******PHOBOS-SIZED SPOILERS!******
25 years ago, my wife and I went out for dinner and a movie with two married friends of ours to see “Mission to Mars” (2000); a Disney (nee: Touchstone) space opus directed by esteemed director Brian De Palma (“Carrie,” “Scarface,” “The Untouchables”), a screenplay cowritten by Graham Yost (“Speed”) with music by Ennio Morricone (“The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly,” “The Untouchables”), and with a high profile cast. I’ve been a Mars fanatic since age nine, when I saw the first first Viking lander images back in 1976, and I’d hoped this would be the definitive movie on Mars exploration. Well, expectations are dangerous, and “Mission to Mars” was a hot mess served on a cracked platter. Over dinner, I remember we ripped the movie a new one just before one of our married friends announced she was pregnant (which was a better plot twist than anything in the movie).
The stunning Jordan-for-Mars locations add tremendous production value, but its screenplay is surprisingly stilted.
Well, that night was over a quarter century ago. So, when I saw the movie show up as a ‘free’ offering on my YouTube Premium account, I decided to give it another try, wondering if time might be kinder with a rewatch. I was originally going to do a comparison of “Mission…” with that other Mars movie from that year, “Red Planet” (starring the late Val Kilmer). However, after rewatching “Mission…”, there was so much to unpack that I had to give the movie its own retrospective. I hope to do a deep-dive on the not-much-better “Red Planet” at some future date.
I was going to cover and compare both movies for this column, but “Mission to Mars” was just so wrongheaded that it pretty much had my full attention. Neither movie is particularly good, but at least “Red Planet” was wise enough to reign in its ambitions.
For this retrospective, I’m going to synopsize the movie’s plot/story within the photo captions, with my own notes below, followed by my summary opinion of the movie. So, take your protein pills and put your helmet on…
“Mission to Mars” (2000)
The movie opens in 2020, on the eve of a launch party for the first manned Mars-1 mission, led by Commander Luke Graham (Don Cheadle). Wishing Luke off are his fellow astronaut buds, Woody Blake (Tim Robbins), and recent widower Jim McConnell (Gary Sinise). We meet all the happily-married astronauts and their oh-so loving wives, who are in stark contrast with lonely Jim, who was bumped from the first flight in the aftermath of his wife’s death.
Note: Gary Sinise, once again playing a down-on-his-luck astronaut, is parlaying his cred from Ron Howard’s vastly superior “Apollo 13” (1995). The launch party scene is laden with astronaut dialogue cliches, and ‘sensitive-guys-with-beers’ schtick. The actors, especially Don Cheadle and Tim Robbins, are too good to be saddled with this subpar, TV-movie nonsense. Optimistically projecting a manned Mars mission within 20 years, “Mission to Mars” feels hopelessly naive today; with a manned Mars flight no closer now than it was then. Ever since I was ten years old, a manned Mars mission has always been “20 years away,” and that was 50 years ago.
The movie then time-jumps to the landing on Mars, with Luke and the Mars-1 crew; French astronaut Renée (Jill Teed), failed ladies’ man Nick (Cavan Smith), and Russian cosmonaut, Sergei (Peter Outerbridge)–who’s married to Renée, of course, because every mission we see in this movie carries married couples for some reason. Mysterious radiation signatures lead the group to an unusual weather and radiation event…
Note: One of the first things I noticed first time I saw the movie was the spacesuit helmet design, which is a deliberate homage to the spacesuit helmets seen in Kubrick’s “2001: A Space Odyssey.” Secondly, there are three–count ’em, three–sets of married astronauts; widower Jim’s wife was an astronaut, Woody Blake’s wife Terri Fisher (Connie Nielsen) and astronaut Renée is apparently married to Russian cosmonaut Sergei. It’s true that many astronauts are married, but with the exception of space shuttle mission STS-47 in 1992 (Mark Lee, Jan Davis), NASA has an ironclad rule against couples flying into space together for many of the reasons illustrated in the movie with Woody and Terri later on (taking unnecessary risks, compromised judgment, etc). This restriction doesn’t apply to privatized billionaire space joyrides, of course.
