Mission to Mars: Houston, we have a problem
Aliens taught us that in space, no one can hear you scream. Mission to Mars teaches us something a little closer to home: that in the theatre, everyone can hear you scream. That's about the only fitting response to something like this, though. Quite simply, Mission to Mars played a lot better as a trailer--where things don't have to make sense--than full-length. It does have one cool effects shot (that dust tornado), but other than that it's just Contact and Total Recall meet 2001 and Sphere at Apollo 13's pad and sit down to watch some Abyss. And not even the director's version, either. Not that they pay much attention, anyway . . .
The year is 2020. We know this because the Isuzu's look different. And the mission is of course that first jump to the red planet. Remember all the hoopla a year or two back about the 'face' on Mars? It matters here. First, however, there's months and years of getting there. Though all the time in between is taken care of with subtitles ("X months later," etc), once the dialogue starts trying to account for that missing time, it'll feel like years. Clunky, contrived--the same kind of bad-idea lines Double Jeopardy required to 'account' for Ashley Judd's time in prison. Mission to Mars could have seriously benefited from condensing the action down to a day or two, then presenting the rest out of order. We are a sophisticated audience, after all; we can make sense, don't need everything laid out in obvious cause and effect order.
Too, and in large part due to all the forecasting which results from presenting everything in 1-2-3 fashion, it's not at all difficult to figure out who's dying here, who's staying where, all that. I mean, even without Mission to Mars, lots of the developments are cliché by now: did the captain not die in Supernova, in Pitch Black? was it a good idea in Event Horizon to send a grieving spouse into deep space? In addition, all the warm-fuzzy parts of Mission to Mars are cloying, to say the least: zero-grav dances, watching old home movies (per Strange Days), heart-to-hearts with the director of operations, a wholly ridiculous raising-the-flag scene, all that. It doesn't help any that these space-shuttles which the crew inhabits for long long months don't look all that lived in, as Ridley Scott might have done, but instead look as sterile as ever.
But that face: is it, as the trailer strongly intimates, our alien ancestors? When we first see it, yes, it does look cool enough to carry us over all the other already-apparent flaws in the movie. The problem is, it just doesn't really get any cooler, ever. I mean, yeah, our 'worthy' survivors here do eventually get inside, but, instead of having that jack up the action any, it's a long releases of tension. Now we know everyone's going to be OK. All that's necessary is the movie has to end for fifteen minutes, fifteen minutes which includes an ill-advised alien (long-finger, crying, a little too benign?) and a really bad answering-machine joke. And this is a movie which includes talent like Gary Sinise, Tim Robbins, Armin Mueller-Stahl? Regrettably, yes. To their credit, their performances are of course nothing less than we'd expect, it's just that what they're performing is perhaps the weakest space-movie to come along in a while. Including the direct-to-video slasher-in-space stuff. The one good thing about Mission to Mars is that DePalma finally rolls the credits at some arbitrary point, and you can leave. If you were careful, too, your fond memories of 2001 will still be intact. Mission to Mars is forgettable enough that that shouldn't be a problem.
(c)2000 Stephen Graham Jones, http://www.cinemuck.com
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