[Ryan Kelly is an East coast based amateur film blogger who writes out of a passion to share his views with the world. He is the author of the blog Medfly Quarantine.]
One of the most inexplicably hated movies of this past decade, Brian De Palma's Mission to Mars, is not only "not that bad", it might even be great. The film presently rests with a score of 34 on Metacritic (which translates to "generally unfavorable reviews", to those who don't speak the language), and a confounding, outrageous, wholly unjustifiable 24% on Rotten Tomatoes. Of course, much of this hatred arises from the fact that the movie was marketed one way (a space adventure from the man who made Mission: Impossible just a few years earlier), while actually being a thoughtful, humanist, post-modern take on science fiction lore. And I feel it's the film's unique encapsulation of the science-fiction genre on film that may have jarred some at first; it has the grand, cosmic mystery of Kubrick, the humanistic benevolence of Spielberg, and the spirit of science fiction pulp and b-movies. Tim Robbins' character, Woody Blake, wears a Flash Gordon rocketship around his neck, and like the Robbins character, Mission to Mars keeps the adventurous spirit of B-movies close to its heart; but it's more than a celebration of trash, it's a transcending of it. So many action spectacles are given a free pass in spite of more often than not being nothing more than B-movies with high production values, but Mission to Mars understands the childlike sense of wonder these films would tap in to—De Palma has never been an artist who denies cinema's more base pleasures—but De Palma does much more here than dress-up empty material with CGI.
The movie begins with one of De Palma's patented long takes (complete with some Buckwheat Zydeco on the soundtrack), but it's so much more than showing off technique—he introduces us to all the film's principle characters here, the two teams of astronauts that will be the first human beings to set foot on Mars. They each consist of three men, one woman ("same handicap", one character quips at the beginning of the film, but women being equal to men is one of the key elements of Mission to Mars), and this is fitting, as gender dynamics have always been a key element of De Palma's work—and in Mission to Mars, gender dynamics define space exploration, as husband and wife couples are chosen to give support and strength to one another during the long duration of the voyage. It's at this point that the movie introduces us to Jim McConnell (Gary Sinise), an astronaut who, along with his wife, was slated to be on the first manned mission to Mars. However, it is revealed that Sinise's wife got sick and passed away, and he had to unfortunately give up his and his wife's life-long dream of going to Mars in order to be at her side while she died (apparently, playing characters who almost-but-not-quite go to space is Sinise's specialty). For a movie that so many reviewers wrote off as poorly written, the dramatic elements of Mission to Mars are poignant and extremely well played by the film's performers. Yes, it's a film that wears it's heart on its sleeve—but is that really such a bad thing? It's one of the most earnest movies of the decade, so enamored with its central concept and characters that I personally find it difficult not to love it as well.
Mission to Mars, with its large-scale subject and budget, also gives De Palma great material with which to flex his directorial muscle; the incredible special effects and set design make it one of the few movies, outside of 2001, that have actually taken me to space. There is one sequence in a spaceship where the characters dance to Van Halen's "Dance the Night Away", and the camera is as weightless as the characters. Even if you don't like the movie, I defy you (seriously) to tell me that this sequence, at once romantic and bittersweet (romantic in that it shows how in love the Robbins character is with his wife, bittersweet in that it highlights the loss felt by the Sinise character), doesn't at least bring a smile to your face. The sequence that shows the Mars Rover exploring the Mars Terrain (one that recalls R2-D2's arrival on Tattoine from Star Wars), with Ennio Morricone's soothing, beautiful music on the soundtrack, uncannily recreates the surface of Mars in gorgeous widescreen. Brian De Palma has always been a film maker who operates within the Hollywood system, all the while subverting it within his films, and it speaks to what an idiosyncratic artist he is that he managed to bring his unique moral stamp to a large-scale Hollywood spectacle.
