MovieChat Forums > The Last Days on Mars (2013) Discussion > This film made me so effing mad!

This film made me so effing mad!

posted 10 years ago by tamtle
51 replies | jump to latest

I love a good sci-fi, and i'm willing to sit through most of them. but i got so mad sitting through this one. I got so mad because all the astronauts were freaking idiots. the screenwriters didn't do their research. you have to be the best of the best, the smartest of the smart, to be selected for a space mission. instead, all these astronauts were acting like pansies with an IQ of a negative! in today's world, with SARS, anthrax, legionella, ebola, heck, even the common cold, every scientist in every facility knows about containment and quarantine. don't bring any *beep* into my lab/into my building if you have disappeared for awhile, can't communicate, or look like a zombie. and if a crewmember shows up looking like death, then don't try to save it or talk sense to it, just contain it first, then run tests and ask questions. these astronauts were constantly saying, "What just happened?", "Why is it doing that?", "What's going on here?!". it just made me so effing mad that they could be that stupid. even the ship that came to take them home, it just opened the cargo door to let them in. nobody does that. i blame the director and writers. when you disregard the viewer's intelligence, you totally lose.

no wonder it didn't make any money and got such a low rating on Rotten Tomatoes. all the best acting can't save a stupid character. I feel a little better now.

[–] eolloe 10 years ago

They do not select dumb or average people for space missions. You have to be all around balance in IQ and EQ. You have to pass psychological evaluations, go through many training sessions, simulations, and you do it over and over again. And they don't pick crew members who are best friends or have emotional ties, they select individuals who work well together, make decisions together, with an objective team dynamics. The characters in this film were all fighting each other, yelling and disobeying orders, constantly knocking each other down. That's not how it works.

We didn't get a chance to see enough of their skill levels to make any kind of judgment as to how impressive they were. Maybe they were the top of their classes.

And how do you know how a group of people would behave after being cooped up together for the 6 months just to get there, then the 6 months of the mission? There's never yet been any kind of mission like that, so you can't act like you know how people will behave. Besides which, why couldn't this particular group of people just have a unique dynamic?

[–] MarshallStax 10 years ago

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_spaceflight_records#Ten_longest_h uman_space_flights

Pretty sure there wasn't any sort of nonsense like "Last Days on Mars" on any of these actual missions that went on longer than a year...

All Art is pretense.

[–] eolloe 10 years ago

How many of those actual missions involved mixed-gender crews? How many involved being transported 'strapped to the back of a nuclear warhead'? How many of them were to a location so far away that it took months just to get to the site?

But here's the main problem with your argument: What if there are certain group dynamics that only arise infrequently -- so infrequently that you wouldn't pick them up by examining only a handful of past missions?

[–] MarshallStax 10 years ago

You make the assumption I am arguing. I am simply stating that, absent a change in the selection process for spaceflight crews, the kind of behavior we saw in this movie is just not plausible.

All Art is pretense.

[–] eolloe 10 years ago

You seem to still be missing the point.

By analogy:
A study of the effects of a new drug in 50 patients finds the drug is safe and effective. What if there is a major side effect, say, fatal stroke, that occurs in 1 in 500 patients? A study of only 50 patients is likely to miss that side effect. Similarly, if an important group dynamic only occurs in 1 in 300 missions, a review of only a couple dozen past missions is insufficient for drawing conclusions about the plausibility of that dynamic occurring.

[–] MarshallStax 10 years ago

To use your analogy, this movie's events would be like a fatal stroke occurring in every test subject in the current experiment when the drug had previously been found to cause death in only 1 out of 500 subjects.

All this analogy-swapping does not and likely will not change my view that this entire group of human beings (who have been extensively trained to be cool and methodical under pressure) would not suddenly start acting like backstabbing high school students, throwing out all their college-learned and training-sharpened behavior to behave not just illogically but stupidly.

This is an awful movie and the primary reason it is awful is the writing. Everything else was fine to me: direction, cinematography, acting, editing, music, visual effects, production design. But, as the saying goes, you can't polish a turd.

The uninspired story and unbelievable characters completely negated the not inconsiderable efforts of everyone else involved in making the movie. It's a shame, since a well-written script based on the same story and using the same resources might have resulted in a minor classic.

All Art is pretense.

[–] tamtle 10 years ago

Beautifully written ChuckMunson. Beautifully written. I'm glad someone, as well as others, got my point.

[–] sp017 10 years ago

Largely agreed.
I wanted to enjoy this movie so I tried to suspend my belief for some time.

But clearly, somewhere in our future, there is a Prometheus Academy of Idiotic Astronauts Training and Selection school out there, from where we get daft scientists and crewmen that man our future space programs and make silly plot-progression decisions.

Mostly the same reasons I had a headache from rolling my eyes upwards far too frequently during Prometheus..

