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* warning - the following review contains spoilers
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* cast : gary sinise , don cheadle , connie nielsen , jerry o'connell , kim delaney ,
tim robbins , elise neal , jill teed , jody thompson , bill timoney written by : jim thomas , john thomas and graham yost directed by : brian depalma running time :
115 minutes the first big event movie of 2000 turns out to be anything
but .
gary sinise stars as an astronaut who is removed from a mars mission when his astronaut wife , maggie ( kim delaney ) , becomes ill and passes away .
don cheadle is then given the mission along with a russian couple and a young hotshot .
when a strange whirlwind shot from the top of a mars mountain range attacks the crew of the mission , sinise and robbins convince their superior to let them , neilsen , and o'connell perform a rescue mission for whatever crew might be remaining .
what they discover on the surface of the planet will dramatically change their lives forever ( although no one watching the film will come away profoundly affected ) .
before i ever saw the film , i was aware of the promotional campaign with dr .
pepper .
every time i would see a bottle of the soft drink , the mission to mars logo was emblazoned upon it .
little did i know that the plot would be taking a back seat to the product placement of the drink and several other products .
dr .
pepper saves the day at one point , and a dream sequence / flashback features jerry o'connell shoving m&m 's in our face .
these are but a couple of the ridiculous examples of product placement scattered throughout the film .
clich ?
s are also the order of the day with mission to mars .
dialogue and character motivations are all lifted directly from countless other science fiction films that have all done it better and with more style ( even independence day , which lifted all of it 's premises from other sci - fi films was better than this film , and i do n't like independence day ) .
films like 2001 : a space odyssey , the abyss , and close encounters of the third kind are all blatantly stolen from ( and poorly at that ) .
there is even a sequence where a rover is traveling through a canyon , and i could n't help but whisper " u'tinni " to myself and wait for a jawa to quickly hide in the rocks before the rover could get a glimpse of it .
this film also features one of my all - time least favorite movie clich ?
s :
the " he would have wanted you to have this " moment , where one character gives another a trinket that yet another character is established as constantly having ( and is usually made fun of by the character who ends up getting all sappy over it later on ) .
scenes like these always bother me when they come out of nowhere in regular films , but in a film as clich ? ridden as this ,
it is particularly irritating .
ennio morricone 's music is usually considered to be some of the best stuff in the projects he works on , but here it is dreadfully overbearing
.
his music sounds like it came straight out of a vincent price movie in certain scenes .
at other times his music is unbearably over - dramatic .
one sequence involving a daring spacewalk rescue is given a particularly cheesy sting when it is discovered that the grappling hook device used for the rescue wo n't reach its intended target .
mission to mars is push button filmmaking to the greatest extreme .
events are set into motion that are obvious to anyone who has ever seen a movie and seem like they are just there to evoke an emotional response in the audience .
we are apparently supposed to be upset that tim robbins character removes his helmet in deep space and kills himself to save his wife , but i felt extreme boredom coupled with a twinge of disinterest .
what makes it all worse is that fact that there is no real reason that robbins ' character needs to turn himself into a popsicle , except to invoke an emotional response ( i could think of at least one way to save him , and the nasa clowns in this film are supposed to be " smarter " than i am ) .
during the finale , when we are finally introduced to the translucent , conehead , kitty - faced aliens that we ostensibly sprung from , we are presented with some of the most ridiculously cartoonish cgi ever put to film
( just slightly worse than the plane crash at the end of air force one or the hell scenes in spawn ) .
a brief history lesson about " where we came from " is proffered , then sinise is whisked away to be with " the rest of our people
" ( he does this because his late wife proclaims in a video he watches early on that " this is a chance to step foot where no one else has " ) .
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from the press i 've been seeing this film receive ,
it is apparent that mission to mars will be dying a quick death at the theater .
i 'm sure the first weekend or two will be huge , but once word gets out people will stop going .
let 's just hope the upcoming red planet is better than this and is n't hurt by the negativity this film is generating .
i 'd venture to say it wo n't be worse than this waste of time .
[ pg ]
unbearably over - dramatic scenes like these always bother me it is apparent that mission to mars will be dying a quick death i felt extreme boredom coupled with a twinge of disinterest . what makes it all worse this waste of time the ridiculous examples of product placement scattered throughout the film . clich ? s are also the order of the day a particularly cheesy sting it is particularly irritating blatantly stolen from all lifted directly from countless other science fiction films it is dreadfully overbearing some of the most ridiculously cartoonish cgi ever put to film