treated science (partially alluded to in the first part of the review). At least in Star Trek, you know which scientific laws to ignore in what degree to ignore them (inertia works on the small scale, but not on the large, ships always meet each other on a plane, like naval vessels, etc).
I actually enjoyed the film (which is usually the ultimate goal of a movie, isn't it?), but wished it stayed more consistant with the way it treated science. Oh well...
One question...where the hell was the plot?? And what was up with skipping all the stuff that had potential for being interesting??? I mean, its the day before the launch, and then its like more than 6 months later and they are on mars??? Whatever...movie was definately lame...and did ya notice all the Russians were killed off first? And if there were russians, why was it nasa? its not national when they add other countries...muhaha...iNASA! AHH! whats happening to me!
Windows is not the answer. It's the question, NO is the answer.
Let's see here: "Forrest Gump" - Gary Sinise is in command of a small Army unit. "Apollo 13" - Gary Sinise is an astronaut. "Mission to Mars" - Gary Sinise is an astronaut in command of a small rescue unit. Are things getting just a tad too predictable here? (Incidentally, no, I haven't seen the movie yet, but then again, I'm so lazy that I probably wouldn't muster up the energy to go see it even if someone paid me...)
I agree with you as well; I was trying to point out why, by-in-large, Mission to Mars FAILED, and The Matrix succeeded. In terms of acting, writing, and camerawork, Matrix had lower-calibre actors, two boys who had only written one movie previously, and the two boys' cameraman as the cinematographer; Mission had top-notch actors, some of whom have been nominated for major awards, what should have been a sure-fire writer, and I'm sure, one of the highest-paid cinematographers in the industry.
The difference is that Matrix had a mix that WORKED; Mission was like a formula that had been put into a magic Hollywood computer (which I'm SURE exists, or some of these directors should be put to death for creating such pieces of over-hyped DUNG,) and which spit out...ummm...THAT.
Just goes to show that chemistry is EVERYTHING, formula is NOTHING. (Ack! Kinda like Sprite!)
"PENTIUM IS LIKE A RACE TRACK BECAUSE THE CARS CAN GO FASTAR AND THE GUY WHO STARTS THE RACE CAN LEAVE" -JeffK-http://
That hurt. I mean REALLY hurt. And it was a slow pain that snuck up on me after I left the theatre. The plot was blown out the same hole that was sucking air out of the cabin. Oh, if you think that was a spoiler, and STILL want to see this ball of heinous spoo, there's probably something wrong with you, and not in a good way. This movie was offensive to anyone who paid attention in elementary science class. Just say NO.
"PENTIUM IS LIKE A RACE TRACK BECAUSE THE CARS CAN GO FASTAR AND THE GUY WHO STARTS THE RACE CAN LEAVE" -JeffK-http://
This would be a bit different because the movie purports to have a stong basis in current reality (via several establishing scenes in the beginning showing daily life only 20 years in the future as being very similar to current living conditions, the numerous scenes where they are ascribing scientific explanations in terms of what SHOULD be physics, and the many industrial designs that LOOK like something that is a logical extension of what is available today, from Dr. Pepper cans to the front end of the Mars2.) This indicates that the director wanted us to identify closely with the characters in terms of them being 'not so different from us,' and the occurring events as being something that 'could happen in your lifetimes.' The director also wanted you to feel that this movie was made in a solid base of REAL science, alot of which is known to us now. They just forgot to listen to their scientific advisor. Or write the movie. Or direct the actors into making their characters anything resembling real people (or, at the very least, 3-dimensional characters in a movie people are going to pay hard-earned money and waste 2 hours watching.) The Matrix, by contrast, began by establishing itself as NOT being based in THIS reality (at least, as we could see it in the near future??) within the first scene-Trinity first is able to move within milliseconds whereas the cop appears to be frozen in place, and is kicked to the floor, then moments later she runs on the walls, leaps 20 feet to another building, and dives through another building's window, to end up disappearing in a pay phone booth. The scenes with 'Thomas Anderson' establish that there SHOULD be some relation between our reality, and his, yet the scenes still remain in odd green, blue, and yellow tones, and suddenly someone knows what he's thinking impossibly through his computer. Later, the movie of course establishes that it is set ABOUT 200 years in the future, and the artificial reality of the matrix is only SUPPOSED to SEEM like it is occurring currently. To boil it all down, from scene 1 of Mission to Mars, the director is asking us to think that this would be possible in 20 years (IF, of course, the whole polarity of pyhsics and just about any other science reversed polarity,) but the directors of The Matrix are DEMANDING that we suspend our disbelief within the first 2 minutes of the movie, and drives that beyond any doubt by the time anything resembling reality appears.
"PENTIUM IS LIKE A RACE TRACK BECAUSE THE CARS CAN GO FASTAR AND THE GUY WHO STARTS THE RACE CAN LEAVE" -JeffK-http://
Hmm, funny you should mention Armageddon, because it was MUCH better than Mission to a Horrible 2 Hours-and I'd rather have knitting needles piercing my eyes than watch that flag-waving tear-jerking piece of crap again!!! Argh!!!
Ennio Morricone wrote the score to this, and this movie sucked so hard that even his fabulous talent couldn't stop the movie from sucking the life out of the music!!! MAKE IT STOP!!!
This movie traumatised me HORRIBLY-can you tell? ; )
"PENTIUM IS LIKE A RACE TRACK BECAUSE THE CARS CAN GO FASTAR AND THE GUY WHO STARTS THE RACE CAN LEAVE" -JeffK-http://
This movie "borrowed" so many ideas from 2001: A Space Odyssey. The ship looks exactly like Discovery I! Hmm, space crew is lost, rescue crew goes after it. Sounds a lot like 2001 and 2010 huh? What the hell is wrong with movies these days! I have defined current movies into 3 categories: the remakes, the idea-stealers, and the movies based on videogames. Thank god Speilberg picked up Kubrick's AI. Now, maybe some life will be breathed into Hollywood.
Why must people constantly attack Waterworld? I watched it again a couple weeks ago, and though I find nothing impressive about the movie, I also found nothing to warrant such abject hatred of the movie that nearly everyone seems to have. Anyways, I saw M2M (M&M?) yesterday, I must agree that it was quite horrible.
Ok... everybody hear is talking about how bad the movie was. Sure the physics were WAY off. (Some of my friends wouldn't believe me when I tried to explain it to them) However, the main reason I didn't like the movie was it had NO new ideas. All the ideas in the film are present in some film or book in the past. I walked out of the movie thinking nothing new. I was not inspired.
The whole movie kinda jumped around with special effects and such. The only real 'meat' came at the end when the 'alien' (hah) explained how life came to earth. Does that really solve anything. I mean, how did life start on Mars?
If you are looking for something to spark your imagination, your toe nail has a better chance then this movie.
I have not seen this movie, but on Friday, I was reading the reviews over at Yahoo Movies and I was cracking up.
My personal favorite was this review which I have included below:
A choice of masters is not freedom
The "rotating" DNA helix of M&M's made total sense to me, I don't see why anyone else missed it. It wasn't that the HELIX was rotating in space, it was staying still and the rotating LIVING QUARTERS was rotating around it. The camera tracked the living quarters, giving the helix the appearance of rotating. You could really do this (very carefully) if you were on a rotating ring in space. Although I admit this was about the best it got in the movie, don't moan about the "impossible" effect; it's possible.
My other major beef with this movie was, why are the humans controlling everything? On a mission to Mars I really doubt there will be humans sitting at consoles punching buttons with the split-second timing needed to perform course corrections. I would think the computer would be doing all that while the crew sat back and drank whiskey. Let's see, what else? The gravity rotation didn't shut down when they entered Mars orbit, this is bad. Imagine that you are flying a giant gyroscope. You try to turn. It doesn't work.
If the aliens all escaped in their cute little spaceships, as the hologram would lead us to believe, why didn't they just come to earth? They seeded earth with new life, but where did THEY go? And you are telling me that this futuristic spacecraft was incapable of alerting the crew to the ENORMOUS FREAKING HOLES in the fuel line? Or how about the guy's face freezing immediately after removing his helmet? There's nothing in space to conduct the heat away from your body -- you can't describe it as "cold" because there's nothing there to be cold. Heat radiates away as infrared in space, and this doesn't occur fast enough to cause the effect depicted in the movie.
Is it worth it to continue? I think not.
Seriously, folks, M2M IS a big nasty skanky dog of a flick. With maggots. Bow wow. HOWEVER... we all had so much fun laughing AT it that it was almost worth the (otherwise complete waste of) $7. My advice? Wait for video release and pitch in $.50 with each of your friends to rent it on "bad bad movie night." You'll get more than your money's worth of fun-poking both during and after this fine piece of... er... cinema. -squirrel
You are on a merry-go-round going fast; you have to hold on to keep from flying off. The force you apply is DIRECTLY towards the center of rotation, which does nothing to the angular velocity.