The film strips away the usual xenophobia of space action/adventure movies by portraying aliens as benevolent givers of life, as opposed to relegating them to a generic monster role. "Life reaches out for life" is the film's simple, eloquent, and profound mantra—and it's the exact notion that so many films on this subject fail to grasp. It's so easy for films to give us empty spectacle that offer nothing in terms of ideas or subtext, but for a film to challenge our ideas about life, the universe, and everything (to borrow from Douglas Adams) is a rare thing that deserves praise. Of course, this is Brian De Palma we're talking about, so these ideas come from within the firm boundaries of genre; but the subtext is still there, and it's still powerful. Mission to Mars expands on popular folklore by making the so-called "Stone Face of Mars" (something that allegedly proved there was life on Mars which ultimately proved to be an optical illusion right around the time of the film's release) a central plot point; one character says, "In all our myths, in every human culture, Mars has always held a special attraction. I mean, what if that means something?" Mission to Mars assumes that the fact that Mars has tapped into the popular imagination in the manner it has does mean something, and so expands on that pop mythology by making Martians the creators of life on Earth; it is revealed at the end of the movie (set inside the Stone Face) that upon the destruction of life on Mars by an asteroid, Martians "seeded" life on Earth. An inspired CGI sequence gives a brief history of Earth, with the first single celled organisms evolving into fish, then reptiles, then mammals, then humans—this causes Sinise to realize that we are one with not only one another, but with the Martians as well "We're them, they're us" is the film's ultimate realization—all life coming full circle and being intimately related to one another. Then Gary Sinise's Jim McConnell, like Richard Dreyfuss' Roy Neary from Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977), is given a choice between remaining with his human compatriots or hopping in the Martian spaceship into the great unknown, and Sinise makes the decision to go on the quest of eternal enlightenment; the decision many of us would probably like to make, if we weren't too scared of what we might find.
Mission to Mars is, ultimately, a supremely good-natured, highly entertaining adventure film—but one that understands the essence of science ficition, which is ideas about existence and humanity. De Palma gives us all this in the guise of a Hollywood action movie (one released by Disney with a PG rating, no less), but when you take De Palma's career as a whole and realize that he's always been as much defined by popular modalities of storytelling as by his own, highly idiosyncratic style, Mission to Mars feels less like an anomaly and more like a flawless distillation of themes he had previously tackled; at once paying homage to genre and expanding on it. The cosmic perspective of Mission to Mars would pave the way for his next film, Femme Fatale (2002), which instilled his preferred genre (the thriller) with similar cosmological and existential queries presented in Mission to Mars. It has marked the beginning of a bold new phase of De Palma's career, one that would challenge the popular notions about the kind of director he is (plagiarist, stylist, and so on) and enrich his art with bold, dazzlingly self-assured technique.
Showing posts with label Gary Sinise. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Gary Sinise. Show all posts
Thursday, September 10, 2009
De Palma Blog-A-Thon: Visions of Life - Mission to Mars
by Ryan Kelly
[Ryan Kelly is an East coast based amateur film blogger who writes out of a passion to share his views with the world. He is the author of the blog Medfly Quarantine.]
One of the most inexplicably hated movies of this past decade, Brian De Palma's Mission to Mars, is not only "not that bad", it might even be great. The film presently rests with a score of 34 on Metacritic (which translates to "generally unfavorable reviews", to those who don't speak the language), and a confounding, outrageous, wholly unjustifiable 24% on Rotten Tomatoes. Of course, much of this hatred arises from the fact that the movie was marketed one way (a space adventure from the man who made Mission: Impossible just a few years earlier), while actually being a thoughtful, humanist, post-modern take on science fiction lore. And I feel it's the film's unique encapsulation of the science-fiction genre on film that may have jarred some at first; it has the grand, cosmic mystery of Kubrick, the humanistic benevolence of Spielberg, and the spirit of science fiction pulp and b-movies. Tim Robbins' character, Woody Blake, wears a Flash Gordon rocketship around his neck, and like the Robbins character, Mission to Mars keeps the adventurous spirit of B-movies close to its heart; but it's more than a celebration of trash, it's a transcending of it. So many action spectacles are given a free pass in spite of more often than not being nothing more than B-movies with high production values, but Mission to Mars understands the childlike sense of wonder these films would tap in to—De Palma has never been an artist who denies cinema's more base pleasures—but De Palma does much more here than dress-up empty material with CGI.
