Makes Prometheus look like a good movie

It's been ages since I watched Mission to Mars, I remember finding it over the top and boring, but I didn't recall much in particular.

When Prometheus came out, I pretty much panned the movie for being the most ridiculous sci fi movie in its budget/expertise class. I couldn't recall any movie with a similarly renowned cast and crew that was even remotely as imbecile in writing (great visuals, though).

But Lord, had I forgotten about Mission to Mars. Re-watched it today, and it really takes the cake.

First of all, the editing was odd to say the least. Half the time I felt that the movie completely failed to set the tone for the current development. It starts at a party, then switches abruptly to Mars surface (you might expect a match cut from footprint to footprint, but nope), the lab, Earth orbit, ... without even botherhing to make much sense of anything. Then the guys get caught in a bizarre sandstorm but don't really appear to excited until the inevitable happens and somebody gets hurt. While most of the audience is already feeling like "Huh? Isn't that scary or something?" the NASA crew is only mildly interested at best, the soundtrack is still on vacation and the editing can't be bothered to express tension or stress either.

Fast forward to the micro asteroid scene where the ship is damaged in a way that everybody on board is apparently prepared for, yet the ship designers seem to never have heard of the same problem. The ship has no compartments that could be sealed off and no system to detect holes in the hull (like, similarly to the solution shown in the movie, spraying mist to visualize the air flow). The onboard computer has a voice recognition password for hazard situations to make sure that only authorized people (of all people that hang around on a NASA mission) can save the ship. Fuel is then leaking from a pipe but nobody notices. This all culminates in a simply ridiculous death scene of Tim Robbins.

Then there is the flag scene which would have worked if this were Independence Day II (actually this scene has a soundtrack, for a change), but it isn't. Then Don Cheadle attacks the NASA crew because he's been stranded on Mars and gone crazy, but soon thinks better of it and quits being crazy because they've got stuff to do:

The aliens left a 3D plot of DNA, which to the expert eye of the NASA engineers certainly "looks human". Gary Sinise figures out that this is - of course - a test. There is one pair of chromosomes missing and these must be sent to the alien ship. If you send the wrong signal you get eaten by a sand worm, which makes sense since you (the aliens) wouldn't want anybody to find the right answer by guessing. And naturally the aliens wouldn't want to be bothered by any other species than humans; there's lots of traffic on Mars and you can't look at everybody personally who comes around. This whole concept makes so much sense to everybody around that nobody tells Sinise to shut the crap up, they just go for it.

It works, they enter the alien ship and get locked in. Then they meet a Walt Disney alien that makes both James Cameron's Avatar and the little monkey thing from Lost in Space seem legitimate and plausible. They hold hands, learn about evolution, learn that it's quite unlikely that human DNA is the right answer because the alien species is responsible for every life form on earth (in particular for how the dinosaurs evolved into mammoths), but of course by this time they don't care anymore. The aliens had left mars to a galaxy right around the corner because apparently earth wasn't good enough for them (and no other solar system in this galaxy), so it's no wonder that Sinise doesn't want to go back either. Luckily even though the launch countdown started (again easily recognized by the NASA engineers because a binary pattern on the floor is showing increasing digits) the exit doors are open again so the two remaining guys can leave while Sinise flies to the other galaxy as well - the end.

Nothing in this movie actually ties together. Sinise losing his wife is not relevant for the plot. The aliens waiting for human DNA doesn't make sense. The aliens eating people for entering the wrong password doesn't make sense. Why would they do that? They are apparently highly developed and human-like yet they use a password system where you don't even know you accidentally entered a password before you get killed. Seeing how these aliens and the life forms they created are the only living things in the solar system (at least!) this seems a bit overcautious, no? The whole micro asteroid incident only served to prolong the plot - the marriage between Robbins and Nielsen was perfectly irrelevant up to this point, and it was irrelevant afterwards.

Basically this movie does everything wrong that Prometheus did wrong:
- unbelievable actions by characters as taking off their protective gear in an alien environment
- unbelievable conclusions drawn by characters (everybody understands every bit about alien stuff)
- unbelievably deficient technology (no means of detecting hull breaches, no means of recovering people who slipped away during EVA, no pressure gauge on fuel pipes, ...)
- ridiculously fancy computer screens
- ridiculous explanations for who the aliens are, what they do and what they want

Except that it for once doesn't revolve around intra-team conflicts, which was a relief.

Plus the movie does a lot wrong that Prometheus didn't, for example:
- extremely odd and anticlimactic narrative style
- boring soundtrack
- so-so visuals (A visual masterpiece? Come on, people... seriously?)
- ridiculous alien design

So all in all, Prometheus wasn't a very good movie but Mission to Mars really is one of the worst. No - not of all movies, of course, but, like Prometheus, of movies with a reputable cast and crew and a more than sufficient budget. Given its means this was a joke.

And I've read people likening it to 2001. I would like to stress that 2001 did have a similarly unusual narrative style but none of the ridiculousness, an incredible amount of realism and plausibility and it knew where to remain enigmatic instead of feeding every stupid explanation and justification directly to the audience. 2001 is out there where few sci-fi movies came close, and Mission to Mars is down here somewhere between Plan 9 and Avatar.