Very close, but not quite right. Technically, the force you apply does nothing to the speed (magnitude/length) of the angular velocity vector, but it does apply an acceleration to that vector by continuously modifying its direction. In physics, the term velocity refers to a vector (both direction and magnitude), whereas speed refers to a scalar quantity (magnitude only).
Another point which seems to be hanging up a few folks is the difference between an orbiting object and a rotating one. The M&Ms(tm) in the movie were NOT tied together with string (in pairs); if they had been, they would each provide their counterpart M&M(tm) with the inward, perpendicular (centripetal) force that would allow them to continue spinning neatly and (nearly) endlessly, much like the earth does (tides and such aside). In M2M(tm), however, they were not tied together in any such fashion, so each M&M(tm) would continue to fly in a straight line off on its own (inertia, often mistakenly referred to as the non-existent centrifugal force). Unless, as one poster astutely pointed out, our boy Chump-For-Brains had managed to give each M&M(tm) just the right amount of spin to cause it to travel in a curve (like a curveball). This is possible only in air, of course, and damned near nutty to pull off.
Basically, the string holding each opposing pair of M&Ms(tm) together - or the lack thereof, in the movie - is the difference between orbital motion and angular motion, two very different situations in curvilinear mechanics. Perhaps if the M&Ms(tm) had been made of ridiculously dense not-so-fat-free dark matter...
-squirrel
Anyone else think that the big alien looked alot like one of the aliens from Mars Attacks?
Well I sure did and actually burs out laughing in the theater.
Oh well could be worse I guess. I did like how the "greenhouse" was a tent and you could breathe inside though.
the review on this page was actually more entertaining than the movie itself... it sure sucked... besides being a contact (with jodie foster) rip-off. exactly the same except that one plays on earth and the other on mars. i think it was ok until the husband killed himself in space cause his nerotic wife was trying to rescue him... CHEEEEEESY!!! and then the alien... OH MY GOD! was that thing supposed to be a hologram or real???
Was it just me, or the "Alien" look /REALLY/ close to Black Accherina (sp blah) of Beast Machines (coruse BM sux's but thats another post) and there "Escape Ship's" look /EXECTALY/ like Stasis Pods
Supprised Megatron dident show up...
Far and away the worst movie I've seen since Wing Commander <sigh>
I read that they were allowed to use the NASA logo because NASA got script approval and made some cash selling their consulting services to hollywood. Now, I'm all for NASA collecting money from the private sector. Over the last few years they have realized that their image, exposure, and expertise are marketable and their goverment funding is slipping. I think it's great, and who better to rape money from than hollywood, an industry with far too much cash, and too little concern for any real world issues. This piece of garbage is not the kind of thing NASA needs to improve their image. If they are simply going to collect cash and dish information from intern trek-junkies then this is a step in the wrong direction. Please offer real consulting services and attach your name to a film that won't be forgotten by this fall's "Red Planet" (A script that NASA turned down).
"I'm a slave of Karma, Spin the Wheel and I'm a king reborn."
It wasn't all that bad of a plot. I did notice the advertisements also, but tell me one movie that doesn't have advertisements these days. Some parts weren't that believable though. Even a very tiny hole in the space craft would make it decompress almost instantly. Over all I thought it was good.
PS What do you guys mean about the problems with momentum. When was that?
What are you talking about?!
The Matrix COMPLETELY ripped off Tron's theme!
>:P
--
Soma: because a gramme is better than a damn.
I remember reading about the "face on Mars". A scientist at NASA got fed up with the hoopla, did some searching and found another land formation that looked like Kermit the Frog! He proved his point that it was just a stupid concidence. Sounds like it might made for a better plot line, though! Cue Fozzy Bear and Beaker (Or sorry, they made a Muppets in space movie already).
JonKatz's writing is shorter than that of the other suckers? How can this be?
"YOU DON'T GO TO SCI-FI MOVIES TO CRITICISE THEIR SCIENCE - LARGELY BECAUSE IT'S NONEXISTANT, NO MATTER WHAT TYPE OF SCI-FI IT IS." I think the big beef with this flick is that they attempt to pass this crap off as real science. They use just enough truth and buzzwords to attempt to convince people that this is what the space program will be like in twenty years. When compared to a lot of sci-fi flicks, the good ones either encourage you to suspend belief (Star Wars, The Matrix) or use science as real as possible (2001). Instead, the writers of this waste of film played on the excitement of the Mars probes to quickly shove science-babble down the throats of typically ignorant moviegoers. With regard to the product placement, I wholly expected Wayne from Wayne's World to come out holding a couple of pills and say "Little. Yellow. Different." The centering in on the Dr. Pepper "future-can-thing" at the end of the picnic scene was pretty bad, too. And how's this for a plot hole: WHY DIDN'T THE STUPID ALIENS JUST FLY TO EARTH? WHY DID THEY HAVE TO GO TO A *HUGE* GALAXY MANY LIGHT YEARS AWAY? btw, I thought Tang was the official drink of the space program...what gives?
That was a very bloody funny review! I am going to see the movie just so I can appreciate the review fully!!
....Be careful of dueling with dragons - you are crunchy and taste good with tomato sauce....
Why the hell can't Jon Katz edit at least one of his articles thoroughly? Direct quote:
"isn't all that easily to replicate"
What the hell is this? Just lloking at his review, that jumped right out at me. And all it would have taken to fix it would have been a simple reread before he submitted it. Maybe he should have hit the preview button?
Pr0n K1ng
"Oh well... Off to download pr0n..."
Oh well, back to dowloading pr0n...
Pr0n K1ng
Thing 1: Now there's a movie with a CGI creature that's worse than Lost in Space.
Thing 2: The M&M's are the new variety, not the old 1999/2000 versions! In the future they're made with Dwarf Star Alloy (1tsp = 100 tons). Really really lasts a long time when you eat them. Their mutual gravity allows them to orbit a common center of mass, so you get a rotating helix in a non- or low-gravity environment! (Not available on Earth or planets with crappy CGI creatures)
"First things first, but not necessarily in that order."
- Doctor Who
What exactly does it mean to "rotate circularly"?
/can/ continue forever, as long as the object in question is not acted upon by an outside force.
When rotating, we're talking about rotation about an axis. WWWebster Dictionary - rotation: "1 a (1) : the action or process of rotating on or as if on an axis or center". And rotation
If by "circular rotation" you mean orbital motion, as long as it is not acted upon by an outside force can't such an object also continue indefinitely? Keeping in mind the object in orbit does experience the force of gravity, which keeps it in orbit. But as long as its tangential (linear) velocity remains above/at a given level, shouldn't it remain in orbit?
I guess one could say the Earth is rotating circularly. Since it is in rotation about its axis, and in orbit around the Sun. Although such orbits aren't circles, they're elipses.
The problem is that this movie tried to seem scientific.
I can stand a movie which is full impossiblities if that is what is what is intended (Star Wars, The Mummy, The Matrix, etc.) I could care less if they jump from zero to beyond light with no much more than minor bouncing.
However, when a movie tries to act scientific, the flaws are so obvious and horrific that it drives many people nuts. Stuff like manuvering in space with jets that are above your centre of gravity, memorizing human DNA, or living on Mars under a tent is just unforgivable.
Ok, thats a lie. It was a piece of cinematic trash, but thats what makes it so good. Think about it : Mission to Mars, Pitch Black, Wing Commander, Starship Troopers, to a lesser degree the Species movies and the latest Alien movie... A new huge batch of terrible sci-fi movies, all hyped up to be the best thing ever to grace the silver screen. What's next? Shock-o-vision? 3D? Disclaimers dismissing the producers from responsibility if you happen die of shock in the seats? It's great, I tell you! I enjoy all these movies purely for their laughability factor. Hopefully in 30 years they'll have developed some weird sub culture akin to 50s creature features.
I was being half sarcastic. Also I dont mind paying 7 bucks to see a movie. You can get something out of every movie, even if its a good laugh. I'd feel much lamer coming onto a messageboard and saying I bootlegged it or something (not that you did or anything) ... the antithesis of l33t. actually l33t is the antithesis of l33t at this point but oh well. stupid irc/hax0r talk is just a big joke at this point anyway. i owns j00, b1z@ch.
sorry about the "marz" there last post it was a typo.
Bring on the flames...
... heh ... $7.50!
;-)
I saw it this weekend with my younger brother. Maybe I liked it because it was the first movie I have watched in a theatre in about 2 years. Maybe it's because the special effects make cool eye candy. Maybe it's because I think NASA kicks a*s.
I don't know what it was: But I know I liked it. When I clicked onto slashdot today, and read all the "this movie has a plot centered around inertia and it defies Newton's laws!!!" and "a space-pack that has thrusters on the shoulders?!" I wasn't suprised...
It's a movie.
I get enough of the intellectual kind of stuff at work. Didn't anyone ever read the first fundamental of theatrical entertainment: Suspension of disbelief. I can understand why most of you have difficulty in this, but I beg you: Step out of the box.