The movie begins with one of De Palma's patented long takes (complete with some Buckwheat Zydeco on the soundtrack), but it's so much more than showing off technique—he introduces us to all the film's principle characters here, the two teams of astronauts that will be the first human beings to set foot on Mars. They each consist of three men, one woman ("same handicap", one character quips at the beginning of the film, but women being equal to men is one of the key elements of Mission to Mars), and this is fitting, as gender dynamics have always been a key element of De Palma's work—and in Mission to Mars, gender dynamics define space exploration, as husband and wife couples are chosen to give support and strength to one another during the long duration of the voyage. It's at this point that the movie introduces us to Jim McConnell (Gary Sinise), an astronaut who, along with his wife, was slated to be on the first manned mission to Mars. However, it is revealed that Sinise's wife got sick and passed away, and he had to unfortunately give up his and his wife's life-long dream of going to Mars in order to be at her side while she died (apparently, playing characters who almost-but-not-quite go to space is Sinise's specialty). For a movie that so many reviewers wrote off as poorly written, the dramatic elements of Mission to Mars are poignant and extremely well played by the film's performers. Yes, it's a film that wears it's heart on its sleeve—but is that really such a bad thing? It's one of the most earnest movies of the decade, so enamored with its central concept and characters that I personally find it difficult not to love it as well.
Mission to Mars, with its large-scale subject and budget, also gives De Palma great material with which to flex his directorial muscle; the incredible special effects and set design make it one of the few movies, outside of 2001, that have actually taken me to space. There is one sequence in a spaceship where the characters dance to Van Halen's "Dance the Night Away", and the camera is as weightless as the characters. Even if you don't like the movie, I defy you (seriously) to tell me that this sequence, at once romantic and bittersweet (romantic in that it shows how in love the Robbins character is with his wife, bittersweet in that it highlights the loss felt by the Sinise character), doesn't at least bring a smile to your face. The sequence that shows the Mars Rover exploring the Mars Terrain (one that recalls R2-D2's arrival on Tattoine from Star Wars), with Ennio Morricone's soothing, beautiful music on the soundtrack, uncannily recreates the surface of Mars in gorgeous widescreen. Brian De Palma has always been a film maker who operates within the Hollywood system, all the while subverting it within his films, and it speaks to what an idiosyncratic artist he is that he managed to bring his unique moral stamp to a large-scale Hollywood spectacle.
The film strips away the usual xenophobia of space action/adventure movies by portraying aliens as benevolent givers of life, as opposed to relegating them to a generic monster role. "Life reaches out for life" is the film's simple, eloquent, and profound mantra—and it's the exact notion that so many films on this subject fail to grasp. It's so easy for films to give us empty spectacle that offer nothing in terms of ideas or subtext, but for a film to challenge our ideas about life, the universe, and everything (to borrow from Douglas Adams) is a rare thing that deserves praise. Of course, this is Brian De Palma we're talking about, so these ideas come from within the firm boundaries of genre; but the subtext is still there, and it's still powerful. Mission to Mars expands on popular folklore by making the so-called "Stone Face of Mars" (something that allegedly proved there was life on Mars which ultimately proved to be an optical illusion right around the time of the film's release) a central plot point; one character says, "In all our myths, in every human culture, Mars has always held a special attraction. I mean, what if that means something?" Mission to Mars assumes that the fact that Mars has tapped into the popular imagination in the manner it has does mean something, and so expands on that pop mythology by making Martians the creators of life on Earth; it is revealed at the end of the movie (set inside the Stone Face) that upon the destruction of life on Mars by an asteroid, Martians "seeded" life on Earth. An inspired CGI sequence gives a brief history of Earth, with the first single celled organisms evolving into fish, then reptiles, then mammals, then humans—this causes Sinise to realize that we are one with not only one another, but with the Martians as well "We're them, they're us" is the film's ultimate realization—all life coming full circle and being intimately related to one another. Then Gary Sinise's Jim McConnell, like Richard Dreyfuss' Roy Neary from Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977), is given a choice between remaining with his human compatriots or hopping in the Martian spaceship into the great unknown, and Sinise makes the decision to go on the quest of eternal enlightenment; the decision many of us would probably like to make, if we weren't too scared of what we might find.
