[Mission To Mars 720p Mkv Movies
Luther Lazaro
Though the characters generally display the typical attributes of a "flyboy" astronaut or air force heroes commonly seen in action movies, they also display values of sacrifice and dedication to their crew and perhaps humanity as a whole.
Parents need to know that Mission to Mars is a 2000 Brian DePalma-directed sci-fi movie about a team of astronauts in the year 2020 who land on Mars and make a profound discovery. Characters are in peril and there are a number of tense moments and several deaths. One of the astronauts is blown into pieces by a violent sandstorm. A later death scene in space (a character commits suicide to save the lives of others), might be too emotionally intense for some viewers. There is also some consumerism: M&M's, Dr. Pepper, and Kawasaki products are prominently displayed in important scenes. Profanity includes "son of a bitch," "damn," "goddamnit," "ass." To stay in the loop on more movies like this, you can sign up for weekly Family Movie Night emails.
MISSION TO MARS takes place in 2020. Don Cheadle plays an astronaut who leads a team to Mars to investigate the possibility of colonization. When a huge tunnel-like dust storm kills the rest of the team, and communication with the space station is cut off, four of his colleagues, played by Tim Robbins, Jerry O'Connell, Gary Sinese, and Connie Nielson, go on a rescue mission.
Director Brian DePalma is known for movies that have two qualities: striking visual flair and frustrating narrative incoherence. If you are the kind of person who talks about the plot after seeing a movie, this is not your kind of movie. But if you would enjoy seeing an old-time Flash Gordon-style movie with 21st-century special effects and computer graphics, you just might want to see it twice.
Science-fiction movies and novels have long been fascinated with the planet Mars. What are some other examples of movies and books set on Mars? Why do you think Mars arouses such curiosity and speculation?
Second time's the charm appears to be the general box office rule of thumb when it comes to twin blockbusters, that strange phenomenon when two different major studios somehow hit on the same tentpole idea at exactly the same time. Armageddon obliterated Deep Impact, A Bug's Life squished Antz, and White House Down toppled Olympus Has Fallen. Yet during the not-so-great space movie race of 2000, when Mission to Mars and Red Planet hit theaters eight months apart from one another (March 6 and Nov. 10, respectively), it was the first to launch into cinemas that reigned supreme.
You could argue, however, that there wasn't really a winner at all. Sure, Mission to Mars pulled in nearly $80 million more than Red Planet. But as a bigger-budgeted, starrier affair based on a Disney theme park ride, Touchstone Pictures was no doubt expecting to finish higher on the year-end's highest-grossers list than No. 40 (and above Coyote Ugly, Road Trip, and Pokmon the Movie 2000, too).
Village Roadshow Pictures, meanwhile, trusted a complete novice with $80 million to direct its alternative Mars mission: Antony Hoffman had cut his teeth in the world of high-end TV commercials and, following the disastrous response to Red Planet, never stepped foot on a film set again. Val Kilmer and Tom Sizemore, two actors whose careers would soon nosedive into straight-to-DVD territory, probably didn't help matters, either. The pair reportedly spent most of the shoot in Southern Jordan's Valley of the Moon on the verge of knocking seven bells out of each other.
Admittedly, Kilmer's cocky systems engineer Robby is the only real engaging presence in an unlikable crew of cookie-cutter personalities tasked with troubleshooting a Mars colonization project: The oxygenic algae needed to make the planet habitable has mysteriously vanished and after an hour of forced banter, backstabbing, and pseudo-mumbo jumbo (the early exit of Terence Stamp's groan-worthy philosopher comes as sweet relief), we learn that parasitic, highly flammable insects are to blame.
With a narrative based on the disappearance of bio-engineered algae, it's perhaps little surprise that Red Planet failed to draw the crowds. Still, to be fair, Hoffman does maintain a sense of jeopardy that's largely missing from its inter-planetary rival. There's a terrific crash sequence in which the lander, protected by brown airbags that resemble giant Maltesers, bobbles around the desolate Martian landscape. And as each crewman (Carrie-Anne Moss' commander Kate is sadly consigned to spouting instructions from the damaged main ship) is picked off one by one, the film becomes a more compelling venture into survival horror. There's even a malfunctioning killer robot.
Colonization is also the focus in Mission to Mars, although set 36 years earlier (2020, in fact), its efforts aren't quite as advanced. And as the expedition inevitably runs into difficulties, De Palma delivers a few hair-raising set pieces of his own. Robbins' leader Woody heroically sacrifices himself in the name of love during a visually stunning, if disastrous, float in the cosmos. And a monstrous sandstorm that takes out all the bit-players in one fell swoop (leaving Don Cheadle's Luke marooned) provides a limb-ripping death that inspires gasps and guffaws in equal measure.
