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CORRIDOR
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DARK CORRIDORS VOL. 1, NO. 24 |
 Astronaut Val Killmer strides across Martian plain in "Red Planet." |
'red planet' |
It's a high-tech version of a sci-fi space movie from the 1950s
By
RON MILLER
of TheColumnists.com
Not many film critics are enthusiastic about "Red Planet,"
the new space adventure film about a group of astronauts stranded
on the surface of Mars with only a few hours to escape certain
death. Most found it slow going. Put me down as a troublemaker
then: I liked it.
I liked the slim storyline and 1950s retro feel of "Red Planet," which is sort of a jacked-up, tech-enhanced version of "Destination Moon" or "Rocketship X-M," the first two sci-fi movies I saw as a kid in 1950. After all the animatronic bug-eyed monsters in recent space movies and those complex plots that leave you scratching your head at the finale--"Event Horizon" is a tiresome example of both--it was a relief to watch a movie that just put some astronauts in a fix, then tried to get them out of it.
The "Red Planet" plot is simple: The first manned flight to Mars is in progress in the early years of the 21st century with the people of Earth desperately hoping the astronauts will find the red planet a suitable new home for Earth's teeming population. Before the manned expedition, Earth has been bombarding Mars with missiles aimed at "seeding" the barren planet with a form of algae that will grow in whatever moisture is extant there, hopefully creating an atmosphere with enough oxygen to sustain human life. It seemed to be working as large green areas began to appear on the surface of Mars, but recently those areas have started disappearing, so the astronauts' main mission is to find out why.
But trouble begins when a "solar flare" type accident robs the main spaceship of power. With the mission's female commander Bowman (Carrie-Ann Moss) staying behind on the ship, trying to remedy the problem with the help of Mission Control in Houston, the five male astronauts make their descent to the surface, crash-landing miles from their destination, a day's trek from the life-sustaining Mars habitat that had been positioned there earlier by robot probes of Mars.
With only enough air to last a few hours, the astronauts must get to the habitat, make contact with the mother ship and try to work out a way to survive until they can be rescued. But they soon learn they have even bigger problems than that. And one of them is their discovery that there is life on the lifeless planet after all.
Some have griped that "Red Planet" has wooden characters. Well, this certainly isn't "War and Peace," so I'm not sure how much more character is needed. We never learn much about Bowman, the female commander, except that she's a loner, used to being the only woman among men--and, most important, a natural leader. Personally, I think that's all we need to know. It falls to her to attempt the rescue that occupies the final reel of the film, so we must believe she's a capable, quick-thinking woman of action.
The film also gives us a hint of a budding romance between Bowman and crewman Gallagher (Val Kilmer). If the others are merely crewmen to her, the fact that she cares more deeply about Gallagher also gives her more motive for what she must do in the finale--disobey orders from Houston.
Otherwise, we know only as much as we need to know about the others. Gallagher is a self-confident, but laidback individual who's the "hands on" guy in the crew. (One of them even refers to him as the mission's "janitor.) The others are typical astronaut/scientists: Pettengill (Simon Baker), Dr. Burchenal (Tom Sizemore), Santen (Benjamin Bratt), although Chantillas (Terence Stamp) is also a "philosopher," which means he makes a few sobering pronouncements about man and the universe from time to time, which take on new meaning as events unfold.
In my book, "Red Planet" deserves special credit for its rendering of the Martian landscape, which struck me as pretty realistic. There are no ancient Martian cities, no Edgar Rice Burroughs-type civilizations that somehow escaped the orbiting cameras, no monsters of the "Id." When the life forms finally are discovered, they're both a blessing and a menace, which works for me.
The film's best menace, though, is AMEE, the robot aide brought along to help the astronauts with their experiments. Knocked around in the crash landing, AMEE gets stuck on "attack" mode and begins hunting the astronauts, which is all they need with all the other woes they have to deal with on Mars. AMEE also is well-equipped with some awesome weapony, including whirling blades of precision steel, acute sensing devices and an airborne mini-chopper surveillance pod that can fly over the desert and pick out the astronauts, unobserved, from the air.
As a devotee of both Mars stories and survival stories, "Red Planet" held my attention throughout and thoroughly entertained me. I grew up on some really cheapjack Mars movies like "Flight to Mars" and "Rocketship X-M," so the big budget "Red Planet" is like an unfulfilled dream finally coming true. I won't say it's going to enthrall everyone, but I saw it with a bustling Friday night movie crowd and didn't see anybody walk out or hear anybody snoring.
And, by the way, if "Red Planet" is any indication of what colonization of Mars might be like, I think we'd better start cleaning up Earth and get a handle on population control before our descendants get stuck having to settle in what looks like a very, very inhospitable neighborhood.
© 2000 by Ron Miller. Photo © 2000 by Warner Bros.
Let us know what you think of "Red Planet" with an email to: talkback@thecolumnists.com
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