Go to a movie, suspend disbelief, Newtonian physics, laws of inertia and conservation, and all the other things we have learned on our short period on this planet and enjoy yourself for 2 hours!
After all, it only cost you
So bring on the flames - I liked the movie. Sure I recognized the scientific flaws and the liberties taken by the producer / director. Do you believe NASA pilots would honestly go out and mess around with a random face on a planet without going through years of tests?! Come on... How long did it take us to get to the moon? A decade? It wasn't because some hot shot said (while in orbit) "I ain't leavin 'til I gets me a piece of 'dat dere moon." Realisticly no NASA pilot would ever contaminate or corrupt a discovery as profound as what was proposed in the movie...
But when watching the movie I thought they might.
So please, sit back - grab a bag of popcorn that might have been popped at suboptimal temperature and salted with unpuritized NaCL and sip that 140 calorie Syrup and Caffeine mix. Light up the night for once and enjoy the emotion of the event, if only for 2 hours.
After all, DNS zones, the genome project, SETI, OR Mapping tools, initrd, and the 2.2.15 kernel can wait for just 2 hours.
Goodnight.
Yo, tell me what time it is now,
It's our time
Do it for da shorties
Totally agree (and I also have a physics degree back in the dim mists of time). The myriad science laughers were as nothing compared with the execrable character "development", the hackneyed dialogue, the mind-numbing music, the bland yuppified characters (who are still dancing to Van Halen in the year 2020), the laughable final scene, etc., etc. I will defend Pitch Black, however. It was a much more subtle film, much better shot and edited, with much more impressive and original visuals, and non-stereotyped characters. I think a lot of people had problems because the main characters were neither all good nor all evil, but a combination of both --- but I love stories with ambiguity and dramatic tension.
This is the funniest movie I've seen in a while, probably since South Park. Though I found DePalma's film technique and grasp of science offending, that just made it funnier. I recommend this movie to everyone, but also I recommend that no one pay full price to support the further rape of the art of film making.
...and since they're geeks, they gravitate to the scientific errors. But it was a deeply flawed movie, no matter what you thought the reason was. A few scenes with good special effects don't make it a good movie. Even getting every bit of science right wouldn't have made it a good movie. It was bad for ARTISTIC reasons. Bad acting, bad script, bad dialogue, bad score. Gee, can good sfx make up for that crap?
I reallllly hated this movie. I had hopes that it might be fun/crappy in an Armageddon kind of way, but it didn't even reach that level. And one of the worst parts was the score! Did anyone else notice how bad it was?
For instance, during the suspenseful where an astronaut almost died from oxygen deprivation because he preferred floating around to actually putting on his helmet. The score consisted of a stupid organ player pounding his hands down on the keyboard. "Thunk" (two second pause) "thunk". Repeat for five minutes. I wanted to scream. Really...
And how about the awful camera pans? The director's favorite shot seemed to be to put the camera 2 feet away from a bulkhead and move it slowly over random dials and crap until it finally rested on something interesting. All this time the insipid dialog was the only thing of interest. Or at least of interest to SOMEBODY.
Geez. What a waste of time. Hope the other one is better.
Is there ANY chance we would go to Mars and not have a couple of imaging satellites in orbit around it? In fact, don't we actually have one circling the damn planet right now? Is there any conceivable reason we would need to have a SATURN probe that just happened to be flying by Mars at the moment to take pictures of the surface? And wouldn't we maybe notice that the face on Mars had turned into a real stone sculpted face? I mean isn't that why we use satellites in the first place? Arrrghhhh!
But the movie wasn't BAD! The Matrix succeeded despite it's rip-off theme and it's logical problems. Mission to Mars fails, in part because of those things, but also because, as a whole, it does not work. At all. It is hideous. To even mention the Matrix in the same breath makes me think that indeed, you missed something major. Like the lack of acting, or dialogue, or good camerawork. There is more to a movie than special FX. Or at least there should be.
I saw it, and I didn't think it was as awful as the critics say. Sure the science was crap, but I still thought it was fun, and I hope that this and "Red Planet"(w/ Val Kilmer coming out summer IIRC) and the Mars 3D IMAX and miniseries by Cameron can ignite public interest in exploration of Mars.
Close your eyes for a minute, and imagine what it would be like if the public suddenly gained interest in a manned mission to Mars. Think if Bush or Gore, as the next President, made a speech ala JFK. Think if in 2009, NASA launched a ship for Mars.
A crappy movie or two would be a small price to pay for such an accomplishment.
You forgot:
The planet just "happens" to have a breathable atmosphere. Yeah, it's a bit low on O2, but you don't see that bothering them too much after the first few minutes. Then again, if they'd been in spacesuits we wouldn't have been able to see Riddick's eyes as well, so they might have had to find another effect to show us over and over again ad nauseum.
It tries to be realistic, but whenever the science gets in the way of Hollywood, Hollywood wins.
They're hoping to pander to an audience whose willingness to swallow pseudo/non-science has been nurtured by several years of X-Files.
Scully's tits...arousal...insert Alien/Cattle-mutilator/Conspiracy meme...tits...ahhh!...Scully's emits seamingly reasonable 'scientific' assumptions to explain the strange event...tits...Mulder mocks her for 'ignoring' the 'obvious' 'Truth' that is 'out there'...tits...Mulder's right again...look at that ass...when will Scully learn to stop thinking and accept that whatever the California New Age Police say is true is true?...nice crotch shot, even with clothes on...ooh! Leather!
Take two m$m's 'n call me in the morning.
**>>BELCH
The constant bombardment of media, especially big budget sci-fi movies, as made a lot of people very cynical. I wouldn't rate it as one of the greatest movies of all time but I didn't feel ripped off. It was either go see a movie or sit in traffic for three hours listening to my kid try to convince me that he is slowly dying by starvation and boredom.
$8.50 sounds like too much. I see from your bio that you are from Annandale, Virginia. I live down in Newport News. The most expensive movie I have gone to here was $7.50. I can assume from your e-mail address that you are attending Virginia Tech (need to update your Bio page and say hello to my cousin Kim Orrell who is a Biology Grad student). Maybe when you are done with college you may want to consider moving into the Hampton Roads area.
Where I live now I'm 30 min from Virginia Beach (babes), 30 Min from Bush Gardens (vicarious thrills sitting outside the log ride on a cold day waiting for chicks who weren't expecting to get wet walk by), 3 hours from DC and four hours of so to Nags Head. The cost of living is excellent, lots of jobs especially slack government positions. There are pleanty of hi-tech jobs in the area including good starter positions at the company I work for Newport News Shipbuilding. And last, but not least the AMC Hampton 24 Townecenter Cineplex. 24 screens with stadium seating, awesome sound and big screens (tihs place has ruined me to watching movies anywhere else).
"God fights on the side with the best artillery." - Napoleon, Marshal of France - speaking truth to power
I wound up going to the movie with my four year old son because of a traffic jam. I chose the movie because of the PG rating. You surely can slam on this movie for technical reasons but it has to be the first Sci-Fi in a long time that doesn't revolve around gratuitous violence or focus on the negative aspects of human nature.
There were only two scenes where I had to cover his eyes. The scene in the beginning where one guy gets a rock in the face and another gets ripped apart and the freeze dried guy near the middle.
If aliens watched this move they would garner that humans are decent, courageous people who care about each other and strive for greatness. The whole movie is a message of hope and a reflection of our own wishes to find we are not alone in the universe. The cinematography it reminded me a little of " Robinson Crusoe on Mars".
But it didn't have a cryptic meaning or a French tragic ending or a "to be continued" so the critics don't feel satisfied. The techie nitpickers didn't get to see all of the true boredom of day to day life on a spaceship or on Mars so they aren't happy. Meanwhile I walked away from two hours of enjoyment with my son that hopefully showed him a little of the wonderment I feel about space travel and exploration. I guess with $40 in ticket sales the first weekend a few others maybe agreed.
"God fights on the side with the best artillery." - Napoleon, Marshal of France - speaking truth to power
I saw the film yesterday with a few other folks in a rather crowded theater. None of us came to see the film with any preconceived notions and most of us don't see enough television to really catch many of the advertisements for it.
What I can say is that all of us were rather impressed that the film was really quite decent. The acting was well above par most of the current Hollywood fair (most of us are actors, so we should have some idea what constitutes good and bad acting). The visual effects, while obviously computer enhanced, didn't look all that bad either. Thankfully, the scenes stuck more to science fact than science fiction. Some of the fact was in fact exaggerated, yes, but in all it seemed fairly correct.
As a side note, it was pleasant to see Gary Sinise in a leading role like this. Many of his roles are inexcusably forgettable. This one, however, will hopefully propel him towards the stardom that he just deserves.
Aside from some of the cliches (the rocket pendant, the footprint in the driveway, etc.), I found the movie to be a great way to blow a few bucks on a Sunday.
