Red Planet (2000) | Sci-Fi Saturdays

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From Pitch Black to Red Planet, the year 2000 covered the spectrum.

Red Planet promises an adventure to the earth’s nearest neighbor mixed with a mystery? Aliens? Something more dire? But it delivers a haphazard and unenthralling trip with some of the worst choices for astronauts that Hollywood has yet to offer up.

First Impressions

The first thing the trailer shows is a robotic character (maybe a dog). For a science fiction film, that cannot bode well. A crew of astronauts travel to Mars on a terraforming mission and encounter problems, which causes their lander to crash on the planet. The last shot of the trailer is that robot coming back to menace Val Kilmer. Other than text that indicates Red Planet is “the color of fear,” there’s not much else to go on here.

Presented below is the trailer for the film.

The Fiction of The Film

A voice over from Mars-1 Mission Commander Bowman (Carrie-Anne Moss) states that by 2025 problems on Earth necessitated looking for a new planet to live on. Terraforming of Mars began with a series of rockets loaded with algae, which worked, but then something changed. The crew of Mars-1 is sent to investigate on a six month trip in an under-tested craft. This includes Commander Bowman, science officer Chantilas (Terrence Stamp), co-pilot Santen (Benjamin Bratt), mechanical systems engineer Gallagher (Val Kilmer), and two civilians, bio-engineer Burchenal (Tom Sizemore), and terraforming expert and last minute replacement Pettingill (Simon Baker).

The crew gets to know each other a bit over several scenes across the 182 day trip to Mars orbit. They arrive on Feb 5, 2057 when their ship is hit by a gamma burst that fries the electronics and starts several fires. Bowman evacuates the five men using the Mars entry vehicle (MEV), having to stay aboard due to automated launch systems being offline. She puts out the fires by venting the atmosphere and begins repairs on the ship. The MEV heads off course and they jettison the landing gear which contains their robotic “dog” AMEE (Autonomous Mapping Exploration and Evasion). The MEV crashes, injuring Chantilas in the process.

Gallagher exits first becoming the first man on Mars. Chantilas stays behind (to die) at the crash site as the other four head off to find the HAB module that was previously sent up. As they begin to run out of air in their suits, the men find the HAB, but it has been destroyed by something. Santen wanders off. Pettingill finds him by a precipice, saying he forgives Santen for landing them in the wrong area. Santen disagrees, provoking Pettingill, who takes a swing at the pilot. Santen accidentally falls off the cliff to his death. Back at the HAB, Pettingill returns claiming Santen committed suicide. With the air running out, Gallagher opens his helmet, hoping to die quicker–but realizes there’s a thin atmosphere on the red planet.

Gallagher, Pettingill, and Burchenal use leftover fuel from the HAB to light a fire which attracts AMEE, who was activated on crash. Her systems were scrambled back to military mode and she wounds Burchenal before taking off into the night. Gallagher predicts she is slowing them down to kill them later. Meanwhile, Bowman has managed to get the engines back online and has orders from Houston to return home. She believes that at least some of the men survived and waits as long as she can for a word. Gallagher leads the survivors to the landing spot of Pathfinder, where they are able to jerry-rig a radio, allowing them to contact Bowman.

Bowman gets information to them that they need to walk 100km to Cosmos, a 2027 Russian probe. Unfortunately only two can fit in the small area under the probe. They are delayed in their trek to the ship by an ice storm “the size of Montana.” Hiding in a cave, Gallagher says that Burchenal and Pettingill will be the two to go back to Mars-1. But Pettingill becomes paranoid and takes off while the other two are sleeping and is killed by AMEE. When they find him, there are small bugs crawling in his body that when exposed to sparks, ignite and burn.

Burchenal theorizes that these bugs were revived by the algae blooms and ended up eating the food source. But also, that their waste is oxygen which helped terraform the planet quicker. He takes samples but realizes with his wound he won’t make it and self-immolates. Gallagher makes it to the probe and uses the explosive pack for the lander’s chute to incapacitate AMEE. He launches back into space where Bowman is able to grab him by going EVA on a long cable. She revives him and they start back for Earth, realizing how attracted they are to each other. They kiss.

“Well, I don’t mind dying. I just hate being alone.” – Bowman

History in the Making

Red Planet concludes a brief and rapid release of films taking place on Mars. It was the second film of 2000 to feature a trip to Mars (after Mission to Mars), and the third Martian film reviewed since Sci-Fi Saturdays returned in October, that other being Ghosts of Mars. Out of the three, Red Planet may be the least science-fiction type of film. It lacks the alien civilizations of the other two films, but does explore elements of terraforming the red planet for human civilization like Ghosts. It does include speculation on an insectoid species that lives on the planet which is the extent of any alien lifeforms. For the most part, the humans are the invaders in this film.