Mission to Mars is, ultimately, a supremely good-natured, highly entertaining adventure film—but one that understands the essence of science ficition, which is ideas about existence and humanity. De Palma gives us all this in the guise of a Hollywood action movie (one released by Disney with a PG rating, no less), but when you take De Palma's career as a whole and realize that he's always been as much defined by popular modalities of storytelling as by his own, highly idiosyncratic style, Mission to Mars feels less like an anomaly and more like a flawless distillation of themes he had previously tackled; at once paying homage to genre and expanding on it. The cosmic perspective of Mission to Mars would pave the way for his next film, Femme Fatale (2002), which instilled his preferred genre (the thriller) with similar cosmological and existential queries presented in Mission to Mars. It has marked the beginning of a bold new phase of De Palma's career, one that would challenge the popular notions about the kind of director he is (plagiarist, stylist, and so on) and enrich his art with bold, dazzlingly self-assured technique.
[Ryan Kelly is an East coast based amateur film blogger who writes out of a passion to share his views with the world. He is the author of the blog Medfly Quarantine.]
One of the most inexplicably hated movies of this past decade, Brian De Palma's Mission to Mars, is not only "not that bad", it might even be great. The film presently rests with a score of 34 on Metacritic (which translates to "generally unfavorable reviews", to those who don't speak the language), and a confounding, outrageous, wholly unjustifiable 24% on Rotten Tomatoes. Of course, much of this hatred arises from the fact that the movie was marketed one way (a space adventure from the man who made Mission: Impossible just a few years earlier), while actually being a thoughtful, humanist, post-modern take on science fiction lore. And I feel it's the film's unique encapsulation of the science-fiction genre on film that may have jarred some at first; it has the grand, cosmic mystery of Kubrick, the humanistic benevolence of Spielberg, and the spirit of science fiction pulp and b-movies. Tim Robbins' character, Woody Blake, wears a Flash Gordon rocketship around his neck, and like the Robbins character, Mission to Mars keeps the adventurous spirit of B-movies close to its heart; but it's more than a celebration of trash, it's a transcending of it. So many action spectacles are given a free pass in spite of more often than not being nothing more than B-movies with high production values, but Mission to Mars understands the childlike sense of wonder these films would tap in to—De Palma has never been an artist who denies cinema's more base pleasures—but De Palma does much more here than dress-up empty material with CGI.
The movie begins with one of De Palma's patented long takes (complete with some Buckwheat Zydeco on the soundtrack), but it's so much more than showing off technique—he introduces us to all the film's principle characters here, the two teams of astronauts that will be the first human beings to set foot on Mars. They each consist of three men, one woman ("same handicap", one character quips at the beginning of the film, but women being equal to men is one of the key elements of Mission to Mars), and this is fitting, as gender dynamics have always been a key element of De Palma's work—and in Mission to Mars, gender dynamics define space exploration, as husband and wife couples are chosen to give support and strength to one another during the long duration of the voyage. It's at this point that the movie introduces us to Jim McConnell (Gary Sinise), an astronaut who, along with his wife, was slated to be on the first manned mission to Mars. However, it is revealed that Sinise's wife got sick and passed away, and he had to unfortunately give up his and his wife's life-long dream of going to Mars in order to be at her side while she died (apparently, playing characters who almost-but-not-quite go to space is Sinise's specialty). For a movie that so many reviewers wrote off as poorly written, the dramatic elements of Mission to Mars are poignant and extremely well played by the film's performers. Yes, it's a film that wears it's heart on its sleeve—but is that really such a bad thing? It's one of the most earnest movies of the decade, so enamored with its central concept and characters that I personally find it difficult not to love it as well.