As a side note, I saw the movie in a DLP (Digital Light Processing) theater. Quite and experience! The quality was excellent and many times some of the original film artifacts could be seen. Yes, there was a little pixelation, but generally the visuals and sound were absolutely superb.
To all those panning it for lack of anything better to do, see it again. See it with an open mind and a child-like curiosity. Notice a lot of the details in the background and I believe you'll be pleasantly surprised.
---
Well, The Matrix had the advantage of being the first *good* cyberpunk movie.
---
Naw. [i]Bladerunner[/i] beats The Matrix hands down when it comes to capturing Gibsonian cyberpunk. I liked The Matrix, but it's definately not in the same realm.
- Jeff A. Campbell
- VelociNews (http://www.velocinews.com)
- Jeff
Lots of US Navy (and probably other navies as well) ships have gasoline fuel lines on the outside of the hull on the theory that it is simply too dangerous to have inside. In a battle, you probably don't need that fuel immediately, and it's easier to take care of outside.
:-)
So this must have really been a USN ission, and NASA was just along for the cover story
--
Infuriate left and right
Hehehe, Remember Austin Powers II? There was the intentional humorously subtle product placement throught the entire movie. ("Would you like a Hot Pocket? An Eggo?") That was funny, and added to the movie. Also, remember Twister? Great movie, but one big Dodge commercial. ("That's a Nice Truck!")
In the case of a regular movie with lots of product placement, it's always funny to see how they work it in. I remember back when E.T. first came out, the people who made the film originally wanted to use Skittles. They brought it to the Skittles people, and they said "No. This movie is going to be a flop." and pulled out. So they went to Reese's, who happily said that ET was permitted to munch on Reese's Pieces. Then the film was a huge success, and everyone wanted Reese's Pieces.
-- Give him Head? Be a Beacon?
-- Give him Head? Be a Beacon? :P)
(If you can't figure out how to E-Mail me, Don't.
One area I have to disagree with you on..."The meteors manage to nick an exposed fuel line, an idea which completely contravenes all conventional engineering wisdom as well as any design that Nasa has set forth to date." Evidently you havent noticed that the International Space Station will have just about all of its major fuel and electrical routings on the outside. There are two reasons for this safety and abililty to make repairs that will continue to function...even if sections of the space stations are having problems.
One only has to look at pictures from Russia's MIR space station with the spagetti of electrical and fuel conduits zip-tied to the walls and running through hatchways, thereby preventing sealing those sections of quickly in an emergency. When MIR was hit by that cargo ship several years ago it took several minutes to disconnect all the equipment so they could close the hatch. And as a result, they lost use of the electricity produced by one of the solar arrays.
NASA has learned from MIR...and routing cables and pipes on the out side is one of them.
SELECT * FROM User WHERE Clue > 0
0 rows returned
Ok, the MARS candy company (quite wealthy), in the millennium year 2000 (that's MM in Roman numerals) heavily sponsers Mission to Mars. Any other hidden self-promotional meanings in there?
try { do() || do_not(); } catch (JediException err) { yoda(err); }
Folks,
:-P
I think the general consensus is that MISSION TO MARS is a horrible movie.
Problem is, one Richard C. Hoagland (of MONUMENT OF MARS infamy) put a spin on the movie that Director Brian de Palma is trying to prove that NASA covered up a lot of information about Mars they don't want us to know (and other gobbleybook bulls***). Methinks that radio talk show host Art Bell should permanently disassociate himself from Hoagland and save us the need to take painkillers and antiacids when trying to buy Hoagland's "washing machine spin cycle" spin on this whole subject.
Raymond in Mountain View, CA
I think the point they were striving for, was that even the Martians had been seeded. That the whole sequence of seeding other planets when your planet dies is repeated over and over, helping this DNA structure spread throughout the universe.
BUT, it could just be the M&M's and DrPepper talking. Mmmm, DrPepper.
Bad Mojo
Bad Mojo
"If you can't win by reason, go for volume." -- Calvin
I caught the end of Contact last night. I really felt this movie had so much going for it, and then in the end, it fell apart. Jodie Foster's character had so much physical evidence, I found it hard to beleive that she just wilted in fron of James Woods. I understand the point they were trying to make about science and religion, but they overlooked something I felt was obvious. Science is based on physical evidence. Religion doesn't need physical evidence.
Not only did she (unknowingly) have 16 hours of recorded static, everyone else working on the project (I guess) just backed out and didn't want to help present a strong argument in her favor. I guess they must have all been payed government contractors or something.
Bad Mojo
Bad Mojo
"If you can't win by reason, go for volume." -- Calvin
Erm... I go to movies to be entertained for a couple of hours too.
HOWEVER I do not have any sort of patience for stories that out and out insult my intelligence, which is what MTM appears to do. (I have no desire to see it, esp. after reading the reviews here and at Salon)
Some of my favourite movies ever aren't necessarily "realistic" vis a vis real life, but if there's self-consistency, that's WAY more important.
Apollo 13 set out to be a docu-drama and kept to real-life physics, because to do otherwise wouldn't have made sense. MTM wants to be scientific in the same vein, but fails miserably. And there's the difference.
Pope
It doesn't mean much now, it's built for the future.
_________________
rooooar
This looks like one of those movies where you watch it and say to yourself "How could they actually release this?" Another example was a movie I saw on tv several months ago, the title of which I don't remember. The original robocop was in it, and there was some kind of hostage situation and he was hiding in a secret room and the bad guys had some kind of a heat-sensitive map of the building. So the good guys know that the bad guys can see them and what do they do? Robocop goes to the sink with two towels, wets them, brings them back to the computer guy, puts one on his head and the other on the computer guy's head. Computer guy asks, "what are you doing?" and Robocop replies, "Disappearing!" Then we cut to the bad guys' IR map and we see the two guys' heat signatures fade out. Then the bad guys basically go "huh!"
The movie wasn't a comedy, but I laughed quite hard at it. Ah, IMDb reports that Robocop man was Peter Weller, but I can't find the name of the movie. There was a woman in the movie also, I want to say Meg Ryan, but it wasn't Meg Ryan. She was his love interest (and special agent) and he was a cop or soldier or something. If anybody knows the name of this movie, please let reply let me know, now it's bothering me.
_________________
rooooar
sitting there, thinking "rah rah our side" or "rah rah oooooh a sex scene" as you read Heinlein
Did you read Heinlein while you were asleep or something? Did you only read his Boy's Life stories or something?
Regardless of whether you like him or not, Heinlein was never shallow, even in his light hearted novels. Often he had major problems with fully dimensional characters, but he usuall made up for that with dozen or so mind-blowing thoughts.
A Government Is a Body of People, Usually Notably Ungoverned
Even movies that don't focus on sci/tech screw up things that they could have easily got right. I just saw a movie recently (can't remember the name, grrr) about a bunch of scam-artist stockbrokers who pressure people into buying stock in fake companies. I thought it was a great movie, good acting, interesting plot, no Hollywood ending, the guy didn't get the girl.
But there was one glaring, stupid thing in the movie. The main character is going to be an informant for the FBI, and the G-man instructs him:
"We need you to copy your drive C onto a floppy".
So many people in the theater laughed out loud I missed the next line of dialog.
Why, why, why, don't script writers and directors get someone to read through the script and fix stupid things like that? It would have been so easy: "We need you to copy (some file) onto floppy" would have done it.
You know what would be really cool? During the Oscars, the host or hostess could take them apart. Mock them, rip them to bits in front of millions of people. Maybe next time they would make the effort to get it right.
Slashdot Interview suggestion: A director or screenwriter willing to face the heat!
Torrey Hoffman (Azog)
Torrey Hoffman (Azog)
Torrey Hoffman (Azog)
"HTML needs a rant tag" - Alan Cox
I saw Mission to Mars last night. I liked the little remote-controlled rover. He was the best part of the movie. We named him 'Skip', and rather enjoyed MST3K'ing some lines for him. Try it, it's fun. :)
But... I'd take this movie any day over Supernova. Supernova has to be the *worst* Sci-Fi movie I've ever seen... Really... And I've seen a lot of really bad Sci-Fi movies.
Supernova(a movie that was supposed to be released in 1998) was originally directed by Francis Ford Coppola. (yes, THAT Francis Coppola). He quit half way through, and they went through a slew of other directors and crew. This is the only movie in recent memory that had *NO* opening credits, and very short closing credits... Nobody wanted to be associated with this.
It had plot holes up the wazoo. First, they were a kind of space ambulance. They'd receive a distress call, and go rescue people. To do this in a speedy way, they had to use some kind of warp drive. However, to use their warp engines, they all had to get naked and get inside these protective bubbles. They had 6 crew members, and 6 bubbles. So, if they actually did rescue someone, they had no hope of bringing them back.
Also, space ambulances apparently have a whale problem, since they had CO2 powered harpoons all over the ship, that they used several times.
Oh yes, and zero-gravity sex. Many many unnecessary times. (and it's PG13, so it's kinda pointless boring shots)
They actually had a guy wrapped in a sheet or something, and said he was a robot. He limped. I still don't get it.
