Mission to Mars Review by Tim Wick

One out of Five Beakers

I'll warn you right now that I will be putting a lot of spoilers into this review. My reasoning is simple. If I tell you the end of this movie, you will not have any need to go see it. I would save you the two hours.

Mission To Mars would like you to believe that it is a serious space movie. You are supposed to believe that NASA rubber stamped most of the in space stuff to ensure that it is more realistic. Perhaps some of it is realistic, I couldn't tell. What I noticed were scenes that had theoretically weightless astronauts who weren't even moving a little bit to give you the feeling they were in space. I noticed a character dying because the scriptwriter knew nothing about the laws of motion. I noticed several other characters dying because the fight or flight reflex apparently didn't work.

The central problem this film has is a lack of plot. I mean, it is a black hole (to use and obvious space analogy). A bunch of astronauts go to Mars at the beginning of the movie. Something bad happens (which would not have happened had they done the reasonable thing and RUN AWAY). Another crew is sent to rescue them, including a guy who is depressed because his beloved wife died (Gary Sinise). Because there is not enough in the script to work with, the rescue mission gets into a lot of trouble and another astronaut dies (probably because Tim Robbins realized he had a better movie to make). Then we discover that the "thing" that killed the first three is the infamous Face on Mars!!!! It was just sending us a friendly little signal that we misinterpreted. Well, our intrepid team of hardy astronauts figures out the signal and goes to check things out. Turns out that we all descended from CGI aliens who seeded earth after Mars was hit by a comet (or asteroid, or CGI space particle - I couldn't tell). The depressed astronaut, having recently seen Close Encounters of the Third Kind decides to go "home" to wherever the rest of the martians who apparently had the technology to get their butts relocated after the comet hit, but not the technology to do something about the comet, went.

There you go. That's it. I could have filmed a commercial that told this story. Someone realized that, so we are treated to several scenes of character development that are absolutely moronic. I do mean moronic. Early on, we learn that Sinese's character WAS going to be the first commander until his wife died and he took himself off the active list. We see him put his foot into the ground in a "moving" scene where he pretends he set foot on the red planet. Later, he gets there and THEY DON'T EVEN show him putting his foot on Mars. Nice character arc, Einstein.

They spend a lot of time developing the relationship between Tim Robbins' character (the commander of the rescue mission who should be wearing a red shirt) and his wife, played by Connie Neilson. These two love each other and have a big thing for sex in zero G. Wouldn't it be tragic if one of them died? When Robbins does die, it is without need. I saw this film with a group of fifteen. Among us, we came up with at least four different ways his character could have been rescued. It was not rocket science. Given the astronauts working the problem WERE rocket scientists, they should have had an easy time of it.

The ending was taken straight from several movies that are far better. Every line uttered by Gary Sinsise before he "went home" was so predictable, I was whispering them to myself before he actually said it. I love Sinese as an actor and fretted for him through the entire film. He was not bad in this movie, but the script was so awful, it seemed like it was fighting him tooth and nail at every turn.

In fact, none of the acting was actually bad. The special effects were great as well. Problem is, without a story, the movie was drifting like Tim Robbins character right before he died. Clearly someone thought it would be a good idea to do a trendy film about going to Mars and forgot that you actually needed a plot to make a movie.

I could go on an on. How did the astronauts have enough time to study DNA and recognize the message being sent by the face was a human DNA strand that was missing the last two links? Why did the shipboard computer require a voice print when there were only four people on board? Was someone going to hack into the thing? How did three astronauts survive an emergency landing in a supply module not designed for re-entry with human cargo (this one obviously stumped the producers as well, so they didn't show you)? Why did the martians have to kill us if we didn't get the "combination" to the face right (I mean, they are supposed to be benevolent)? If you need to reconfigure the radar to send a signal, why does the control panel already have a "send" button on it? Why was this movie made in the first place?

Sadly, this film will make money. The previews (that give everything away) have been bombarding our psyche for the last three months (typically appearing before much better films). The effects look good and the (missing) story that has been implied is pretty interesting. I would wait for this summer's Red Planet and hope that it is a better film. In my opinion, it will be tough for it to be worse.