Better dead than red

>> Mars goes bust again in Red Planet

by MATTHEW HAYS

What are earthlings to do once they're through environmentally raping and pillaging their own planet? According to the basic premise of Red Planet, the big-budget sci-fi feature film, it's time to pack up our bags and start making life on Mars a distinct possibility. Hell, just plant some algae and soon enough the whole place will have enough oxygen for everyone. Then, after a couple hundred years of environmental abuse there, I suppose it's off to Venus or something.

Red Planet comes just a few mere months after Mission to Mars, Brian De Palma's blunder about a space mission to the very same planet. Funny, but this planet appears to constitute some kind of curse for filmmakers. And a curse that seems to come with very specific instructions. Both films try to rip off Kubrick's sci-fi masterpiece 2001: A Space Odyssey. Look, fellas, either you're going to make a high-minded film like that one, or you're just going to go for some good old-fashioned B-movie cheese. Don't try to get heavy after creating a film that is virtually 95 per cent crap. De Palma attempted to deliver "the big message" in his film's final moments, with laughable results.

In Red Planet, the 2001 allusion comes in the form of yet another HAL rip-off, named Amee. She's a sort of mechanical dog, operated by astronaut Val Kilmer. After he and the crew crash land on Mars--with apparently no way off and very few provisions--Amee (get ready for the surprise now) malfunctions, turns on the crew and tries to hunt them down and kill them one by one. Amee even has a little light eye that peers through black glass, exactly like HAL's.

Meanwhile, Carrie-Anne Moss, who plays the mission commander, has remained on the mother vessel, which orbits Mars. She declines Kilmer's romantic offerings on the trip over, and now she appears to be regretting it. She's desperate to save the crew and get them back up on the vessel so they can go back to earth together. Much of her drive appears to stem from her urge to shag the daylights out of Kilmer, and frankly, who can blame her?

The principle problem with Red Planet doesn't involve the lame-ass romance, nor the highly improbable Mars hijinks, nor even the fact that the very reason for their mission (saving the human race) appears to be entirely forgotten about a third of the way through the movie. Instead, Red Planet sucks simply because it is so claustrophobically boring. How did they make such a dull movie about space exploration? Did someone take out a bet?

There is a bright side: Red Planet and Mission to Mars, though they look like they cost a lot, could have beneficial fiscal ramifications for future governments. People were filled with curiosity about what walking on the moon would be like, and thus there was great political pressure to spend billions on space programs to get humans up there. These movies, on the contrary, will work as anti-travelogues, making Mars look so bloody dreary that the public will undoubtedly be put off, saving the government trillions in useless efforts at sending people there.

Red Planet opens Friday, Nov. 10