They found some 9th-dimensional matter, too. Apparently, you can make a big-ass bomb out of it. *puke*
How does the movie end? Well, a supernova started, and the impact is going to reach earth in 51 years. What happens to earth? What happens to the two people who survived?(who had to both share a protective bubble-thing on the way back, and had their "DNA mixed") No idea. I'm not waiting for the sequel.
Perhaps one day I'll go make a movie..
--
SCO employee? Check out the bounty
When I saw the trailer for this at Toy Story 2, I had to be PHYSICALLY RESTRAINED. My friend actually had to hold me down in my seat, as I was about to get up and do something. I don't know what I would have done, but it would have been bad. Very Bad. May the Ghost of Stanley Kubrick haunt those responsible for this movie with a lust for carnage only rivaled by Alex's lust for UltraViolence.
A wealthy eccentric who marches to the beat of a different drum. But you may call me "Noodle Noggin."
Quando Omni Flunkus Moritati
I saw it a couple of weeks ago. (Gotta love being in LA) And, damn. It was pretty weak. I'll just repeat what everybody is saying: don't go see it.
The one high point was meeting Jerry O' Connell after the show. We were standing there making fun of it, and he rushes over with "what'd ya think, guys?" I just reached out and pumped his hand-my friend couldn't think up anything polite to say so he just stuttered a bit.
-brett (hopefully I can do better than this someday)
It's as if the people who made it wanted to make their little mint, with no intent to tell a story, portray a theme, express a thought. Nope, it would appear to be all about money. And the person who made this movie, although perhaps upset at its apparent failure as a motion picture, will still rake in the money for it. Until the reviews come out.
This sort of thing reflects on the problems that accompany having a *few* people with the money to make movies who make movies to make money, versus the ideal situation where people with a story to tell get to tell a story, like it was with books. (Not to say that books are always good! Ha!) The problem is in the barrier to entry. Many people have great ideas about movies, like a traffic cop's "Star Trek", which was an idea that inspired, well, a culture.
Mission to Mars won't be inspiring many cultures. It has no theme, a thin plot, dull witted characters, insulting science fiction, among various other complaints that you don't need to be reading. This movie, like so many others, irks me with its existence in spite of the lack of competence existing in making it.
Did anyone else notice how Jupiter lacked moons? ... of course some of you did ...
If you would like to know a *real* or at least compentent (and in my humble opinion excellent) rendition of a possible mission to mars, read Kim Stanley Robinson's Red Mars, Green Mars, and Blue Mars Trilogy.
..P.O.S.
I saw it yesterday up in Wyoming (where it's cold) with some friends of mine who were playing there that night. This movie was so bad, we had a special event and admonished everyone in the bar that night to avoid "Mission to Mars" and instead, go on a much more productive "Mission to Bars." Needless to say, our mission was a success.
Like the NYU screening (see Salon article), we couldn't help but laugh when the laws of physics were suspended for a rescue attempt that would have been more at home during a Mr. Show with Bob and David episode. "Oh, look, her determination will pay off! oup, nope, couple feet short, time for the touching suicide of a main character 100 yards in front of the love of his life.
The only way to see the movie is to sit in the front row and loudly and verbally belittle it to the delight of your fellow move-ie go-ers.
--
ba-bu-ba-ba-baaa, da-da-dum. Re-boot the ser-ver.
ba-bu-ba-ba-baaa, da-da-dum. Re-boot the ser-ver.
+&x
The solution is to route the wires externally, then to put covers over the wiring for protection. This may not be crucial to the ISS, since it may well have a lifeboat. However, if you're making a ship for a mission that places you six months away from anything else, these lines become a crucial component and must be protected!
Exposed fuel lines on a manned mars mission should get the engineers' licenses revoked, and possibly jail time. But even if the ISS doesn't have maze covers, anyone who engineers external lines without maze covers on a
--The basis of all love is respect
- shots of the ships were well done, but that's just expected...and no better than you could see on Star Trek: Voyager every week on TV.
- The sandstorm/tornado-type thing was OK, but The Mummy did a better job of that last year
- Shots of Mars were remarkably dull. When the Tim Robbins character says "hello, beautiful" as they're approaching Mars, I was expecting a correspondingly beautiful shot of the planet. Instead, we get a faded red sphere with little texture and detail.
- I don't know if that alien was supposed to look computer generated, or whether that was actually how the species supposedly looked like, but it was embarassingly amateurish and fake.
- The explosion of the face thing and the escape of the alien craft at the end, the only fireworks in the entire movie, were extremely poorly done. Granted, it's hard to make fire look real with CGI, but with $100 million, they could've done a hell of a lot better than this. Look at the Deep Space Nine episode The Sacrifice of Angels. That is how you do CGI. And that's a TV show, something I can watch for free.
It speaks volumes about how bad a movie is when even the effects suck. It's not just De Palma, or the actors, or the scriptwriters who should be embarrased about this. It's all of Disney. There's just a staggering amount of incompetence showing on every level of this horrible movie...the first giant turkey of the millenium.The biggest flaw in the film is not the technical detail or all that stuff. It is the basic premise of the movie. Nobody has mentioned this, so I have to say it. /Martian/ life came from.
MTM attempts to present an answer to the origin of life on Earth. The answer it presents, in such high and mighty terms "500 mil years ago, an explosion of life....and nobody knew why. And now we do" (dramatic music.)
OK, that is just bad. Not just scientifically, but philosophically. This doesn't answer any questions about the origins of life! It just confounds them! Now we have to find out where
This arrogant attempt at philosophy is what angered me most about the movie.
In one scene, the female astronaut flies out into space to rescue her husband. As we all [should] know, acceleration is provided by the jetpack fuel. But not in this movie... in this movie if you want to move 100 yards in space, you need 100 units of fuel. If you want move 50 yards in space you need 50 units of fuel. Thus, she doesn't have enough fuel to get there and back. When she stops firing her thrusters she stops getting closer to her husband. In real life, you can accelerate and coast to your destination without using fuel. Bah. Did they play out the scene with her reaction to his death long enough? I'm sure it was a real tear jerker scene to people who weren't thrown off by the bad physics. Oh wait, it still was a lame scene? Ok. Armageddon may have had 10 times worse physics than this movie, but at least they were excited to be in space unlike these dead weights. (insert droning voice here) "We're losing pressure, let's work the problem people."
before we get into that:
that is one looong and we-are-trying-very-hard-to-be-funny-and-sarcastic review.
yeah: the science was not rock solid
but: It's is movie! I expect it to have its stupid moments, and it is interesting to think that life originated on a different planet. I think it is an interesting concept; and there were people who said 2001 was boring;the only people I saw dissappointed at this movie were those who came in to see armageddon-style blow everything in sight action. Its a movie, it has artistic license; do not expect to apply today's science to a science fiction movie and come out a winner.
yeah: there was a ton of product placement
but: lets face it; this does look like an untapped advertising source. Take the Bond movies, look at ANY sporting event and see brand names splashed on every piece of plastic, cloth, canvas, metal, wood etc. Its a form of advertising just like the banner add at the top of this page. Would you prefer TV with no commercials and product placements instead? Think about it.
The movie has a cool concept. It is not the best movie I've seen, but it definitely does not deserve such scathing reviews! Sounds like phbs criticizing Matrix because it was about hackers.
Yeah, the names were on them, but the fact that some people never noticed makes it clear that there wasn't any of the blatant product-placement that the other poster(s) are talking about. It's easy to spot movies with intentional product placement, the product is either the focus of a shot, or are placed prominantly, with the logo clearly visible to the camera, in the foreground of a fairly still shot, such as two people having a conversation where one grabs a soda can, opens it while holding it low enough to show the Pepsi logo (which faces the camera straight-on), drinks it, and sets in on the table, dead in the center of the shot.
Intolerant people should be shot.
You're crossing the border into the Fantasy genre when you break the rules of known science. Science Fiction has always been an attempt to predict future technology in the present reference frame and optionaly social norms.
The only time you're really allowed to break a currently known physical law is when its central to the plot. I think that was one reason that Star Trek had such a stronger impact in its original version. The created tech had more room to be plausable. Now that science has caught up so much, the Trek franchise is caught in the dilema of abandoning its previous 'tech' or start breaking rules that current science is beginning to establish.
Again, transgressions against science in science fiction are ONLY okay if its central to the theme. This just really irks me as a scientist myself because people don't seem to realize that unlike other laws the laws of physics can't be broken.
The best science fiction manages to blend plausable science and its influence on social structures. Of course I may be impartial on this since Asimov is my favorite SF author and that was one of his central themes.
wow, i musta missed something major. i saw it, i enjoyed it. of course i saw some things that were technically impossible. sure, the theme was a direct rip-off of many other pictures and books. I just took it as a rip-off picture and accepted it for what it was.