Bombarding the phenomenon with radar pulses, a violent response is triggered, and the crew are sucked into a massive sandy, rocky vortex, as a sentient tornado strikes the M-1 crew, ripping them apart. Only Luke survives. The sandstorm then subsides, revealing a clear face; the “Face on Mars” at Cydonia that conspiracy theorists have been drooling about since 1976.
Note: As we see later with 2015’s definitive Mars exploration/survival epic, “The Martian,” sometimes Mars weather events have to be exaggerated for dramatic effect (“The Martian” author Andy Weir owns up to his book’s dramatic cheat), given that Martian atmospheric pressure is less than a hundredth of that of Earth at sea level. Martian dust devils and sandstorms (which sometimes cover the planet) don’t carry much force; more like a slight breeze when compared to their terrestrial counterparts. Granted, the cyclone in this scene is artificially generated by the intelligence behind the Cydonian “Face” (more on that below), but throughout the movie, we see Martian skies filled with thick storm clouds, when the atmospheric pressure would simply be too light for such heavy clouds to form.
This is the mysterious “face at Cydonia” on Mars; on the left is how it appeared under the lower resolution of earlier spacecraft, and on the center and right we see how that face ‘melts’ under higher resolution and different times of Martian Sol (day).
Note: The real-life Martian locale of Cydonia may be familiar to space conspiracy zealots as the site of the mysterious ‘face on Mars,’ which is, in fact, nothing more than a large rocky plateau whose ‘facial features’ (a vague mouth, eyes and nose) fall apart at higher resolutions. Humans see patterns in nature because that’s the way our brains work. The face gained popularity when spotted by the Viking mission orbiters in the mid-1970s. 49 years later, the face has been dismissed as a peculiar artifact of light only seen during particular shadowing with low-resolution imaging. The ‘face’ breaks down under the 1.5 meter per pixel resolution of more recent Martian observing spacecraft, like the images gained by the Mars Global Surveyor (1997-2006).
Back at Mars Mission Control, now situated aboard the ‘World Space Station,’ a distress signal from Luke at Mars-1 is received, where he states he’s the only survivor, and that the rest of the M-1 crew were killed while investigating an unusual radiation/weather event.
Note: The “World Space Station” appears to be something very similar to the current International Space Station, but with a big centrifuge added for simulated gravity; something that saves the actors a lot of wire work (and saved the producers a lot of money; the movie already cost Disney $100 million). The movie assumes NASA and its ESA partners would pony up for that kind of unnecessary modification, which is doubtful, considering one of the main reasons for the ISS is microgravity research.
Note: Look carefully among the Mission Controllers and you’ll see a bald man sitting at a console; that man is astronaut Story Musgrave, who flew on six space shuttle missions and participated in multiple spacewalks, including the Hubble Space Telescope repair mission in 1993, which fixed a critical optical error in the telescope’s main mirror and ushered in a virtual revolution in space-based astronomy.
The Mars Rescue Mission spacecraft is on its way, after a bit of hemming and hawing from Mars Mission Leadership.
Note: The movie’s title, “Mission to Mars” comes from the Disneyland attraction “Mission to Mars,” which was a 1975 update of the park’s original “Flight to the Moon,” aka “Rocket to the Moon,” which was updated to Mars a few years after a manned flight to the moon became reality in 1969, with the successful landing of Apollo 11. The Mars ferrying spacecraft fuses NASA space shuttle heat-shielding technology combined with the Discovery-1 spacecraft in “2001: A Space Odyssey”; with its heavy centrifuge/crew compartment section separated from its powerful engines. If only the characters of the movie were as well realized as the space hardware.
Jim’s goofy pilot friend Phil (Jerry O’Connell) creates the DNA for his dream girl out of M&Ms; a geneticist’s porn stash.
Note: Jerry O’Connell, who once played “Vern” in 1986’s coming-of-age movie “Stand By Me,” is no stranger to science fiction, having starred as ‘Quinn Mallory’ in the 1990s sci-fi series “Sliders,” and more recently as ‘Commander Jack Ransom,’ in the animated Star Trek series, “Lower Decks,” which recently ended its five season run. In “Mission to Mars” he plays goofy, wannabe-playboy pilot Phil Ohlmeyer; a character right out of 1950s sci-fi movies, like the working-class schlub astronauts seen in “Destination Moon” (1950) and “Conquest of Space” (1955). Like most of the characters in this movie, Phil is nothing but a walking-talking cliché, with no depth or shadings whatsoever.
