nilen-51573 I remember seeing this when it was new and I disliked it so much that I still remember it clearly to this day. Why do they have a robot with the possibility to hurt people with them. You knew form the start that this will go wrong. All the members are presented in a good fashion except one who you know little about. I wonder who the bad and selfish guy will be.The thing that I so hated was that they after awhile on the planet notice that its possible to breath on it. Two persons died before this without really needing to. I just disliked that "plots twist" so much that I would put this as one of the worst movies I have ever seen.

Python Hyena Red Planet (2000): Dir: Antony Hoffman / Cast: Val Kilmer, Carrie- Anne Moss, Tom Sizemore, Terrence Stamp, Benjamin Bratt: About as bad as Mission to Mars. Plot regards a small crew deep in space on their way to Mars where they are ship-wretched. From there it is recycled mayhem as crew members die horribly by a mechanical creature that they created. Visual effects are striking and director Antony Hoffman does his best but the story is lame. Some of the crew die early. Terrence Stamp ruptures his spleen on the fall from space. Perhaps it was an easy method of getting off the set. Benjamin Bratt is accidentally pushed off a cliff, perhaps by somebody who couldn't stand his performance any longer. Val Kilmer, Carrie-Anne Moss and Tom Sizemore are wasted. They are on the screen the longest, which makes them the bravest considering how embarrassing the film is. Amee the mechanical dog malfunctions and runs rabid just like the screenwriter does when he put pen to paper. The only purpose the film serves is to repeat the same old story and market the production as if intelligent people couldn't see through the dimwitted scheme. Like the mechanical dog, the screenwriter also malfunctioned and ran rabid with crap we have seen countless times. Perhaps this film should be used as a doggie treat for a pound full of mechanical dogs. Score: 2 / 10

chaos-rampant At its time, all those 13 years ago, the film probably went by on its, for the time, palatable effects on a big screen, decent cast not totally phoning it in and fairly simple story of Martian exploration. Watching it now is to get the sense that in another 13 years it will be looked back as amusedly as It - Terror from Outer Space or any number of those 'guys in a tin can pretend to fly in space' sci-fi films of the 50's.It's truly bad. The story is as silly now as it was then, the science and technology as ludicrous (a robot with ninja moves!), the performances as theatrical. But what really has sunk it, I think, is the handling of cinematic space.Films set in space only bring to the fore, with more clarity than usual films, cinematic space as the main anchor of a story-world. 2001 got right a set of notions about the gravity of things in space, the viewing gravity that creates immersion, so every extravagant thing down the road was rooted in our first having been transported to space. I'm eagerly anticipating Gravity as the new template in this field.Here everything feels phony.An unfortunate contrast with the closing theme, so to speak, which is how god, what we call god, is the willingness to not give up, on close ones and otherwise, and this willingness is nothing else than not losing track/sight of the presence of another human being in space, a matter of persisting vision. When the female captain in the end hurls herself from the main vessel, attached to merely a chord, to recover the sole unconscious survivor, this should have been a powerful moment to capture this commitment, had we been rooted as firmly as they are.

Helio Copter Apparently, NASA itself basically disowned RED PLANET. That is, they declined to act as consultants because of the film's egregious scientific inaccuracies. I did not learn about that until after I had naively watched it for the first time. Then, when I watched for the second time, I realized how horrible the screenplay is. All of which is a shame, because there are some really nice visual effects and cinematography, and the assembled cast of actors is very good. The general story itself is not bad. In fact, it is quite compelling, but the devil is in the execution here, and the execution is less than stellar.However, in spite of all of that, I still find RED PLANET to be a rather enjoyable viewing experience. What can I say, I love stories about Mars exploration, and this one has enough for the eyes to reward the looking. The competitor/sister film MISSION TO MARS seems to have a better reputation. If nothing else, I find myself wanting more of these types of stories, and there is something to be said for that.