Sadly Over-hyped

Good start, but then it gets ruined

Each character in this movie — down to the smallest one — is an individual rather than a type, prone to spontaneous changes of mood and sometimes amusing outbursts of pettiness or ill humor.

There are moments that feel comical, some horrific, and some downright inspiring but the tonal shifts hardly matter as the end results come to a film that's perfect for this time.

What "Red Planet" could have been if had been brought to the screen with necessary scientific accuracy. At first glance, the movie seems tightly made with 100 Minutes running time without end crawler. But director Antony Hoffman and screenwriter Chuck Pfarrer give in towards a mediocre entertainment factor. Spaceship arrives at Mars orbit. The Hollywood standard incident occurs with Spaceship having malfunctions. Exploring crew gets stranded on the Mars surface. Then they team members die one by one by accident, hand-to-hand struggle, malfunctioning robot dog attack and bio-hazard insect invasion. Spaceship in orbit gets fixed. One member on Mars surface survives. He gets off the planet by locating a hidden space capsule and stealing the battery from robot initiate rescue probe engines. Spaceship crew of two seals their victory with a kiss. The couple flies back to Earth.Due to the string of a straight forward scene structure, the movie can be enjoyable. Nevertheless every step of the characters' journey in "Red Planet" comes to easy. There is no urgency nor dramatic tension within scenes. The cast plays their parts, but they are not living it on screen. The ingredients have been on the plate to choose from, but the director makes no use of it. Cinematography Peter Suschitzky does only the absolute minimum to convey the visual story with color, light and standard camera movements. Production Designer Owen Paterson has his craft under control, but does not get challenged by the director. So to speak it seems that the studio executives took charge of the production footage and finished it up with two editors in standardized manner to open the movie up for widely ranged target audience, which in the case "Red Planet" did not work out. The movie fell flat at the box office domestically as well as internationally with just approx 33,500,000.00 U.S. Dollars revenue worldwide.This 80,000,000.00 Millions U.S. Dollars production shows in a sense that if a first-time director comes to story-driven feature material after a successful commercial portfolio, then it does not guarantee that a directorial signature can be translated. "Red Planet" could have been directed by anyone, it lacks a director's vision, which challenges the cast in their interactions, even dare to improvise from a mediocre script to surprise the audience instead of sedate them in their comfort zone. The production team of "Red Planet" had it all. Director Antony Hoffmann was unable to make use the values to create an event movie that last in the specter's mind.

