Red Planet (2000)

Yawn. Poorly Filmed Snooze Fest.

Sadly Over-hyped

If the ambition is to provide two hours of instantly forgettable, popcorn-munching escapism, it succeeds.

The acting in this movie is really good.

This is a fairly enjoyable, old-fashioned slice of sci fi escapism which runs through all the old genre clichés without offering up anything you haven't seen before. Released at the box-office at around the same time as Brian De Palma's MISSION TO MARS, for me this is the superior film, although it has to be said that neither are great. Technically proficient, RED PLANET looks and sounds great but is oddly uninvolving. It's kind of like all those old '50s science fiction yarns in which astronauts land on a remote planet, combat and fight all kinds of foes and dangerous situations, and return home. Except the wobbly special effects and spaceships are now replaced with state-of-the-art CGI design and impressive, expensive visuals created by today's top computers.One thing the film has in its favour is that it places emphasis on characterisation over a constant stream of action. This may be why it was a flop with younger audiences. Personally I would prefer the former in terms of good film-making but then again I'm not adverse to the latter, being an undemanding genre fan. The cast is an interesting one with some accomplished performers, although it has to be said that everyone seems to be going through the paces with the exception of Tom Sizemore, an actor who grows on me every time I see him. Here he puts in another edgy, likable turn as a sceptical geneticist. The much-maligned Val Kilmer takes the lead and gives a solid but unspectacular turn as the rugged janitor who inevitably becomes the film's hero. Carrie-Anne Moss is actually very good as the ship's commander, here giving a more in-depth and human performance than that in her breakthrough role. The supporting players Simon Baker and Benjamin Bratt are fine, and there's a small but typically kooky turn from Terence Stamp as a philosophising scientist! The special effects are excellent, but you wouldn't expect anything else from a film which cost this much to make. The CGI is also impressive, looking more realistic than most, especially in the form of a well-designed robot named AMEE who is damaged and reverts to her military programming, leading to some tense cat and mouse games on the planet's surface. In fact this killer robot is one of the film's main foes and figures predominantly in the finale.Being a film set on Mars, there are of course aliens, although not what you would think; rather, these are flesh-eating killer cockroaches who have eaten all the algae on the surface of the planet. Once again they're very well animated and a memorable threat to our survivors. The plot is fairly slow-moving but there are lots of dangerous situations and cliff-hangers, including one of the best "running out of oxygen" scenes I've witnessed in a film, which looks really painful and horrible for the actors. In retrospect, RED PLANET looks remarkable but doesn't offer up anything new to the genre, but then what new films do nowadays? Enjoyable escapism to undemanding sci-fi fans of which I am unashamedly one.

I'm an avid science-fiction fan and I enjoy movies about space travel, especially if it's about traveling to the Mars. This movie is so unwatchable that I barely cared about what was happening to the characters.The movie is not engaging at all and the characters are all unlikable,even the actress that played Trinity in the Matrix looks completely bland in this horrible movie. The sets are all poorly made and even by the standards of 15 years ago, the special effects are disastrous;considering there were fantastic movies like the Matrix and the Terminator 2 around at the time.I'm sure my judgment has not been influenced by all the successful science fiction movies I've seen during all these years. I even enjoyed Mission to Mars. At least that movie was emotionally engaging, but this one is just horrible. By the end of the movie, my nephew and I were laughing out loud at how horrible the movie was and we both thought its only redeeming quality was the girl's space suit near the end of the movie, which was much more attractive than the ugly suits the characters had on all the time. This movie is not even eye-candy. It is just terrible. Do not even get me started on how unrealistic and unscientific it was. Avoid this movie like the plague.

This is a very fun to watch movie, but it has some flaws: The plot is basic Hollywood formula, and also there are some holes in the script that annoyingly could have been fixed by a few extra lines, But the film also has many upsides, such as a good mystery, decent suspense, and cool FX. The acting is decent too, and the hole ridden plot still manages to keep it together. In all this is a decent sci-fi film. I recommend this film to people 12 and upOVERVIEW SCORE: 7.2/10

(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.