[–] cadenbt 10 years ago

I don't understand what quarantine protocols you people expected them to make. They tried keeping the infected quarantined inside several rooms. The zombies just kept breaking down all the doors. There was no quarantining possible. Their only bet was to either fight back or run. And I think they should have fought back, but running is just as plausible.

[–] markfilipak 10 years ago

Gasp!! You said it.... You said the word.... You said "zombie".

SPOILER! SPOILER! cadenbt is a SPOILER!
_____
I don't have a dog. And furthermore, my dog doesn't bite. And furthermore, you provoked him.

[–] cadenbt 10 years ago

A. I didn't put it in a title of a thread. My spoiler is avoidable.
B. This thread became a spoiler thread long before I got here.
C. You're being very immature.
D. You're wasting everyone's time.

[–] be236 10 years ago

I totally agree with you... seems they threw any safety precautions out the door when the first event (the two zombies coming back to main base)... and they didn't even organize to fight them (eg, they didn't use or find any weapons? there are no guns or swords, whatever, on this base? geez).

[–] cadenbt 10 years ago

Why would they have quarantined them that early? They had no way of knowing they were infected.

[–] be236 10 years ago

So the fact that Marko has fallen and it's been hours since he's heard again (plus the fact the group had a team meeting in the kitchen presuming he's dead) doesn't tell them that "hey , if he were to survive, something's might be wrong?

Most of these movies have this theme (go watch Sunshine, and see what precautions they didn't perform there)...

You'd think someone from the top level would have a safety protocol that says "hey, if someone's been unaccounted for X number of hours, then assume they are not normal and use extreme caution until they are determined to be normal." That's reasonable.

[–] Kent_Kainer 9 years ago

So the fact that Marko has fallen and it's been hours since he's heard again (plus the fact the group had a team meeting in the kitchen presuming he's dead) doesn't tell them that "hey , if he were to survive, something's might be wrong?

His survival wasnt impossible. They didnt even know his life condition.
Id expect every crew member can check the life monitor of any other but it appears NASA saved money there.

Since Mars has a much lower gravity theres always a chance that things did not break and tear.

Heard of The Martian? Its a book, also available as audiobook, not made into a movie yet (but thatll come - The Martian (2015)). Well there someone survives a fall, while the rest of his crew thinks he didnt and head home to earth leaving him behind on Mars.

---
Lincoln Lee: I lost a partner.
Peter Bishop: I lost a universe!

[–] AckbartheHutt 10 years ago

Use the search function next time.

Duh

[–] Forever_Knight 10 years ago

I couldn't watch anymore after the point where one crew member tries to defend a zombie and gets stabbed by the same same zombie for his trouble.
The fact that people are defending the dumbest things about this film explains why the filmmakers underestimate the intelligence of the audience.
Or should that be "correctly" estimate the intelligence of the audience.

[–] Asteri-Atypical 10 years ago

They not only got their behaviors wrong, but the science was quite erroneous, as well, not to mention the plot being no more than "The Walking Dead in Space" (gee, I always wondered how that illness got started... lol)

The decontamination procedures were nightmarish, too, especially when faced with an obvious contagion.

I was hoping for more, but this turned out to be a turd.

______
Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence - Carl Sagan

[–] Kent_Kainer 9 years ago

Stupid and incapable “astronauts“.

When their Cpt died I would suggest to behead him as a crew member as cruel and disgusting it may sound and is... my will of survival and fear of living dead would subdue the disgust.

But using him as test object was even better. Unfortunately they didnt proceed to use that stuff to overpower the zombie in the airlock to behead him ^^
2 min of zombie weakening would be enough.

And no matter what disease... beheading solves everything.
Should be no prob for a horror movie.

I missed the mandatory axe such horror movies have and wouldnt it be wise in genral to bring such a handy tool?
Or youve Riddick on your team. Thats sufficient enough too ^^

---
Lincoln Lee: I lost a partner.
Peter Bishop: I lost a universe!

[–] bwiggins-1 9 years ago

This film is a double-whammy of lazy writing: a bad sci-fi script and bad zombie script. Good cast, but there's nothing they could do with that kind of writing.

[–] margotlorena 9 years ago

I am watching the moving right now on netflix and the thing that bugs me the most is the lack of professionalism. every minute, every experiment, every move, everything on a mission is planned and rehearsed, because they cannot waste any time or resources. The team may work together, but if you are given an order you must obey, not cry or whine. This team of astronauts look like a bunch of teenagers fighting at school over something. the attitude is not professional. In order to go to mars for 6 months, you would have to go through a lot of training, tests, they wouldn't send some morons who defy authority or cry over their families because it could jeopardize the mission.
that being said, the script is very poorly written, they didn't have the creativity to execute their idea :S
really, very disappointing for a movie made just 2 years ago :S

[–] tamtle 9 years ago

I totally agree. It's been a while since I've seen it, but it still makes mad, that the script was so poorly written. I just can't believe it got the green light. They lost so much money and potential over stupidity.