The Mars Rescue Mission carves out time for zero-G dancing lessons en route to their objective, with Woody and Terri once again demonstrating how oh-so in love they are–as they do all the time in this stupid movie.
Note: It seems like Woody and his wife Terri are making out or dancing every few minutes in this movie, and I won’t lie; it gets super-obnoxious, very quickly–to the point where it clearly impedes both their judgments (see: the upcoming evacuation sequence). On the subject of things shoved in a viewer’s face, there is embarrassingly obvious product placement everywhere as well; from Phil’s M&M-made ‘dream girl’ DNA strand, to a squeeze bottle of Dr. Pepper that temporarily patches a hull breach, to a Kawasaki-made Mars buggy. I’m okay with a little product placement, except when it’s so distractingly obvious, as it is all over this movie.
On approach to Mars, Jim takes a few minutes to wax melancholic over a video of his late wife, Maggie (Kim Delaney), who was an astronaut as well–because just about every couple in this movie are married astronauts. Jim’s morose state is interrupted by the ship’s approach to Mars–you know, the objective of the mission.
Note: Actress Kim Delaney, who had a breakout role on the ABC soap opera “All My Children” back in the 1980s, has been a staple on TV for decades, including roles in “Tour of Duty,” “LA Law” and “NYPD Blue.” Sadly, the actress’s personal life has been marred by issues related to substance abuse and domestic violence, culminating in her recent arrest for battery against her domestic partner in March of this year.
During the approach into Mars orbit, a swarm of micrometeorites pierce the ship, and damage a fuel line. After patching up the holes in the hull (and in Phil’s hand), they ignite the main engines, which explode. With no choice, the crew abandons ship, using tether lines to stay connected and thrusters in their spacesuits to aim for a nearby orbiting resupply module (‘Remo’), in hopes of using it as a landing craft. Unfortunately, they don’t have enough fuel to reach the module. To quote Princess Leia in “Star Wars”: “This is some rescue…”
Note: Visually speaking, the evacuation and acquisition of the resupply module in Mars orbit is the best scene of the movie. The meteorites striking the ship were an homage to 1955’s “Conquest of Space,” which this movie very much reminds me of; both are visually striking (for their respective eras), yet feature characters who are either broad caricatures or boring cardboard cutouts.
Realizing the group will only survive if one of them uses their remaining fuel supply to acquire the Remo, Woody unhooks himself from the Martian conga line. After hooking on to the Remo, Woody is de-orbiting too rapidly for the others to save him. When Woody’s wife Terri threatens to risk her own fuel supply to go after him, Woody removes his helmet and commits suicide in order to prevent it.
Note: Call me cynical, but I was glad the movie sacrificed Tim Robbins’ Woody for two reasons. First, it added some much-needed dramatic gravitas (even though, as a character, ‘Woody’ lived up to his name). Secondly, we wouldn’t be forced to endure any more obnoxious PDA moments from Woody and Terri. On a visual FX note, the ‘freeze-drying’ death of Woody is very effective, even if it defies physics dealing with pressure differentials.
After landing the Remo as an escape pod, the crew venture out toward the Mars-1 landing site, where Jim and Phil find the habitat, and the greenhouse…
Note: Jordan’s exotic Wadi Rum location has a history of doubling for Mars in the movies; as seen in “Red Planet” (2000), “The Last Days on Mars” (2013) and “The Martian” (2015). It also appeared as the planet ‘Pasaana’ in “Star Wars Episode IX: The Rise of Skywalker” (2019).
In the habitat’s greenhouse, Jim and Phil find a dazed, nearly-delusional Luke, whose wild-eyed disbelief is soon settled once he realizes that Jim and Phil aren’t hallucinations. Luke relates the story of the phenomenon and how it killed the rest of his party. He’s also been studying it’s curiously arranged electromagnetic pulses…
Note: This scene of a disbelieving Luke attacking his rescuers reminded me of a scene from the superior, if badly outdated Mars movie, “Robinson Crusoe on Mars” (1964), where stranded, fever-stricken Mars astronaut Commander Kit Draper (Paul Mantee) briefly hallucinates that his dead shipmate Mac (Adam West) has returned for him. Despite its badly dated space science and goofy title, “Robinson Crusoe on Mars” is a wildly underrated survival epic that is well worth checking out.
