Mars has long been an interesting resource for movies. Usually that means that aliens are coming from the planet to attack the earth. Red Planet doesn’t take that idea and is set more in reality. It’s about a group of people sent to Mars. Earth is slowly becoming inhabitable and the seeds had been planted to create an atmosphere to make it a new home, but things didn’t go as planned and a crew is sent to the planet to find out why. I never saw Red Planet before and when it showed up on my VOD service I decided to check it out.
The crew is a small one and we join them on their journey which takes several months. The fact that this movie is set in a fairly realistic setting means that going to Mars is just that. Going to an empty planet only to investigate why the atmosphere isn’t being created by the algae that were planted there. It means that the drama has to come from the interaction between the characters, but there just isn’t too much to go on.
There is an interesting sequence before they are on the planet, but once they are there, there just isn’t too much to latch on to. That’s why the movie introduces a villain, but it just feels forced. Part of me wished it would be just a simple survival movie although I have doubts it would be more interesting. The movie also has a romantic storyline, which hasn’t been worked out much so you don’t believe the connection the characters supposedly have. The movie looks good and the actors do what they can, but the story just didn’t engage enough to really keep me interested. I never felt any suspense and the answer to the mystery of what had happened just sounded unbelievable.
Sounds like they ran out of story before they ran out of film. Pity.
Yeah it was a shame it wasn’t better, really liked the concept and the space scenes look really good.