What seems wierd to me is i dont remember anyone slamming 'The Matrix' this hard. Its theme was just as ripped off as this one, and alot of its tech just as bad.
so why is one rip-off better than the others?
Actually, you're wrong about Heinlein. You state that "he had practical experience as a Naval Officer in World War II". He didn't. He was a Navy officer, but he was discharged prior to WWII (1937 I think) due to an injury (his back?). His stint in the military was decidedly short and unglamorous and, it's reasonable to assume, less than what he wanted (cf. the scathing view of the Navy in Starship Troopers).
Further, I don't know that you can call S.T. "a polemic against Communism/Fascism" since RH is clearly using the book to espouse a system of "rule by the military" -- i.e. fascism. Benevolent fascism, sure, but the difference between Heinlein's system and Hitler's is ideology, not method. Take a look at Glory Road or Cat Who Walks Through Walls or, better yet, Between Planets.
Sure DePalma/Hollywood twists stories to better grind their own political axes, but so do writers. Heinlein in particular is a horrible example. How many of his stories at at least -- at minimum -- 25% filled with his characters in some sort of Socratic dialog about politics. And who always gets to be Socrates? Heinlein.
The fiction-as-pulpit racket is nothing new -- it's just that the sermons have changed.
: think it depends on the movie. Complaining about
: scientific innacuracy in Star Trek:
: Insurrection, or (god forbid) The Phantom
: Menace, would be extremely geeky. (In the
: negative sense.) But MtM was heavily promoted
: for its realism.
Don't forget that is HAS been done right a number of times over the years.
Remember Apollo 13? The director actually went through the trouble of using NASA's "Vomit Comet" aircraft in order to determine how things REALLY behave in microgravity. As I recall, didn't they actulally FILM a significant protion of Apollo 13 IN the "Vomit Comet"???
Deep Impact, while more flawed than Apollo 13, did a pretty good job of realisticlly showing a near-future space expidition. (aside from the "synchronise the nukes" TOTALLY destroying the last comet (all that mass and energy STILL has to go SOMEWHERE (ie. into Earth's atmosphere, just not all on one place))).
2001 did an EXCELLENT job of a realistic near-future space expidition. Aside from overly optimistic predictions of our progress by the year 2001, that is. Oh, and the sentient computer turning on its masters as well. (Both of these flaws can be forgiven tho I think, as they were very common themes in 1960's SciFi.)
Even a low-budget affair like HBO's miniseries "From the Earth to the Moon" did a vastly superior job than this "Mission to Mars" drek.
The point?
It CAN be done right. "Mission to Mars" just CHOOSE not to.
john
Imagine all the people...
: "Deep Impact"?
: I should just rest my case there, but:
If you do a careful comparison, I bet you'll find more fradulent science in M2M than in all the examples I listed (including Deep Impact) COMBINED!!! Hell, throw in Armegaddon, and I bet M2M would STILL be trying to pass off more fradulent science as the real thing!
:: [sic] FILM a significant protion [sic]
Gee, the best you can bitch about are typos and rushed grammar? Gee, so sorry that I don't compose my posts in a word processor with spell and grammar check and meticulously proofread every detatil before I post. Gosh darn, call the f-ing language police. Are you french?
Obviously you know nothing about angular momentum if you think that Mission to Mars' microgravity scenes were filmed in an actual microgravity environment. Such cluelessness is worthy of nothing but contempt. Try picking up a physics text book sometime.... or even just read the rest of the reviews, they may just use small enough words for you to comprehend.
: This film can be appreciated for its accuracy.
: Some people just CHOSE not to
Uh yeah, if your idea of accuracy doesn't include Sir Issac Newton, sure.
Since you obviously didn't bother to read the earlier posts in this thread, I'll repeat. The problem is NOT that it was inaccurate. The entireity of the Star Wars/Trek sagas have laughable science.
The point is that M2M CLAIMS to be accurste (you DID read the cited quote from DePalma, yes? Well, obviously not, otherwise you'd have a clue), while passing off bas pseudoscience rubbish as the real thing.
john
Imagine all the people...
When seeing the previews for this movie (they being very vague, much like previews from the Matrix), I wanted to see this movie. I then discovered that the only cinema in my small hometown would be getting it on its opening weekend. (This happens rarely.)
Furthermore, I was invited to see Mission to Mars by a friend, who is also an employee of said theatre, the night before it opened! What luck! I would be able to see the movie before the majority population even had a chance! It was a mistake I will forever regret.
This movie was BAAAAD. (Not the good kind of bad that some of my friends use, but the "I would rather pluck both my eyes and my testicles out of their respective cavities with a dull, rusty spoon and then switch there locations than watch this movie again" kind of bad.)
The plot (What Plot?!) was weak at best. And the musical score! Who wrote it? I want him fired, maybe even blacklisted from his profession. Furthermore, there is the suspension of common sense and everything you ever learned in school. I can't count the times (and I consider myself a good counter, being able to go to at least 127 or so) that I wondered what in the Ninth Level of the Inferno was going on, since it certainly wasn't possible. This movie was so bad (same definition as the above "bad") that even though I didn't have to pay a thing to see this movie, aside from a little gas money, I still feel cheated. I feel I should be somehow compensated. Maybe some Ben and Jerry's ice cream would help.
Please, take my warning: unless you are a masochist ( and if you are, that is your business), DON'T see this movie. Do something more productive, like eating, sleeping, or masturbating.
This sounds like a troll to me. Paul Verhoeven was in the Netherlands during the Nazi occupation. He and his family were up against walls.
The movie is a parody of the ridiculous book. Yes, I read it. No, I don't like Heinlein. He was a blowhard.
Verhoeven has much more talent than Heinlein ever did -- but it's harder to see that talent, because you have to actually think when you watch his movies, rather than sitting there, thinking "rah rah our side" or "rah rah oooooh a sex scene" as you read Heinlein.
Are you SURE you read it? There's no sex scene in the book you jackass. Heinlen was an excellent writer, that doesn't require that you like him, but at least acknowledge his talent.
Kintanon
Check out JoshJitsu.info for Brazilian Ji
It must be pretty bad when buying (for the sake of argument let's call it) food from MickeyD's is better than this movie.
www.eFax.com are spammers
I hope we can all learn something from this piece of trash movie: paid movie critics are insane! Just look at this (also given above). There are actually some positive comments in there!! "An instant popcorn classic." "Really stays with you." p-lease!! Now we know why every movie commercial on TV has at least a half-dozen positive comments from random reviewers from across the nation.
Only listen to your freinds' movie reviews, or those of people who aren't paid to give reviews.
python -c "x='python -c %sx=%s; print x%%(chr(34),repr(x),chr(34))%s'; print x%(chr(34),repr(x),chr(34))"
A computer generated alien who sheds a single tear for his race.
Doesn't get much worse than that.
Agreed! One of the worst movies I've ever seen. The whole theater was laughing all the time.
Worst lines:
"50% Point of no return"
"Oh, look they're leaving the planet" (as the alien ships are leaving the planet)
"Oh, look, one stays behind!" (as one alien ship stays behind)
Sooooo bad...
-- "Tradition is the illusion of permanence."
I like to imagine that without enough food for the return trip, Stand By Me's Vern ate Cheadle and Delaney, while Sinise grew gills in his suspension bath and came back as Aquaman for the sequel (including a suitable number of flashbacks--just in case you didn't remember how much the movie sucked the first time.)
/me wonders why "Mission to Mars" isn't already on the Nitpickers.com top ten list.
Add your own nipick for M2M here. Have fun! =)
Pablo Nevares, "the freshmaker".
Pablo Nevares, "the freshmaker".
Anyway, he said in Washington DC, where he saw it, by half way through the film everyone was LAUGHING at it, and by 2/3 of the way through, he and his friends we doing their best MST3K and people were paying more attention to their jokes, than the film.
EEEESH. it must have REALLY sucked... my friend simply isn't that funny! :-)
It seems Hollywood doesn't know how to make a good sci-fi flick anymore. Star Wars and Trek don't count.... not to me anyway (no flames please). But not counting those films, what was the last GOOD Sci-Fi flick Hollywood did?
Aliens?
What do you think? I haven't thought that much about it, but don't know. I'll have to spend more time thinking about it.
Ignore Alien Orders
We've been looking for the origin of life on Earth. We've been looking on the wrong planet.
GEE, YOU THINK THEY MIGHT FIND THE ORIGIN OF EARTH'S LIFE ON MARS??
Frankly I don't know why this article contains the words "spoilers inside". Spoilers implies a secret to be spoiled.
It's rare that you're presented with a knob whose only two positions are Make History and Flee Your Glorious Destiny.
I saw this movie last night, and it was a good way to waste 2.5 hours, but there were major lapses in the plot. A little too much appolo 13 in the beginning as well. Worth the matinee price, but not any more.
-- the computer doesn't want any beer, no matter how much you think it does. NEVER, EVER feed your computer beer.
I too, was griped out about this crappy movie.
Then, I remembered that it was DISNEY.