Mission to Mars, with its large-scale subject and budget, also gives De Palma great material with which to flex his directorial muscle; the incredible special effects and set design make it one of the few movies, outside of 2001, that have actually taken me to space. There is one sequence in a spaceship where the characters dance to Van Halen's "Dance the Night Away", and the camera is as weightless as the characters. Even if you don't like the movie, I defy you (seriously) to tell me that this sequence, at once romantic and bittersweet (romantic in that it shows how in love the Robbins character is with his wife, bittersweet in that it highlights the loss felt by the Sinise character), doesn't at least bring a smile to your face. The sequence that shows the Mars Rover exploring the Mars Terrain (one that recalls R2-D2's arrival on Tattoine from Star Wars), with Ennio Morricone's soothing, beautiful music on the soundtrack, uncannily recreates the surface of Mars in gorgeous widescreen. Brian De Palma has always been a film maker who operates within the Hollywood system, all the while subverting it within his films, and it speaks to what an idiosyncratic artist he is that he managed to bring his unique moral stamp to a large-scale Hollywood spectacle.
The film strips away the usual xenophobia of space action/adventure movies by portraying aliens as benevolent givers of life, as opposed to relegating them to a generic monster role. "Life reaches out for life" is the film's simple, eloquent, and profound mantra—and it's the exact notion that so many films on this subject fail to grasp. It's so easy for films to give us empty spectacle that offer nothing in terms of ideas or subtext, but for a film to challenge our ideas about life, the universe, and everything (to borrow from Douglas Adams) is a rare thing that deserves praise. Of course, this is Brian De Palma we're talking about, so these ideas come from within the firm boundaries of genre; but the subtext is still there, and it's still powerful. Mission to Mars expands on popular folklore by making the so-called "Stone Face of Mars" (something that allegedly proved there was life on Mars which ultimately proved to be an optical illusion right around the time of the film's release) a central plot point; one character says, "In all our myths, in every human culture, Mars has always held a special attraction. I mean, what if that means something?" Mission to Mars assumes that the fact that Mars has tapped into the popular imagination in the manner it has does mean something, and so expands on that pop mythology by making Martians the creators of life on Earth; it is revealed at the end of the movie (set inside the Stone Face) that upon the destruction of life on Mars by an asteroid, Martians "seeded" life on Earth. An inspired CGI sequence gives a brief history of Earth, with the first single celled organisms evolving into fish, then reptiles, then mammals, then humans—this causes Sinise to realize that we are one with not only one another, but with the Martians as well "We're them, they're us" is the film's ultimate realization—all life coming full circle and being intimately related to one another. Then Gary Sinise's Jim McConnell, like Richard Dreyfuss' Roy Neary from Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977), is given a choice between remaining with his human compatriots or hopping in the Martian spaceship into the great unknown, and Sinise makes the decision to go on the quest of eternal enlightenment; the decision many of us would probably like to make, if we weren't too scared of what we might find.
Mission to Mars is, ultimately, a supremely good-natured, highly entertaining adventure film—but one that understands the essence of science ficition, which is ideas about existence and humanity. De Palma gives us all this in the guise of a Hollywood action movie (one released by Disney with a PG rating, no less), but when you take De Palma's career as a whole and realize that he's always been as much defined by popular modalities of storytelling as by his own, highly idiosyncratic style, Mission to Mars feels less like an anomaly and more like a flawless distillation of themes he had previously tackled; at once paying homage to genre and expanding on it. The cosmic perspective of Mission to Mars would pave the way for his next film, Femme Fatale (2002), which instilled his preferred genre (the thriller) with similar cosmological and existential queries presented in Mission to Mars. It has marked the beginning of a bold new phase of De Palma's career, one that would challenge the popular notions about the kind of director he is (plagiarist, stylist, and so on) and enrich his art with bold, dazzlingly self-assured technique.
