Red Planet: Movie Review, DVD Review (2000)

For its time, the film was a hugely hyped, big-budget spectacle--one that not only influenced Fritz Lang’s 1926 film, “Metropolis,” but which directly influenced Hollywood’s fascination with the red planet.

It may not be fair to suggest that the groundbreaking “Aelita” is responsible for such camp debacles as “Santa Claus Conquers the Martians,” “Lobsterman from Mars,” “Devil Girl from Mars” and “Planet Blood,” but it can be said that the film sparked pop culture’s ongoing fascination with seeing Mars on film, thus paving the way for those lesser films to land in theaters.


It stars Val Kilmer, Carrie-Ann Moss, Tom Sizemore, Benjamin Bratt, Simon Baker and Terrence Stamp as astronauts sent to Mars to study the growth of algae planted earlier to create a breathable atmosphere. But when a solar flare damages the crew’s ship, all hell--predictably--breaks loose: part of the crew finds themselves stranded on Mars while another, Bowman (Moss), is stuck aboard the failing mother ship.


Still, the film is mostly too introspective, too drawn out, too leaden to suit. There was a time in film, such as in “Aelita: Queen of Mars,” when a trip to Mars was as impossible to conceive as it was exciting to imagine. Now, with Mars within our grasp, we’ve come to a point when the trip itself seems almost like a ho-hum breeze.


Grade: C+