2000:A Space Absurdity

Mission to Mars
Touchtone, 2000
Directed by Brian DePalma

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When NASA has a major screw-up, such as the loss of two recent Mars probes, they spend months pouring over data to determine what went wrong. It's doubtful even that kind of in-depth analysis could explain exactly what went wrong with the Mars mission now in theaters -- the one directed by Brian DePalma. Nevertheless, I'll try and take a crack at it.

Mission to Mars represents one of the classic examples of a film that had all the potential in the universe -- but blew it. At it's core, there's a good Sci-Fi story which tries to lay a Big Idea on us about life on Mars and its connection to the origins of life on Earth. But DePalma has so little respect for the audience's intelligence, that any effort to impress us with Deep Thoughts about the nature of the solar system falls flat on its face.

The incredibly slow-moving plot can be summed up rather quickly: A mission to the Red Planet meets an unexplained disaster when a powerful force rises up from a Martian mountain and kills most of the crew -- a second team of astronauts is sent to find out what happened.

The slow pace gets little help from the actors. Tim Robbins plays the commander, Gary Sinise is the widowed co-pilot -- both look like they're just there to pick-up a paycheck. In fact, you'd be hard pressed to find a cast as fine as this one acting so badly. Only Don Cheadle, as a stranded astronaut, manages resemble a real human being.

To be fair, though, the actors get little help from the script, which drips with lots of silly, expository dialogue -- the kind of lines that give us background on the characters and the situation, but that no one would ever say in real conversation. It's lazy, heavy-handed writing through and through. Instead of trusting that the audience will be smart enough to figure out what's going on, DePalma and his writers spell everything out for us in simple terms -- then, they explain it again -- just in case we're really stupid.

Speaking of stupid -- the movie's logic could use some help. The mountain that possess the supernatural force turns out to be the infamous Martian "Face". But it strains credibility that the crew would be standing in front of one of the most photographed features on Mars and not know it. The Face, as it appears in this movie is also a disappointment -- it looks nothing like the famous photo illusion suggests it would. It's also odd that a movie that takes pains to explain every bit of back-story wouldn't include a shot of that original picture of The Face for realism's sake.

Another failure is the stunning choice not to dramatize what will likely be the most exciting event of the 21st century -- man landing on Mars. Over the course of the film, two crews touch down on the Martian surface -- but both times, DePalma decides to skip over the actual landing and first surface steps.

In fact the movie has little excitement to offer, period. The film's lone action sequence, involving a mishap that cripples the second crew's ship -- is a bit incomprehensible and is largely ruined by one of the dumbest, most blatant product placement shots in movie history.

The end result of these failures is a movie that resembles 2001:A Space Odyssey, minus the intelligence, the elegance and the eerie sense of awe.

It's not like the movie didn't have a lot going for it -- the production design looks fantastic. The Mars ship is extremely realistic and functional. When it comes time for an actual journey to the Red Planet, NASA wouldn't do bad to use the design of this movie's ship as a blueprint.

Blame must lie with the director. DePalma is usually at home ripping-off Alfred Hitchcock. But since Hitch never made a Sci-Fi movie, DePalma has to steal from others. He takes the ship interior from Stanley Kubrick's aforementioned 2001:A Space Odyssey; the blinding light pouring out from inside of an alien ship is lifted straight from Spielberg's Close Encounters; the all-white room from George Lucas' THX-1138 is also here, as are last-act touches from James Cameron's The Abyss. I'd watch each of those movies a hundred times before ever sitting through a minute of this piece of crud again.

(c) Copyright 2000