Wednesday, September 9, 2009
De Palma Blog-A-Thon: Re-Visiting Mission to Mars (2000)
by Chris Voss
[Here's a look at an unlikely work in Brian De Palma's filmography by the talented Chris Voss, who writes about film at Celluloid Moon, an offshoot of his main site, Geek Monkey]
Has there been a Brian De Palma film that tries harder to distance itself from being a "Brian De Palma film" than Mission to Mars? Along with The Bonfire of the Vanities (both, coincidentally, rank at the bottom of De Palma's filmography over at Rotten Tomatoes, with 24% favorable), it seems the least fitted to the themes and styles he's experimented with throughout his career. It also has the dubious personal honor of being one of only two films (the other being Francis Ford Coppola's unfairly maligned Bram Stoker's Dracula) that caused my wife to exclaim mid-film, "This was one of the stupidest movies I've ever seen."
That was nine years ago, when the film was released, and was the moment in time that instigated me to re-visit the film with as part of Cinema Viewfinder's De Palma Blog-A-Thon.
For the uninitiated, Mission to Mars is about a manned mission to the Red Planet (led by Don Cheadle, who's probably the best thing in the movie) that goes south when the team is seemingly attacked by a mysterious presence that results in the exposure of an enormous, alien face carved out of the rock. A crack team comprised of Tim Robbins, Jerry O'Connell, Connie Nielsen and Gary Sinise (who was originally slated to lead the mission until the death of his wife caused him to be taken off the mission), attempt to rescue the mission but wind up crashing on Mars, where they find Cheadle miraculously alive, and discover the mystery behind the stone face and the beings who carved it.
I only recently discovered that Mission to Mars was in part based on a Disney attraction and, in hindsight, makes the overall visual style of the film more understandable, if not better. It opens with a signature De Palma sequence—a single crane shot that slowly weaves its way through a barbecue party for Cheadle and his crew. The camera leisurely weaves its way through the main players, setting up the same tired group stereotyping: the laid back leader and his awesome wife who's almost but not quite as as capable as he is; the wise-cracking stud/comic relief; only cutting away when we get to Gary Sinise—the hot shot damaged hero.
These slow, continuous takes appear throughout Mission to Mars, and it's hard not to be impressed by some of the moments De Palma wrings out of the story. The space station monitoring the mission is introduced in a sequence that echoes the opening shot, tracking down corridors and following the walls until arriving at the command center. Some of the effects shots are particularly good—De Palma wisely backs away from the action, letting the moments unfurl methodically, as when the face's "security system" makes its appearance:
A later scene, inside the stone face, is reminiscent of Kubrick in its pristine, clinical presentation:
But nothing can overcome a script that relies too heavily on tired cliches and superfluous exposition. Plot points are telegraphed miles in advance (did anyone doubt the whole "candy DNA" gag would be important later on?); exposition is crammed into every scene; and even the effective set pieces, such as when the rescue team are forced to abandon their ship and try to manually latch onto to an orbiting satellite before burning up in Mars' atmosphere, are ruined with corny dialogue and over-used exclamations.
All of which is a shame because under all the silliness is an attempt to make an interesting science fiction film, as opposed to a sci-fi popcorn movie. Maybe not GREAT science fiction, but at least something that tries to stand out against what was popular at the time (the similarly dismal Red Planet came out the same year). Mission to Mars fails.
I have to wonder why, seeing it again, what was it in the story or the concept that caused Disney/Touchstone to reach out and say, "You know who'd be a good choice for this? Brian De Palma," and then bury what De Palma is known for doing in a rote, bland movie that was entirely typical of everything else that was out there.
Randoms ("borrowed" from Matt Dessem's wonderful Criterion Contraption)
[Here's a look at an unlikely work in Brian De Palma's filmography by the talented Chris Voss, who writes about film at Celluloid Moon, an offshoot of his main site, Geek Monkey]
Has there been a Brian De Palma film that tries harder to distance itself from being a "Brian De Palma film" than Mission to Mars? Along with The Bonfire of the Vanities (both, coincidentally, rank at the bottom of De Palma's filmography over at Rotten Tomatoes, with 24% favorable), it seems the least fitted to the themes and styles he's experimented with throughout his career. It also has the dubious personal honor of being one of only two films (the other being Francis Ford Coppola's unfairly maligned Bram Stoker's Dracula) that caused my wife to exclaim mid-film, "This was one of the stupidest movies I've ever seen."