It was the first and only feature film directed by South African director Antony Hoffman. It’s unknown whether that was by choice, or due to the poor reviews of this film. And this film received poor reviews. It is an attempt to make a more accurate portrayal of a trip to Mars, but the weight of all the elements in the production seem to drag it down. The actors don’t seem to really be having much fun, seemingly going through the motions of the script–which often gets nonsensical. They are all given reasons for being on the ship, but it feels more like a bunch of individuals that work together going on an extended retreat, and then realizing they don’t actually work well together. Certain characters, like Burchenal, also change over time. He seems lewd and potentially crazy on board the ship, but once on the planet, Pettingill is the one that goes “crazy” (but only a bit, and for no real reasons). According to Bowman, the “hope and survival of mankind” rests on them, but the plot involves a series of bad accidents and problems that seem like they might have been better prepared for, including a rogue robotic dog. On the bright side, it does make some attempt to be more than just an action/adventure trip to Mars. It includes characters with philosophical outlooks on life discussing their differences, even when they don’t agree.

Genre-fication

The biggest nod to the science-fiction genre is naming the commander of the vessel Bowman. This is an obvious nod to Dave Bowman from 2001: A Space Odyssey. I found this extremely distracting. As one of the premier sci-fi films, it takes a lot of gumption to reference the Stanley Kubrick film in such an overt manner. And, if you plan on referencing it, your project should be able to stick the landing. By naming the character Bowman, Red Planet sets up the doomed mission, a rogue AI, and the encounter with extraterrestrial life. But it does so in a very inorganic way that feels forced and generally stupid for characters looking to colonize another planet. Portrayals of astronauts and other realistic space travelers should at least be intelligent and logic-based. Here, the characters die off like teenagers staying at a campground near a cursed lake.

As with the other Martian themed films reviewed recently, and even last week’s Space Cowboys, Red Planet attempts to be more realistic in its portrayal of space exploration. For example, their ship, Mars-1 has dual rotating rings with a series of solar arrays at the rear of the vehicle. The interpretation being that the ship can gather new energy and produce sufficient gravity that is seen in the ship’s interiors. The production also utilized designs straight from the Mars Pathfinder lander from NASA to create the look of MEV. It has parachutes plus inflatable air bags that protect the capsule from damage on the rocky Martian surface. Red Planet also studied the effects of fire in space when creating the moments that Commander Bowman had to fight the flames aboard Mars-1. Even though the visual effects of the flames seem dated, the way that the fire reacts in the weightless environment is consistent with experiments performed in NASA facilities and aboard Mir space station. In general, the size and function of Mars-1 is more realistic than many previous filmic space missions.

Societal Commentary

This series of articles often discusses the humanity present in science-fiction films. They examine the ways that the genre can look at our species and address common themes about exploration, philosophy, and the human condition. For its other faults, Red Planet does include some diversions into this area. Overall the film addresses humanity’s need for survival. A last ditch effort to save the species which has been trying to kill itself ever since it developed a society. But in the mid 21st Century of the film, humans had been screwing up the Earth for centuries, and by the mid-2020s came to the realization that there was no future on the third planet from the sun. They began looking to our nearest neighbor, Mars, for solutions. Attempts to terraform it seemed to be going well for 20 years, but then mysteries developed, which necessitated Mars-1 figuring out the problem. The film becomes a plea to future generations about the need to preserve our world, since the creation of a new place to live is not easy–and is apparently prone to insectoids that burst into flames at the slightest heat source. The end of the film is a bit more hopeful. The samples that Gallagher brings back of the alien life may hold the key to successfully terraforming Mars, but more aptly rehabilitating the Earth. Which is at least something.

The film also discusses several belief systems of the characters. And while God is mentioned, primarily by Chantilas, his arguments are more about the non-religious elements of faith, than true spiritual beliefs. Chantilas realized that science couldn’t answer his biggest questions, so he turned to philosophy. He specifically states ‘philosophy’ over religion, perhaps as a way to keep the character from seeming too overtly religious. He rebuffs Burchenal’s mockery of any discussions about God by bringing up faith, which is something that even secular people can have. Chantilas says that without faith, Burchenal would not have come on a 309 million kilometer journey. Yet even Burchenal knows when the odds are stacked against him and puts his faith, though he never admits to it, in Gallagher. He must be the one to survive and save the world. The one character that was at the fulcrum between the pragmatic bioengineer Burchenal and the philosophical science officer Chantilas. Gallagher, the engineer that keeps the toilet’s functioning (as the crew often jokes) becomes the savior of humanity, and the love interest to the captain. But was there ever any doubt that Val Kilmer was the star of this film?

