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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.
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