That was nine years ago, when the film was released, and was the moment in time that instigated me to re-visit the film with as part of Cinema Viewfinder's De Palma Blog-A-Thon.
For the uninitiated, Mission to Mars is about a manned mission to the Red Planet (led by Don Cheadle, who's probably the best thing in the movie) that goes south when the team is seemingly attacked by a mysterious presence that results in the exposure of an enormous, alien face carved out of the rock. A crack team comprised of Tim Robbins, Jerry O'Connell, Connie Nielsen and Gary Sinise (who was originally slated to lead the mission until the death of his wife caused him to be taken off the mission), attempt to rescue the mission but wind up crashing on Mars, where they find Cheadle miraculously alive, and discover the mystery behind the stone face and the beings who carved it.
I only recently discovered that Mission to Mars was in part based on a Disney attraction and, in hindsight, makes the overall visual style of the film more understandable, if not better. It opens with a signature De Palma sequence—a single crane shot that slowly weaves its way through a barbecue party for Cheadle and his crew. The camera leisurely weaves its way through the main players, setting up the same tired group stereotyping: the laid back leader and his awesome wife who's almost but not quite as as capable as he is; the wise-cracking stud/comic relief; only cutting away when we get to Gary Sinise—the hot shot damaged hero.
These slow, continuous takes appear throughout Mission to Mars, and it's hard not to be impressed by some of the moments De Palma wrings out of the story. The space station monitoring the mission is introduced in a sequence that echoes the opening shot, tracking down corridors and following the walls until arriving at the command center. Some of the effects shots are particularly good—De Palma wisely backs away from the action, letting the moments unfurl methodically, as when the face's "security system" makes its appearance:
A later scene, inside the stone face, is reminiscent of Kubrick in its pristine, clinical presentation:
But nothing can overcome a script that relies too heavily on tired cliches and superfluous exposition. Plot points are telegraphed miles in advance (did anyone doubt the whole "candy DNA" gag would be important later on?); exposition is crammed into every scene; and even the effective set pieces, such as when the rescue team are forced to abandon their ship and try to manually latch onto to an orbiting satellite before burning up in Mars' atmosphere, are ruined with corny dialogue and over-used exclamations.
All of which is a shame because under all the silliness is an attempt to make an interesting science fiction film, as opposed to a sci-fi popcorn movie. Maybe not GREAT science fiction, but at least something that tries to stand out against what was popular at the time (the similarly dismal Red Planet came out the same year). Mission to Mars fails.
I have to wonder why, seeing it again, what was it in the story or the concept that caused Disney/Touchstone to reach out and say, "You know who'd be a good choice for this? Brian De Palma," and then bury what De Palma is known for doing in a rote, bland movie that was entirely typical of everything else that was out there.
Randoms ("borrowed" from Matt Dessem's wonderful Criterion Contraption)
- For a science fiction film, there are dozens of odd choices and inaccuracies that pull you out of the film. Movement on the planet feels decidedly ordinary - there is no discernible gravitational difference between Mars and Earth. In the space station, zero gravity asserts itself only when it's needed to provide moments like the candy DNA strand or the dance between Robbins and Nielsen.
- The oddest choice, the one that pulled me completely out of the film, was the decision to have everyone's voices sound perfectly normal when inside their spacesuits. It sounds like they're all in a room talking together. Quite possibly the best radio reception to ever be used in space.
- Gary Sinise wears A LOT of eye shadow in this film. It's kind of disturbing.
- Although parenthood has tempered her vitriol, my wife still hates Mission to Mars, feeling it's actively trying to make her dumber. Note to self: DO NOT ask her to re-visit Bram Stoker's Dracula with you.
-------------------------------------
Just when you think you're doing something original (like who the heck wants to talk about Mission to Mars?), you find later that someone has indeed done it, and done it better. There's a great article over at Reverse Shot that essentially makes the same points, albeit with more flair and better overall writing ability.
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