Plot
Astronauts search for solutions to save a dying Earth by searching on Mars, only to have the mission go terribly awry.
Release Year: 2000
Rating: 5.4/10 (26,979 voted)
Critic's Score: 34/100
Director:
Antony Hoffman
Stars: Val Kilmer, Carrie-Anne Moss, Tom Sizemore
Storyline In the near future, Earth is dying. A new colony on Mars could be humanity's only hope. A team of American astronauts, each a specialist in a different field, is making the first manned expedition to the red planet and must struggle to overcome the differences in their personalities, backgrounds and ideologies for the overall good of the mission. When their equipment suffers life-threatening damage and the crew must depend on one another for survival on the hostile surface of Mars, their doubts, fears and questions about God, man's destiny and the nature of the universe become defining elements in their fates. In this alien environment they must come face to face with their most human selves.
Writers: Chuck Pfarrer, Chuck Pfarrer
Cast: Val Kilmer
-
Robby Gallagher
Carrie-Anne Moss
-
Cmdr. Kate Bowman
Tom Sizemore
-
Dr. Quinn Burchenal
Benjamin Bratt
-
Lt. Ted Santen
Simon Baker
-
Chip Pettengill
Terence Stamp
-
Dr. Bud Chantilas
Taglines:
They Didn't Find Life On Mars. It Found Them.
Filming Locations: Boral Quarry, Prospect, Sydney, New South Wales, Australia
Box Office Details
Budget: $70,000,000
(estimated)
Opening Weekend: $8,721,296
(USA)
(12 November 2000)
(2703 Screens)
Gross: $17,480,890
(USA)
(21 January 2001)
Technical Specs
Runtime:
Did You Know?
Trivia:
Many of the Mars scenes were filmed in Wadi Rum, Jordan, a desert valley several miles long.
Goofs:
Errors made by characters (possibly deliberate errors by the filmmakers):
Burchenal says he is an expert in genetics, yet he refers to the 4 DNA nucleotides as A, G, T and P. They're actually A, C, G, and T. It's corrected in the German dubbed version.
Quotes:
[first lines]
Commander Kate Bowman:
[narration]
By the year 2000 we had begun to over populate, pollute, and poison our planet faster than we could clean it up. We ignored the problem for as long as we could. But we were kidding ourselves. By 2025, we knew we were in trouble. And began to desperately search for a new home - Mars. Commander Kate Bowman:
For the last 20 years we've been sending unmanned probes with algae, bio-engineered to grow there and produce oxygen. We're going to build ourselves an atmosphere we can breathe. And for 20 years it seemed to worked. It looked like we pulled it off. We'd done it. Then all of a sudden, oxygen levels started to drop. We don't know why.
User Review
Non-exciting but realistic SF movie
Rating:
I was amazed when reading so many bad reviews . O.K. there're no spectacular
Aliens and we're not blinded by non-stop special effects. The movie has more
realism than the traditional Holywood science fiction stuff. Many parts of
the Mars mission were based on the NASA reference Mars mission . The Mars
explorer spaceship is build in Earth orbit . There're 6 crew-members .
Artificial gravity to stimulate adaptation to Martian conditions . AMEE a
multi-purpose robot with aerial probe . Cushioned landing . Wearable
spacesuits . Other points of realism were the accurate 'fire in space'
sequence, and the computer technology used by the crew. Red Planet could
have been better, but it's decent compared to most Holywood products.
Moreover, real science fiction is a very small niche market and will never
draw nor encourage a broad audience.
If you're a fan of science fiction, looking for more realistic spaceflight
stuff, watch Red Planet .
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