Why ‘Mission to Mars’ Failed to Launch

April 13, 2025 admin Celebrity Gossip 0

Brian De Palma’s “Mission to Mars” was the first of three high-profile, sci-fi event films about the red planet in the early 2000s.

It’s easily the one that arrived with the most fanfare.

Disney’s big-budgeted “Mission to Mars” came with a wave of hype and the bragging
rights of appearing months before “Red Planet” (also 2000) and John Carpenter’s
“Ghosts of Mars” (2001).

I’d argue that Carpenter’s robust guilty pleasure is the best of the lot, though “Red Planet” and even De Palma’s critically dismissed work are better than most remember.

Set in the year 2020, it centers on a cluster of astronauts who are initially on a rescue
mission, when a team led by Don Cheadle is sucked up into an awesome sandstorm.
Later, another team featuring Gary Sinese, Jerry O’Connell, Connie Nielsen and Tim
Robbins investigate the highly atypical activity occurring on the red planet.

You may have noticed I only listed the actors and not the names of their characters. This is on purpose.

A few of the performances (namely that of Sinese and Cheadle) are good, but you won’t care about the humans.

De Palma, coming off the mega-blockbuster of the first “Mission: Impossible” (1996) and
the smaller scale, rousing and flawed “Snake Eyes” (1998), was on a rare hit streak, but
hardly anyone’s idea for the director of a lavish sci-fi epic.

The result was a mixed bag and a bumpy ride, but I have a soft spot for it. The better than expected but still underwhelming “Red Planet” (2000) and John Carpenter’s campy, clunky but still enormously entertaining “Ghosts of Mars” (2001) have slightly better reputations than De Palma’s film.

The latter opened big then dropped harder than a comet.

Today, De Palma’s film has fallen out of favor even more so than during its initial release. It’s often an afterthought when one reflects on his body of work. Yes, “Mission to Mars” is not up to one of his classics, but it’s not “Wise Guys” (1986) or “The Black Dahlia” (2006), either.

The worst parts of “Mission to Mars” are overly reminiscent of other, better sci-fi films. The best scenes demonstrate why De Palma is a master filmmaker.

It opens with a BBQ party, filmed in a single take, like a backyard version of the justly celebrated opening of De Palma’s otherwise atrocious “The Bonfire of the Vanities” (1990). After the impressive start, De Palma tops it with a zero-gravity dance sequence, set to Van Halen’s “Dance the Night Away.”

It’s clearly intended as a tribute to a famous scene in “2001: A Space Odyssey” (1968). To give De Palma a big and deserved compliment – here is one of the few times where someone ever attempted to match Kubrick and nailed it, even if only for a few minutes.

A mild spoiler for this one paragraph: Once we finally get to the extraterrestrial (the reveal is similar to how Dorothy first meets the Wizard of Oz), the Martian resembles a cross between a harp and a disco ball.

Despite a fairly conventional story, it gets crazy during the first and especially the third act. The ending is ludicrous, but I absolutely loved it.

Most of “Mission to Mars” is visually breathtaking, with excellent sound design (note the
skill of the aforementioned sand funnel attack) and FX that are always dazzling.

On the downside, it needed a tighter edit, a lot more of Cheadle and much less pre-
mission chatter. It reminded me of Barry Levinson’s “Sphere” (1998), another lavish, all-
star, equally spectacular, totally bananas and wonky flop that is better than its reputation.

“Mission to Mars” is the kind of movie that, decades earlier, would have starred Leslie Nielsen and Richard Denning and sported cardboard sets.

RELATED: BRIAN DE PALMA’S ‘FEMME FATALE’ LET IT ALL HANG OUT

I found “Mission to Mars” underwhelming the first time I saw it and still acknowledge the
flaws, particularly in the overly drawn-out second act. Nevertheless, the director’s ability
to stage wonderful set pieces, give each moment the space to unfold in real time via
one-take shots and ultimately take the goofy but audacious premise as far as it can go is an asset.

There is an unabashed optimism here, as the screenplay celebrates the wonders of
human ability and “the 3% difference between man and ape DNA.” There’s even a line
that sounds like it could have been uttered by Jeff Goldblum in “Jurassic Park” (1993):

“Life reaches out for life.”

This is such an upbeat view of the possibilities found in the universe. There’s even a “Treasure Island” reference.

An aspect that is rarely mentioned is that, like the subsequent “Country Bears” (2002)
and “Pirates of the Caribbean: “The Curse of the Black Pearl” (2003), this is based on a
Disney park ride: Rocket to the Moon, later retitled Flight to the Moon, then retitled
Mission to Mars in 1975.

Had De Palma’s film been a huge hit, we’d probably be looking at as many sequels as there are Captain Jack Sparrow flicks.

Despite the PG rating, there’s a moment here that continues to traumatize me: we watch an astronaut get caught in a vortex, screaming as he spins until he rips apart. Ah, De Palma.

The biggest misstep here will sound like nitpicking but its almost a total dealbreaker for me: Ennio Morricone’s score sounds like a placeholder, a softer, inconsistent variation on his work for “The Mission” (1986).

During the film’s worst scene, it sounds like Morricone is playing a church organ. Morricone has authored and conducted some of cinema’s greatest soundtracks, but this is at the opposite end of that spectrum.

At times, the film matches De Palma’s attempts to give the sci-fi genre a jolt, which makes it worth seeing at least once.

The post Why ‘Mission to Mars’ Failed to Launch appeared first on Hollywood in Toto.

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