Then, in my mind, I realized that if the thing had been animated, and the astronauts had been monkeys or fish or something, it would have been perfect for an 8 year old kid.
The only real flaw of this movie, then, was that it was live action, and used good actors, and a name, geeky director. Besides those [small] items, it was a prototypical Disney cartoon, about what you would expect from the Mouse. The addition of live action and good actors increased our expeectations, and BOOM, disapointment.
At least they didn't sing.
Donut
I am on my way to buy the soundtrack to this powerful movie. However, I must first grab some M&MsTM and a bottle of Dr. PepperTM. Then I have to change the oil on my IsuzuTM with PenzoilTM. I sure hope that it comes out on DVD so that I can watch it on my SGI flat panel display.
but I could do a better job a showing rotation is possible than these pseudo-physicists could at showing it couldn't be done. Most of them don't even mention Coriolis effects in their discussion of the physics of a moving model inside a rotating space ship.
Then please do so.
Air friction will very quickly drag each individual M&M into the same inertial frame as the air itself, which had long since adjusted to the normal rotation. (Let's forget about random variations in the airflow caused by ventilation that absolutely must keep the air moving at all times, or cause harmful-or-deadly dust pockets to form; even if the model was connected by something, which people seem to imply it wasn't, the entire model would quickly migrate to other locations.)
I haven't seen the movie but I assume it actually held together, despite a lack of glue. Instead, even if the astronaut could magically (or through extensive practice) nullify the rotation of the spacecraft, in a matter of seconds, the M&M would take the velocity of the air around it and begin hiking back to the outside. The only effect of Coriolis "force" (which isn't, of course) would be if you wanted to compute where it was going to land.
This was a science-fiction movie about science and that's an accomplishment in itself.
Perhaps, but my professors don't think much of that argument. "Well, prof, I did the assignment! Even though it completely failed to meet any of the requirements, I don't think I deserve this flunking grade!"
This movie sucked me right in, and I enjoyed it (in spite of the self-indulgent tracking shot it opens with). So shoot me.
Accurate != enjoyable, which too many geeks forget aometimes. But enjoyable != accurate, and for that matter, enjoyable != good. If you want to enjoy it, fine. But it doesn't make it accurate or good. (I enjoy the occasional bad Easter marshmallow candy too, but it still is cheap crap.)
The zero-g pas-de-deux was brilliant, and there were a number of things I doubt any of these griping geeks could have done as well in a million years.
Of all the demographics I can think of to say that about, geeks, the culture where prestige is measured in accomplishments, are the last I would say that about.
The rumours are true, this movie is brutal.
I've tried all sorts of ways to justify what seems to be an unrepentantly bad movie, but it just makes me angry to think about it. There are lots of things that reeked in the movie (dialogue, realism, music...) but let me sum it up with this:
A computer generated alien who sheds a single tear for his race.
Doesn't get much worse than that.
Hotnutz.com - Funny
To just how awful this movie was. I saw it on opening night and there were several different reactions to this movie from the crowd. Several people fell asleep. Some people walked out. Some people did nothing but ridicule the movie. And some people, like myself, were so dumbfounded we could not comprehend how such an awful movie could have been made.
-sirket
De Palma is suffering from a degenerative neurological disorder. (We guessed 70% odds.)
De Palma has joined some religious cult. (We guessed 20% odds.)
Something unimaginable.(The remaining 10% odds.)
Upon further investigation of The Phenomenon, I discovered a promotional trailer for the movie which stated:
"For 25 years, the government has concealed evidence of a life-like formation on Mars..."
This raises the odds of a religious cult as the source of The Phenomenon, IMHO.
However, upon further reflection, I see we may have been a bit narrow in our thinking. What if Brian De Palma is bucking for Dan Goldin's job as NASA Administrator? Please hear me out -- it can't be any worse than paying $8.50 and 3 hours to experience The Phenomenon:
This being an election year, everyone seems to be jockying for some sort of appointment with one of the major candidates. What if Brian De Palma noticed that the primary product of NASA these days is a series of bad computer-generated animations of Things Doing Stuff In Space that have less and less to do with reality? Take "The International Space Station" as an example. We actually had a space station called "Skylab" back in the 1970's but as soon as NASA started putting together animations of space stations, it seemed increasingly interested in developing advanced ray tracing algorithms with texture mapping as spin-offs to the game industry and decreasingly interested in any sort of real, up and operating "Space Station". Hell, in the mid 80s they shit-canned the privately financed Commercially Developed Space Facility rather than do anything along these lines. Indeed, the only real International Space Station thus far has been the Russian Mir. Did NASA pitch in and contribute modules to it? On the contrary! NASA has been hell-bent on getting the Russians to ditch it! The reason? Simple, NASA doesn't want any physical realities impinging on their increasingly virtual realities. So if we take this policy trend to its logical conclusion, what do we get as NASA's future?
Brian De Palma directing bad ray traced animations of stupifying space operas on the NASA channel so we will all think April 15 is good for something even if it is only cheezy space opera on late night cable.
Seastead this.
This time its the Luddites (DePalma) that win...
Paul VerHoeven did the same thing to "Starship Troopers," written by Robert Heinlein as a polemic against Communism/Fascism (he had practical experience as a Naval Officer in World War II). Additionally, the book contained a _very_ moving theme about why soldiers _really_ fight (HINT: it ain't '...for the greater good'), ending the book with "...his name is Zim," that always brought a lump to my throat.
Paul VerHoeven, the producers and Sony _totally_ ignored the _true_ subtexts of the book (even to getting the nationality of the hero wrong - in the book he's Filipino, in the movie, some Aryan-Spanish idiot) in order to promote their 'fascist techno-future' and 'ain't it awful, to vote in the future, you gotta join the military' themes. They didn't even _attempt_ to explain the context in which the political system arose. Then they went on the stump, making sure to talk their leftist, pacifist, trash, while neglecting to mention that the 'themes' they were espousing on their soapboxes weren't even adequately covered in their movie! They defaulted to F/X and gore, as always.
Looks like DePalma took a really good premise and used it for his own political/social ends. But what do we expect from the Money Machine? Until we stop voting with our pocketbooks, they'll continue to pander to the lowest, most ignorant, Luddite common denominator.
Its all about the Benjamins...and the limelight.
Remember guys, this is Amerika. Just because you have the most votes, doesn't mean you get to win.--Fox Mulder
The problem with this movie was the absolute terrible, hideous execution of character development and plot around a fairly neat idea.
The idea of "seeding" earth is one that has been used in a lot of sci-fi movies and scenarios, so that central idea was kind of neat.
But..
Best part of movie: I went for a Sunday afternoon matinee, only spent four dollars. Worst part: I could have purchased McDonald's value meal with that four dollars...
SPOILER ALERT!!! (Not that it matters anyway)
The rescue attempt in space was ridiculous. So they had to abandon ship when their engines blew up? OK. Fine with me. Do a 1 km walk to the old module still in orbit. No problem. Tim Robbins bouncing off the module becuase he can't get a firm grip - going too fast? No problem
But someone tell the producers about angular momentum. He gyrated wildly when trying to grab hold! Why isn't he spinning?? OK - maybe he didn't gyrate to hard. Forgive.
Then he *stops*! Sort of just hangs there in space. This is space. Pressure is low. There is no drag, he shold have continued going on! Granted, they said that over the intercom. But he doesn't look like he's moving with respect to the module. OK, maybe between all the cuts, you can't tell. Fine. Forgive.
Next the rescue attempt. I don't understand this. Same problem. What's the big deal about the fuel? Rockets give thrust. Why give so much thrust if you wanted to save fuel? Someone tell them about Newton's law please. You don't need fuel to maintain motion! So the rescue is slower if you don't move too fast. Big deal! It can be done!
Then the rescuer - the woman astronaught, goes to the *half-way* point (burning fuel in the process) and stops. Shoots the tether, wanting the other guy to take it. Hello?? If they guy grabs the tether, and they reel him him, she will end up in more than the half-way point! Someone tell them about Newton's third law please!
But that's no problem! After all, you don't need much thrust to come back, provided you are willing to wait. But no!! The 1/2-tank is the point of no return? Hahaha! If your space had drag, and the rescuer were to try to return with the poor victim, you will need more fuel than half a tank to come back, becuase your combined masses are larger!
Actually, I am not too sure if it was 1/2-way or 1/2 tank. Either way, it could not have been done!
Some realism! And I don't even want to get into all that space-alien hokey business!
Sadly, they barely touch on a quarter of the inaccuracies in this movie. Here's one for you: the group tentatively decides to plan a rescue mission to Mars, and by the next scene they are im a shiny new spacecraft within hours of orbiting the planet. Nevermind the 1+ year transmit time, and, oh yeah, the time it takes to construct a fscking space ship. The film is replete with such anachronisms. If this movie were (God forbid) real, it would take place over the course of years. Yet no one changes. Not even their hairstyles change.
