Mission to Mars (2000)

Mission to Mars is Brian De Palma’s 2000 science fiction epic and it’s a very very obvious homage to Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey.

The first thing that needs to be said is that De Palma was brought into the project late in the game when the previous director quit. The screenplay had already been finalised. The sensible thing to do would have been to drop the script into the wastepaper basket and start again but De Palma did not have that option. He was stuck with the script (which includes some horrifically awful dialogue). And the cast. De Palma was given an increase in the budget and perhaps that’s what tempted him. It’s a temptation he should have resisted.

The first manned mission to Mars in 2020 ends in disaster. Nobody knows what happened exact that whatever it was was strange and inexplicable. There is a possibility that one crew member survived.

NASA launches a rescue mission and it’s a fiasco. The survivors of the rescue mission do manage to reach Mars. They find the survivor of the first mission and he has a weird story to tell. Something about a force emerging from a mountaintop. He thinks he has found at least the beginnings of an explanation.

And then we find out what it was all about. It’s all deep profound cosmic stuff.

There are countless shots and images that are either direct homages to 2001 or are at least heavily inspired by Kubrick’s movie. Unfortunately Mission to Mars just doesn’t recapture the visual magic and inspiration of Kubrick’s movie. And, even though it was made more than 30 years later, the special effects are just not up to the standards of the Kubrick film.

Kubrick’s spaceship was cooler. Both Kubrick’s and De Palma’s spaceships are partially rotating to achieve artificial gravity. Both movies include scenes demonstrating the disorienting feel of astronauts living inside a rotating cylinder. Pe Palma manages these scenes quite well. Both movies include the kind of gigantic rotating space station that we were promised we would get in the future but the space station scenes in 2001 have a lot more style and wit.

In both movies the interplanetary spaceship runs into major problems. In 2001 the problems occur when the spacecraft’s onboard artificial intelligence, HAL, goes rogue. Very cleverly we never get a precise explanation of why he goes rogue. We are left to speculate. Was it just a random failure or does it have a much deeper significance? In Mission to Mars the spaceship runs into a meteor storm, just like in every 1950s sci-fi B-movie. This is not exactly inspired writing.

In both movies there’s an attempt to save an astronaut drifting helplessly in space, but in Mission to Mars it’s more sentimental and more corny and more conventionally heroic.

Mission to Mars also has an equivalent of the famous monolith from 2001.

There are elements homaged from various other science fiction movies as well. In fact there is nothing at all in this movie that could be called original.

Somehow, despite a vast CGI budget, Mission to Mars manages to be visually uninteresting. The better scenes are way too reminiscent of better scenes in better movies.

Both movies end up getting into philosophical and scientific speculation about our origins and our destiny. Kubrick’s movie ends on a mysterious enigmatic note. De Palma’s movie spells everything out, and it’s not worth spelling out. 2001 is a movie you can watch over and over again. It’s a movie you want to think about. Trust me, once you’ve seen Mission to Mars you will never want to rewatch it. You will never want to think about it. You will just want to forget it.

Given the awful script and cringe-inducing dialogue it’s difficult to judge the acting. The characters are mere clichés. I guess the cast members were doing their best.

The ending of Mission to Mars is unbelievably bad. It’s embarrassing and trite.

We all make mistakes. This movie was a very big mistake for De Palma. Perhaps science fiction was just not his forte.

I’m a De Palma fan but it’s difficult to recommend Mission to Mars.

I watched the German Blu-Ray which looks very nice.

It’s interesting to compare this film to John Carpenter’s Ghosts of Mars made about the same time. Both movies are generally regarded as misfires by major directors. Ghosts of Mars has some real problems but I think it’s the better film.