Brian de Palma’s ‘Mission to Mars‘
is one of those rare movies that didn’t make it quite in the cinema,
despite the reviews. The movie tells the tale of a rescue mission to
Mars. We have seen dozen of those ‘Mars movies’, but De Palma’s movie
strikes a good balance between reality and well, science fiction:
‘Mission to Mars’ had different NASA advisors help making the movie.
According De Palma, the technology as shown in the movie are actually
things that are in NASA’s ‘Mission to Mars’ plans. However there are
certain things that actually make it a science fiction movie: Buzz
Aldrin mentioned that the movie will be a big hit for UFO fans and the ‘face of Mars’ followers.
Nonetheless, the movie has some striking similarities with Kubrick’s
‘2001’: pretty pictures, scenery and dazzling (like in
amazing) computer graphics. Not to mention a fairly realistic
‘zero gravity’ approach. Watch the blood and pop in this movie behave under those ‘no gravity’ circumstances. Pretty neat.
The story is a ‘bummer’: when a major actor is killed way
before the movie ends, it normally says a lot about the movie. In this
movie, Tim Robbins, an actor I actually like, gets killed within
15 minutes (woops). The rest is history: Watch the movie’s special
effects (stunning, really) and forget about the story line and the
rest: interesting, but thank Einstein, it’s science fiction, you know.