A recovered, calmer Luke goes over his studies of the electromagnetic anomaly at the Face of Cydonia with his rescuers, and concludes there’s a curious pattern of three pulses that he’s not able to crack. In a wild leap of logic (and credibility), Jim somehow connects the dots (literally) and concludes the pattern represents a human DNA strand minus two missing bits.
Note: How Jim arrives at his “it’s human DNA” conclusion feels more than a bit deus ex machina, and in dialogue, it sounds like so much technobabble. Why would our common ancestors on Mars, who are eager to reconnect with their Earth progeny, put up lethal electromagnetic vortex traps in the first place? It’s a bit like sweet ol’ grandma putting a deadly electric fence around her roses to keep the grandkids from picking one.
Hoping to test Jim’s theory without killing anyone else, the astronauts send M-1’s tiny robotic rover with modified versions of the Face’s pulses containing the missing human DNA sequences. The rover finds a probable doorway, where it parks and transmits the sequences. The doorway opens. The astronauts then pile into the Kawasaki Mars buggy and head out…
Note: When I first saw “Mission to Mars” 25 years ago, I was sincerely hoping it might be a realistic survival story of astronauts trying to stay alive on Mars. I wasn’t on the internet in those days, so avoiding spoilers before seeing a movie was still possible. Unfortunately, the minute the movie veered off into its outdated, long-debunked “Face on Mars” nonsense by the end of its first act, and my expectations sank. I quickly realized “Mission to Mars” was going to be that kind of movie, as it went down its tired conspiratorial rabbit hole. Fortunately, Andy Weir’s “The Martian” came along a few years later…
Jim, Terri and Luke find themselves inside the Face on Mars, where they enter a large, darkened alien holodeck/planetarium. They then witness Mars’ troubled past, when a massive space collision killed the once thriving world, sending its advanced, spacefaring civilization off to seed its DNA on other worlds, including primitive Earth. This event triggered the Cambrian explosion on our planet, which happened over 540 million years ago. The visuals are clumsily narrated in post-production by the three astronauts.
The astronauts are then astounded by the presence of a virtual Martian who weeps at the loss of their planet, and even joins holographic (?) hands with the Earth astronauts. A light then appears to be guiding them out of the planetarium, which Jim also recognizes as a countdown to launch. Jim concludes that they’re inside of a Martian spaceship.
Note: Up until its climax, the movie had some solid visuals, including impressive spaceship miniatures effectively blended with CGI extensions and backgrounds. The end sequence in the Martian planetarium tips the scales by bombarding viewers with less-than-fully-developed CGI that hasn’t aged well at all. I realize “Mission to Mars” had a lot to accomplish with its $100 million budget, but the CGI employed for its grand finale simply wasn’t up to the challenge of this sequence, and it shows. The weeping virtual Martian in particular, looks embarrassingly amateurish; like something that walked off a late-1990s video game. This was a case of a movie’s ambition outstripping its creatives’ means and abilities.
Volunteering to stay behind with the launching Martian ship, Jim bids farewell to his friends, who hustle back to the Mars-1 launch vehicle. After his friends leave, Jim is enveloped in a thick, breathable liquid (see: James Cameron’s “The Abyss”) as the ‘ship’ bursts out from the eye of the Martian Face at Cydonia; headed at possibly faster-than-light speed to the unknown world where most of the Martians fled, after successfully seeding ancient Earth with their DNA.
Note: One more nitpick; if the Martians fled their planet in such a hurry, where are the other signs of their advanced civilization anywhere else on the planet beyond the ‘face’ at Cydonia? Martian atmosphere is near-vacuum, so while dust storms might cover signs of life on much of its surface, large structures (like those used by a spacefaring culture) might be well-preserved, for the most part. If humans were wiped out overnight by an asteroid collision, there would still be mountains of evidence of lost human civilizations for future extraterrestrial archeologists to examine.