The Science in The Fiction

If science-fiction films have taught us one thing, that’s never put 100% trust in an automated robotic assistant. 2001: A Space Odyssey did it best, but also The Terminator, Alien, Westworld, and Blade Runner all depict varying degrees of AI gone rogue. In Red Planet, that rogue creature is AMEE, a military designed combat robot that has been placed in safe mode (green light) to assist the astronauts. It’s never explicitly mentioned how she would do that. She has a probe that she uses, so maybe she was to make sortees into the Martian wastelands and examine things the scientists couldn’t. But the crash flips her switch, literally (now a red light) back to military mode. A mode that cannot be reset via the remote link, and only by physically moving the switch on her body. Who designed this thing? It seems like something that would have been an issue as a military model. She gets hit by a shell or rifle round and her witch flips to passive mode. That’s just bad design. Her tactics are also suspect. She wounds Burchenal to slow them down, and as Gallagher theorizes she’ll return later using guerilla tactics to kill them one at a time. Whatever for? These sacks of meat are no match for the metal exoskeleton and razor sharp “claws.” It seems like an excuse on the writer’s part to not kill all the characters instantly.

Perhaps the most grievous scientific gaffe of the film occurs by one of the most educated characters, with multiple PhDs. In a flashback to an earlier conversation about God and faith, Burchenal states, “I’m a geneticist. I write code. A, G, T, P in different combinations.” Woah, slow it down there! Maybe this was a misspoken line on the day, or maybe it was written wrong, but what Tom Sizemore should have said was, “A, G, T, C in different combinations.” Those are the four building blocks of DNA. As any high schooler should know. Believing that Sizemore is a geneticist is a bit like believing that Denise Richards is a nuclear physicist (The World is Not Enough). The film also finds the most inappropriate way for the one female character to engage in a shower scene. Moss’s character exits a water-based shower on the spacecraft, dripping with water. As if she used gallons of water to clean herself. How does a voyage that takes six months have that much water that can be spent for a shower? It’s another one of the things that once you realize what you’re seeing it shatters the whole reality that the film is trying to build.

Then there’s the notion of terraforming. The planet has been receiving unmanned rockets of algae in order to help the Mars biosphere develop for 32 years prior to the events in the film. No mention of the water that would be needed to grow the algae (maybe it was in the spacecraft), just that nuclear strikes on the polar ice released a bunch of CO2 which creates a greenhouse effect allowing the algae to bloom, which in turn emits oxygen. There’s some plausibility to that, but not with the small alien creatures that the crew finds. Firstly, Burchenal (a bio-engineer, who should know things about biology) repeatedly calls these cicada-looking bugs nematodes. A nematode is a kind of microscopic flatworm, so in no world, Mars included, would these things ever be referred to by a scientist as such. Secondly, they eat the algae, and most of the HAB as well, in return giving off oxygen as a by-product. This is ludicrous, as that’s not the way the breakdown of materials work. Thus, a huge piece of fiction, in the science-fiction.

The Final Frontier

Red Planet was a film that utilized actors who, at the time, may have only appeared in one or two sci-fi films. For Val Kilmer, this was his second sci-fi after the remake of The Island of Dr Moreau, a critically panned film. He would later appear in Hardwired, another less than stellar genre film Kilmer obviously had issues when picking genre films. Carrie-Anne Moss made this her sci-fi follow up to playing Trinity in The Matrix. She would return for the sequels to that groundbreaking film. Tom Sizemore again plays an antagonist in a genre film, having done so a few years earlier in Strange Days. Benjamin Bratt had made an early appearance in Demolition Man, and would later appear in a television remake of The Andromeda Strain, where he hopefully would not be as big a prick as he is here. Finally, Terence Stamp, probably best known as General Zod in the Christopher Reeve Superman films, has appeared in several sci-fi films including Alien Nation (as the villain) and The Phantom Menace as the Chancellor of the galaxy.

Red Planet is not a perfect sci-fi film. Far from it. My memories of this film were more positive than for Mission To Mars (also not a perfect sci-fi film). But in the critical rewatch of these films within the last month, this film fares much worse than it did in my memory. Perhaps it was the Peter Gabriel song, “The Tower That Ate People” from the soundtrack that clouded my judgment, as I’m a big fan of his work. The film has some things to say, but most of them are things that have been said better in other previous films. There were reported tensions on the set between Sizemore and Kilmer, which–if true–provide some interesting chemistry to their characters’ relationships, but not much more than sparks in this film. Unless you count the bugs that burst into flames. Those guys have a career ahead of them.

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