Yet the movie abandons all thrills by the halfway mark, choosing instead to veer into existential sci-fi and toward a mind-boggling denouement that offers an alternative history of evolution. It turns out us Earthlings descend from Martians who seeded our planet with DNA after evacuating their asteroid-struck home, apparently with the hope the lifeforms they helped create would one day return and join the dots?
Almost as bizarrely, the whole story is relayed to the human visitors in a giant planetarium display they're guided through by an unconvincing holographic alien. Mission to Mars was no doubt aiming to invoke the same sense of wonder as 2001: A Space Odyssey and Close Encounters of the Third Kind. But while its elegant spaceship design (created with aerospace engineer Robert Zubrin) and swooping shots of the galaxy are worthy of the Kubrick and Spielberg classics, it doesn't come close to capturing their intelligence and emotional heft.
That seems slightly unfair to Red Planet, which boasts more tension, semi-realism, and even a few decent gags ("This is it," Robby tells Kate. "That moment they told us in high school where one day, algebra would save our lives"). To be clear though, neither is a misunderstood classic.
Or could it be that we simply prefer the familiar when it comes to movies set in the final frontier? More visible and more reachable, the moon appears to have little problem enticing big audiences (Apollo 11 was the second-highest-grossing documentary of 2019). Either way, Hollywood might be better off leaving all the red planet exploration to Elon Musk.
(Welcome to Seeing Double, a series where two strangely similar films released around the same time are put head-to-head. This time, we leave the safety of Earth behind and head towards Mars in search of adventure, the future of the human race, and some intergalactic mediocrity.)
Disney tried recapturing their own magic with Mission to Mars, while Warner Bros. entered the fray with Red Planet. (Hell, it's entirely possible that Clint Eastwood's Space Cowboys got the green light for the same reason.) Both films put movie stars into a rocket and launched them on a mission to the red planet, and they opened exactly eight months apart in 2000. Nobody cared about either one.
Brian De Palma was no stranger to genre films before helming Mission to Mars with several thrillers and a few horror films among his filmography, but he wasn't a go-to name for big-budget blockbusters. That changed after he directed 1996's Mission: Impossible to nearly half a billion dollars at the box-office. Nabbing him for their big sci-fi adventure was a strong move by Disney as while his films aren't always great, they're also never boring. People want to see the next De Palma. (Back then anyway...) The film's three screenwriters may not have been equal rock stars, but the combined filmographies of Graham Yost and Jim & John Thomas include action favorites like Predator (1987), Speed (1994), and Broken Arrow (1996), so they were equally reliable picks. The film also nabbed De Palma's regular editor Paul Hirsch whose career is littered with success stories including The Empire Strikes Back (1980), Ferris Bueller's Day Off (1986), Falling Down (1991), and many more, and the audible icing on the cake? A new score by the legendary Ennio Morricone.
It's almost unfair to compare all of that to Red Planet's behind-the-camera talents. It was director Antony Hoffman's feature debut... and still his only feature nineteen years later. Writers Chuck Pfarrer and Jonathan Lemkin, meanwhile, gave us Hard Target (1996) and The Devil's Advocate (1997), respectively. Composer Graeme Revell may not be Morricone, but he's ultimately the most reliable off-camera name associated with the film having scored the likes of Dead Calm (1989), The Crow (1994), Strange Days (1995), and plenty more.
Both films are basically disaster movies, albeit ones set in space, and as the sub-genre dictates they both feature ensemble casts consisting almost exclusively of familiar faces. Sure they're mostly supporting players, but each features an A-lister or two as well. Mission to Mars landed Tim Robbins, Gary Sinise, Don Cheadle, Jerry O'Connell, and Connie Nielsen, while Red Planet nabbed Val Kilmer, Carrie-Anne Moss, Tom Sizemore, Benjamin Bratt, Simon Baker, and Terence Stamp.
Mission to Mars failed to wow critics and currently sits at 25% on Rotten Tomatoes with a barely better audience score of 30%. The positive comments showed some people inexplicably praising the visual effects including the Chicago Tribune's easily impressed Michael Wilmington who says it's "a film about space exploration that really knocks your eyes out." I'm not even sure what that means. Criticisms, meanwhile, rightly focus on the clunky screenplay that seems constantly unsure which movie it wants to rip off next.Red Planet fared even worse with a 14% RT score from critics (and 28% from audiences). It was again given credit for the visual effects while critical jabs are mostly focused on its flat script, weak dialogue, and lack of energy.Winner: Both films are labeled rotten, but in the contest of which movie is held in less poor regard the "winner" is Mission to Mars. Fewer people dislike it, so that's a win.
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