As Jim’s sleek, advanced Martian ride streaks by toward a distant destination, we see the Mars-1 ascent module rising to orbit. And that is how “Mission to Mars” ends, folks.
The End.
Summing It Up
Revisiting Disney/Touchstone’s “Mission to Mars” after 25 years, I’d expected this rewatch to be a bit more forgiving. However, many of the movie’s flaws that bothered me then still bothered me now. One of the most striking was the amount of black eyeliner worn by actor Gary Sinise. Good cosmetic makeup shouldn’t call attention to itself, and this is one of my issues with this film–its flaws are difficult to ignore because they’re so obvious.
“Mission to Mars” was one of the earliest Disneyland ‘ride movie’ attempts (following 1997’s “Tower of Terror” TV-movie), even predating its “Pirates of the Caribbean” movies, and two different takes on “The Haunted Mansion.” Rumor has it that “Pirates…” director Gore Verbinski was originally tapped to do “Mission to Mars,” but (wisely) left the project, and replaced by Brian De Palma (“Scarface,” “Dressed to Kill”), but you’d don’t see De Palma’s touch, since “Mission to Mars” is so terribly generic. A fine cast, a great director, a legendary composer (Ennio Morricone), and even an Oscar-winning editor (“Star Wars” editor Paul Hirsch) are all but wasted on this movie’s empty calories.
Space science and the laws of physics are routinely violated in movies, and I would be far more forgiving if they were violated in service of a better story. Sadly, that is not the case here. Scenes such as Tim Robbins‘ Woody effortlessly unlocking his pressurized helmet in a vacuum, or Martian winds hitting with much greater force than they could in Mars’ almost-nonexistent atmospheric pressure. The movie’s greatest sin for me was its embracing the fringe “Face of Mars” conspiratorial nonsense which imagines a long-debunked optical illusion as a giant Martian artifact.
There might’ve been an interesting enough story with the astronauts simply discovering common ancestral DNA on Mars, confirming the still-possible theory of panspermia (life on Earth being seeded from elsewhere in the solar system). Instead, the movie goes all in with the conspiracy crap, and it never recovers. When I first saw the uncovered “face” at Cydonia appear at the end of the movie’s first act, I knew my hopes of “Mission to Mars” being a realistic and definitive Mars exploration/survival story were effectively dashed. Fortunately, that hope was later revived by author Andy Weir‘s 2011 novel “The Martian,” which was beautifully adapted in 2015 by screenwriter Drew Goddard and director Ridley Scott.
With a wasted cast and other talented creatives, “Mission to Mars” still reeks of wasted opportunity a quarter century later. This movie could’ve been a timeless classic; a Mars-based “20,000 Leagues Under the Sea.” Instead, we get a mediocre 1990s SyFy TV-movie script pumped up into a feature film by a massive influx of Disney cash, but lacking the goods to use it creatively or wisely.
If you want a solid Mars adventure fix? Stick with “The Martian,” or even “Robinson Crusoe on Mars” instead. At least you’ll feel genuine investment with their characters. Even after 25 years, “Mission to Mars” remains a no-go for launch.
Where to Watch
“Mission to Mars” is currently available to stream on YouTube Premium (with subscription), and for free on FuboTV. The movie is also available on Disney+, but only in European markets, not in North America. “Mission…” is also available on a Region 1 DVD via Amazon.com, and on Blu-Ray, but the Blu-Ray is a Region 2 import (a non-issue with an international Blu-Ray player).
Mission To Mars had none of the gravitas that 2001: A Space Odyssey, Solaris and Interstellar had. But for its ending that was meant to signify our fascination with Mars, I could give it enough points even if I naturally expected something a lot more spectacular. Thanks for your review.
When I went to see it, I remember hoping it’d be something closer to what we eventually got with 2015’s superior “The Martian,” but sadly, it descended into half-baked “Face on Mars” conspiracy theories.
Such a shame…
Indeed considering how Mars in much of our sci-fi from War Of The Worlds to Total Recall can be most significantly captivating. Ray Bradbury’s The Martian Chronicles were probably the most appealing for me at the time.