By far the most egregious and laughable error is the "greenhouse" that Cheadle supposedly lives in. Nevermind the fact that a blisteringly hot Martian day might break -60 degrees Fahrenheit, and ten seconds spent in this contraption on the dark side of Mars would kill any human, period. Give them a half a point here for at least trying to explain this one away by saying that the base camp was at the South Pole of Mars, which I assume would give it six months of frigid, deadly daylight before the six months or frigid, deadly darkness set in.
Tim Robbins manages to remove his helmet in outer space, which, as far as I know, is not possible to do using the standard NASA latching mechanism for a spacesuit.
Micrometeors appear to hit the ship from at least twelve different directions simultaneously; one has to wonder as to the astronomical probability of particles traveling several thousand miles per hour converging on relatively the same point in time within a split second of each other.
The meteors manage to nick an exposed fuel line, an idea which completely contravenes all conventional engineering wisdom as well as any design that Nasa has set forth to date.
I could go on, but the nausea overpowers me. The whole thing wreaked of a 2001 ripoff when it managed to raise itself to even that level.
--
I think there is a world market for maybe five personal web logs.
I saw the film, and I liked it a whole lot.
First, some background. I used to be like a lot of the reviewers, in that I couldn't stand pseudo-science, but I eventually came to the point that I realized that it's science-FICTION, not science, and that transgressions in the scientific area are totally OK, since it takes some suspension of belief to even think up a movie where people are walking on Mars.
My main criticism of the movie is that it takes half the movie to establish the premise (one mission lost, a second mission to mars to save the losers abandoned from the first) and that for a sci-fi movie, it has a lot of human interactions in it, and not as much galactic piracy, violence, wormholes, etc. That's not necessarily bad, but it's not what I look for in sci-fi.
I too didn't like the constant product shots, but they weren't nearly as obtrusive as some of the slash team's reviews said they were, (with the exception of M&Ms - that was pretty obvious). Most of the product shots consisted of a "pennzoil" sticker on a mars lander in the background and so on. If you're looking to ferret commercialism out of these movies and criticise it on that point, then there will be plenty of ammo in this movie, but I'm straining to think of a movie I've seen in the last few years that didn't have these types of blatant promos in them, and I'm wondering why the reviewers chose to screw the movie based off of those, when they seem to be everywhere.
For me, sci-fi is about suspending disbelief, and in a way, being like a child, and just enjoying wherever it is the movie maker wants to take you. I think all of us have plenty of the cynical bastard type of mindset that permeates professional work. YOU DON'T GO TO SCI-FI MOVIES TO CRITICISE THEIR SCIENCE - LARGELY BECAUSE IT'S NONEXISTANT, NO MATTER WHAT TYPE OF SCI-FI IT IS. (There are some exceptions to that, but not too many)
I thought it was pretty good, all in all. I left the movie theater feeling like I got my money's worth. I understand that there's a lot of people that hate it, but I feel they're hating it for all the wrong reasons. Sort of like how for any given movie, no matter what the premise is, you can find small plot holes and problems in it, small incontinuities, etc. to the point where if you really want to, you can convince yourself that the movie sucks rocks. I think that's what the slash team did in this instance.
Now that my post is on, I think I'll don my asbestos underwear....
-- Truth goes out the door when rumor comes innuendo. -- Groucho Marx
I stumbled on an interesting book on the Origional Star Trek series (published sometime before '84). It was full of facinating stories and interviews with people involved with the series. The tone is set with the discussion of Gene Roddenberry's desire to do SciFi differently in an era where "SciFi" meant bugeyed rubber monsters.
Some of the interesting stories are where Gene got his ideas. Many came from discussions with NASA researchers. The Enterprise design. Ion drives. Transfering energy from one form to another (transporters).
Other stories come from the public's reaction. One company had called the studio demanding to know who the information leak was. Seems they were working on a top-secret product and it had shown up on an episode of Star Trek. Diagnostic medical beds; the idea had made sense at the time. The fact that someone was already working on making the idea a reality was a coincidence. Another medical musing was the discussions Deforest Kelly (Bones) had with real doctors over his medical equipment. They were quite impressed with the concepts the show used, if not disappointed to find out the actual "instraments" were salt shakers.
The show was making up its own physics as it went along. Sometimes some scientific concept would make it in to a show. Sometimes an arbitrary decision was made that later became a rule (the Vulcan nerve pinch). But once a rule was made, it was followed. Walter Coenig (Checkov) once got in to an argument with a guest director over the layout of his station's instrament pannel. The director wanted him to flick some switches. Walter refused on account that activating those particular switches would destroy the ship.
Star Trek wasn't perfect (I'm sure a greater Trek fan than myself could list its faults by heart). Its views have, in many ways, become dated. But at the time of its creation, it was unique in the amount of science and detail it involved.
The lessons of the Origional Star Trek has been lost on the new Star Trek offerings. In some cases, they have the story right. They have characters. But the science is nothing more than a writer's note of "(techno babble)" to be filled in with a string of Trek buzzwords as an afterthought. No reasearch. No theory. There is no science. Instead, it is CGI induced fantasy. And merchandise.
But we still love Star Trek. We still enjoy the latest episode even if it involves a sudden resolution involving Tachyon particles. We know its fantasy. And we're willing to buy it.
I think this is the failing of Mission to Mars. Star Trek's new writers are comfortable in their science fantasy world. They make no claims to their science heritage. However, the makers of Mission have a different claim. They claim true science. They boast, "it is realistic and extremely authentic."
But its not.
It is fantasy. The science is along just for the ride. And merchandising.
I'm VERY glad that I'm not the only person disappointed as all hell at this movie. I went to see it with some friends the evening I came home for my break, and while they all seemed to love the movie, I came out with a sour taste in my mouth. What a disappointment it was! For some reason I had gone into the movie with a high degree of enthusiasm, which was quickly squished by an extremely thin plot:
Beginning of the movie: hmm, we're going to mars...BLAM! We're on mars. Oops! We pissed off a sandstorm with our radar! Ok, scratch one mission.
Next mission: the moment they lose radio contact, they send another ship. Nevermind the fact that 6 months after the first ship was launched the launch window to Mars would have long since passed, and a launch would not be feasible for about another 18 months. (Oh yes, here's where we begin to use this "suspension of disbelief" thingie.)
Anyway. Now we're almost to mars. Oops! The ship is pelted by fragments of rock. Also, the ship is conveniently NOT plated with any sort of protective layer thick enough to prevent cosmic pebbles from penetrating the ship, the magic SGI display, and neatly through someone's hand. No matter, we'll patch it up with our Magic Goo(tm). Problem solved. Next!
Now for the spacewalk to the thing that looks like a flimsy communication satellite that somehow is big enough to hold three astronauts AND strong enough to survive entry into the martian atmosphere. Riiiight.
(insert rant about guy living on mars for a year in canvas greenhouse here)
(insert rant about not having food or supplies to get home, but yet doing it anyway here)
Oh yes, and that alien... what in the hell were they thinking when they animated that thing? Was it supposed to be a Real Live alien? Or was it supposed to look like a cheap computer animation (which it did an excellent job of)?
Who knows. Hopefully the next two or three movies that I hear are coming out involving Mars will be substantially better!
...they're a satire of geek culture.
Honestly, I went to this movie fully expecting the science to stink. The trailer had been edited to make it look like they exclaimed, "That's human DNA!" after seeing a tiny fragment of a computer-generated model.
I was surprised at how much they got right, not how much they got wrong. This was a science-fiction movie about science and that's an accomplishment in itself.
This movie sucked me right in, and I enjoyed it (in spite of the self-indulgent tracking shot it opens with). So shoot me.
It's discussions like this that give geeks a bad name. The idea of constructing a model of DNA in zero-gravity is much better evidence of a creative and functioning brain than these inane complaints. I admit I was put off by the fact that it was rotating, but I could do a better job a showing rotation is possible than these pseudo-physicists could at showing it couldn't be done. Most of them don't even mention Coriolis effects in their discussion of the physics of a moving model inside a rotating space ship.
This kind of review is the geek equivalent of the football star who picks on the kid with tape on his glasses. If the athlete wins, nobody's impressed. And, if the physicists find a mistake in a sci-fi movie, nobody's gonna say, "Wow, those physicists know more science than those Hollywood writers!"
But, if the dorky guy with glasses knows judo and gets more right in the fight than the football-head, it is truly embarassing. And that's what's happened this case. This movie has some errors, sure. But nothing near like the number of mistakes made in these threads.
"Mission to Mars" gets many things right which have never been done well in any movie. It has the best orrery I've ever seen. When the asteroid hits Mars I was genuinely impressed (and surprised). The zero-g pas-de-deux was brilliant, and there were a number of things I doubt any of these griping geeks could have done as well in a million years. Of all the attempts to show how first-contact communication could be accomplished quickly, this is the only one I've ever seen that rang true.
Eternal vigilance only works if you look in every direction.
Another Mission to Mars review