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	Red Planet

Months after filming, her fellow cast members still half-seriously refer to her as "our captain."

Just the screen, thanks

However, the action diva doubts she'll be riding a rocket anywhere but movie theaters.

"No, I would not go in a space shuttle to another planet," Moss told reporters at a recent press event. "I'm extremely claustrophobic."

Australian actor Simon Baker, who plays a relatively green terraforming expert, agrees.

"You wouldn't catch me there," he said simply. "I like it here a lot."

One main detail keeping Moss and Baker from wanting to join the astronaut community: spacesuits. Both hated their costumes, with Moss calling her helmet "extremely claustrophobic" and Baker saying he often "felt like a clown in that suit."

Nevertheless, like real astronauts, Baker came to appreciate his suit, which would keep him alive on an actual trip to Mars.

"It was quite a struggle but . . . you get used to it," he said. "You get to love that suit."

Touching the moon

On the other hand, Val Kilmer, self-described "space janitor" aboard the movie's 2050 Mars run, wouldn't mind seeing the high frontier for himself.

"I had a childhood experience that got me interested in space," he recalled. "My father was in aerospace. He sold some parts to NASA that were going to the moon, and so he had me and my brothers come touch them [so] part of something we had seen and handled had ended up on the moon."

"Every time I looked into the sky it was like I had some kind of personal relationship. I just loved it."

But would he go to Mars?

"Sure, I'd go," he said.

Next page: realism, goosebumps and the truth.

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A question of realism

While Red Planet did not receive formal NASA support to the extent enjoyed by Mission to Mars and Space Cowboys, both cast and crew worked hard to make the film as realistic as possible.

Even as first-time feature director Antony Hoffman was hanging around with astronauts at Johnson Space Center, touring the real-life space shuttle and studying NASA's ongoing preparations for an eventual Mars mission, Moss was reading a lot of books about the Red Planet and talking to astronauts herself.

Val Kilmer on Female Astronauts

"The fact that she's a woman in relation to what we are as astronauts and what we had to go through to become this crew? We have even more respect forher as a woman and what she had to go through. I think it's possible if it weresomeone like Carrie-Anne Moss."

Being so close to -- as she put it -- "the mystery and magnitude" of space travel, "and the bravery that it must take to be someone who dedicates his or her life to this" -- gave her goosebumps and brought tears to her eyes.

Kilmer, who has called the film "the best Mars movie because it's science fact," praised the project's attention to detail and realism.

"The design of the ship and the design of the costumes were all worked with NASA and other experts and the Mars team that exists, so everything [in the film] is possible," he said. "A few thing that are inventions of our designers . . . actually became good ideas, and they're going on to research them themselves."

Looking up, thinking big

It's up to the experts to praise or revile the film for how well it matches up to real-world space technology and procedures when it premieres November 10.

Meanwhile, Warner Brothers has aimed Red Planet at the somewhat less rigorous "philosophical action" market pioneered by The Matrix.

In addition to Moss, the project captured the interest of the sound, costume and production design crews from The Matrix, and the filmmakers hope it will capture the earlier film's highbrow cult following -- and action-thriller-size box-office receipts -- as well.

"It's a smart movie," said producer Mark Canton. "What if we have to go someplace else? What if that place is Mars? . . . The story also has an intelligent side which debates the values of philosophy and theology and religion and science, or lack of all those as well."

The cast appear to agree with this assessment. Kilmer, in particular, waxed rhapsodic about how certain shots in the film "just generate a big feeling, like looking up at a sky full of stars. . . . There is more to life than what the senses tell us, and we find that out on Mars, literally. There's more to life than we think."