Mission to Mars takes some of humanity's most profound intellectual challenges -- interplanetary exploration, the origin of life, extraterrestrial intelligence -- and runs them through the Hollywood meat-grinder. The result is unpalatable, to say the least.
The film opens with a rocket exploding -- into confetti. It's a toy rocket, and as the camera pans down, we begin to spend long minutes at a Texas barbecue/cocktail party, where astronauts and their loved ones have gathered before the first human mission to Mars. The year is around 2020.
Luke (Don Cheadle), who will lead the mission, consoles his tearful young son about his upcoming two-year absence. But Luke feels funny about going in the place of Jim (Gary Sinise), who was dropped from the mission because he was depressed following the tragic wasting death of his astronaut wife Maggie. But Jim is understanding, albeit wistful, somber. When alone, he plants his footprint in the Texas dirt.
Yet another husband-and-wife astronaut team consists of Woody (Tim Robbins) and Terri (Connie Nielsen). But they're not going to Mars. They're going to the World Space Station (WSS), a notably more sophisticated version of the
International Space Station that NASA is trying to construct in real life. The WSS has artificial gravity and long hallways, and serves as mission control room for the Mars trip.
Mars. Thirteen months later. The astronauts have landed. A small robotic rover detects an unusual outcropping in the hills. Could it be ice, key to future colonization? No, it's far more than that. For when Luke and his colleagues probe it with radar, the results give new meaning to the term "Angry Red Planet."
And when the Mission Control people lose contact with their colleagues on Mars, it's time for a rescue mission, one that will be led by Jim, who's rescued from career oblivion by his sheer, undisputed competence. Joining him are Woody, Terri and a young astronaut named Phil (Jerry O'Connell).
All this is depicted with a strange mix of inanity and pretentiousness. En route to Mars, Woody and Terri enjoy a weightless dancing session that lacks both gravity and gravitas. Jim, with great emotion, watches an old video in which Maggie (Kim Delaney) speechifies about Mars and how "life reaches out for life."
Dr Pepper to the rescue
Interspersed throughout are apparent attempts at marketing sugary products. A packet filled with a well-known soft drink (brand name filling much of the screen) spews forth globules of liquid, helping the astronauts locate a hull breach. Phil composes a DNA double helix out of popular chocolate candies.
Eventually, the mission spins out of control, and the astronauts' descent toward Mars provides one of the movie's few genuinely absorbing moments, even if their desperate
spacewalking is reminiscent of a conga line. But the sense of heightened tension quickly dissipates on the planet's surface.
There, they find, among other things, evidence of extraterrestrial intelligence and its connection to life on Earth. Momentous though this is meant to be, it has all the dramatic and intellectual impact of a visit to a third-rate theme park.
Adding to the silliness, the action centers upon the so-called "
Face on Mars," the geographic coordinates of which NASA has apparently lost in the intervening decades.
The special effects are competent (a howling vortex is noteworthy), and the martian landscapes look convincing, but this is far from sufficient to rescue this film. Cinematic legend Ennio Morricone's music consists mostly of a carnival-like repetition suitable for a sitcom, with sudden swellings during supposedly emotional moments.
The acting plods along at a mediocre level, but even brilliant thespians would be stranded on this Mars. It’s hard to be convincing when you're solemnly joining hands with a tearful animatronic alien tour guide.
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