(No SERIOUS spoilers! Just playing safe!)From start to finish, this film is LAZY. Research is non-existent. Astronauts (and presumably scriptwriters) are too ignorant of past missions to know the name of Pathfinder! ("That rover, what's its name" is one reference.) The geneticist talks about writing code with A, G, T and P! (It is C not P.) How little effort would it take, to get such basics right?Why did non-fans of science try making a space movie?What an insult to the audience this travesty is.If you watch, enjoy your eye candy, the gleaming white futurism and the boobies. Stop with the dishonest reviews. Wanking to this film ISN'T anything to be ashamed of, but dishonestly praising the film for its artistic integrity IS!Even Mission To Mars had fewer errors, better dialogue, more point, and fewer people killed by bad science. I almost feel like watching it again, for a dose of sanity.Of course accurate science isn't everything in storytelling, but a bit of authenticity wouldn't go amiss. This science is so bad it would actually distract me from a decent story even if there were one; as it's only down to laziness I won't excuse that.When characters are saved or lost on the basis of fantasy, it does detract from my ability to care what happens next. There are no real, well-constrained problems to ponder, to guess how characters might survive; no judgement can be made of likely outcomes, on any basis but the most fundamental rules of narrative: Has a character been bad? Have they been redeemed yet? Will redemption require a noble sacrifice to save their fellow crew? Such basic (and vague) narrative rules are obeyed, but no peril nor solution is feasible, giving the whole story a pointless, vacuous feel.So don't confuse this space fantasy with science fiction; there's not a bit of science in it. We have unexplained artificial gravity, vanishing when the power does! It's only set in 2025! The FIRST manned Mars mission uses a ship like a futuristic luxury yacht inside, with ample floor space and bright white light. With Carrie-Anne Moss's side-boob shower shots so early, and unashamedly blatant nipple shots later on, it's certainly pleasing to look at; just don't expect plot that withstands any scrutiny. Examples follow...The opening's as clumsy as any set-up could be, giving a vague nod to the half-baked reasons why our blue- green ocean planet could be a less viable habitat than the destination –- a red dust-bowl with an atmosphere 1% as dense. A case of bad predictions? Well they claim the world was poisoned, beyond being saved, as early as 2000 -- the film's release date! However pessimistic your outlook, to suggest starting again on Mars is more hopeful than improving things on Earth is the kind of stupidity you can only learn in college. What a shame the makers had to cram in the popular ideology of the day. Is it not enough that humanity has a more certain future, the more worlds we colonise? We never know what the future holds. Would it be unrealistic to open with a mission to colonise Mars, without the drivel? Is it not something we want to do anyway?Ridiculously (and inconsistently) advanced technology with thin, generalised narrative themes, combined with those hot booby shots, convinced me this film was aimed not at a science fiction audience but at men who need to expand their porn collections. Lately we've been separating works of storytelling art from works of boob art, which I think represents positive progress for both. Had we made so little progress in 2000? Was this film behind the times? I pity boys of 14 who saw this with family, especially their mums. Even boobs could be wasted on those poor lads, who may have simply cringed –- a real shame.The characters are 2D and, for astronauts, astonishingly anti-intellectual and ignorant according to their unbelievable dialogue. Watch this film if you're too drunk/stoned to care about storytelling, and if you know no better science than the lazy researchers in the production team. Otherwise don't waste bandwidth - - let alone money -- downloading.Powering down to the planet at such an angle requires no equations to see its wrongness! Any intuitive understanding, or just a good eye for Angry Birds Space, is plenty!Technical restrictions on plot, regarding fuel and so on, feel inconsistent and arbitrary; they're cumbersomely received from the dialogue.This is the opposite of hard science fiction; it won't get people thinking about what advances might be possible, in what order; it won't make children draw space factories at Lagrange points, served by elevators from the Moon; it'll only provoke, "Wow! It looks really cool!", from the slow-witted and serve as masturbation fodder for Moss fans.Oxygen is the only acknowledged problem with breathing on Mars. Oxygen is found mysteriously higher than expected, thanks to plot elements I needn't spoil; this nod to the problem might appear sufficient to a poorly educated child. No mention is made of pressure, except to convey how bad a cyclone will be at one stage -- 840 millibars, lower than in any storm on Earth, higher than any pressure of atmosphere Mars could ever retain. Plus it conveys nothing, unless we know the usual Martian pressure for comparison. (It's presumably elevated above the natural half a millibar.)Many review it just to declare that they don't understand all the bad reviews. Lack of understanding is indeed necessary, for anyone to think this movie good.Some say it's feasible compared to other science fiction! WHAT other science fiction?! Star Wars was more credible! What do we know about technology a long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away? Most of us know enough about our own solar system, and modern technology, to chortle at this cacophony of lazy errors.

Earth is suffering from environmental damage. Mars has been slowly terra-formed as an alternative home. However it is somehow losing oxygen. A space mission is sent to discover the cause. The spacecraft is damaged by massive gamma radiation burst and the crew crash land to investigate Mars.It takes too long to get the movie going. There is too much tech talk without any magic. They don't even get to Mars until after 30 minutes. They spent too much time talking on the spaceship. I think we're suppose to be awed by all the spaceship special effects. It's not that special. Most of the start could easily be thrown out.The action is confused and rather uncompelling. It doesn't get any better on the ground. It's a slow moving grind. The orange look, the helmets, and the buzzy voices all make for a tiring watch. Watching people slowly suffocate is really boring. Having Carrie-Anne separated from everybody doesn't help. The climax (if you could call it that) has no suspense. It is completely uninteresting.

Apparently, NASA itself basically disowned RED PLANET. That is, they declined to act as consultants because of the film's egregious scientific inaccuracies. I did not learn about that until after I had naively watched it for the first time. Then, when I watched for the second time, I realized how horrible the screenplay is. All of which is a shame, because there are some really nice visual effects and cinematography, and the assembled cast of actors is very good. The general story itself is not bad. In fact, it is quite compelling, but the devil is in the execution here, and the execution is less than stellar.However, in spite of all of that, I still find RED PLANET to be a rather enjoyable viewing experience. What can I say, I love stories about Mars exploration, and this one has enough for the eyes to reward the looking. The competitor/sister film MISSION TO MARS seems to have a better reputation. If nothing else, I find myself wanting more of these types of stories, and there is something to be said for that.