I'm here to talk about an underrated sci-fi movie from my childhood. It's called Red Planet, it's a Mars movie that came out in 2000, long before things like Interstellar, Gravity, The Martian, and Ad Astra, all movies that are way more popular and well known than this one. This movie doesn't get nearly as much love as it truly deserves, this is an awesome movie. It's got an awesome cast, you know, Val Kilmer, Tom Sizemore, Carry Anne Moss, Terrence Stamp, all great actors. It's got an awesome killer robot called AMEE, and it has some interesting ideas, some unique spins on tropes that you commonly see in space travel movies or planetary exploration movies. All of which, I'll get to later on, but first, I'll briefly go over the plot.
Spoilers ahead, if you haven't seen the movie. I know this is a 21 year old movie, but not a lot of people have seen it. It kind of flew under people's radar when it came out (which partially explains why it bombed at the box office), and it continues to fly under the radar. If you haven't seen it. Go watch it if you haven't seen it, I highly recommend it, it's one of the best Mars movies I've ever seen, and it doesn't get nearly as much credit as it deserves.
It was The Martian before The Martian was ever a thing dreamt up by Andy Weir. Speaking of which, is Andy Weir ever going to write anything that's not space related? All three of his novels so far have been about space travel or about planetary exploration or about moon exploration, The Martian, Artemis, and his newest one, Project Hail Mary. I mean, space and planetary/moon exploration is cool and all, but come on, branch out a little bit. Anyway, onto Red Planet.
The plot of this movie is pretty simple. It takes place in the mid-21st century, in the year, 2057, which is honestly not that far away anymore. It's certainly not as far away as it was in 2000, when this movie came out. Basically, Earth is dying from pollution, climate change presumably, and human overpopulation. So, what does humanity do when faced with a deteriorating planet and a mass extinction of most plant and animal species including humans (probably)? They decide to move to another planet of course, what did you think they would actually try to fix the Earth 🌎? Get out here.
Mars is the planet that they decide to terraform and turn into humanity's new home because fuck Venus! Venus is not a good planet for terraforming. We'd all have to live in the sky, in the atmosphere, or the cloud to actually live on Venus because that's the only part's habitable or could be made habitable. The surface of Venus is way too inhospitable even with terraforming or whatever, it's literally like being inside of oven, there's lava flows everything, and the pressure is so strong, you would be crushed if you tried go on there. We sent probe down to the planet's surface, and it literally got crushed as soon as it touched down and took a picture.
Plus, people have been obsessed with Mars since forever probably. People see it as "Earth's twin," and there's just this certain level of mysticism about it. Some even thought that Mars had intelligent life, that it would be the planet where we would find intelligent aliens 👽 or they would find us. That's why the aliens 👽 in the original War of the Worlds novel by H.G. Wells and the 1953 film adaptation are from Mars, and why a lot of alien visitors or invaders in movies, TV shows, and books are Martians.
The word "Martian" is one of the words that people think when they think of the word, "alien" 👽. And yet, we have yet to find a sign of life on the red planet, and if we ever do, it's not likely that it would be intelligent life anything like ourselves. It would either be single-celled organisms (microbes), or small multicellular organisms that are more "primitive" or "animalistic."
But, there was water there, it looked just how Earth 🌎 does billions of years ago, and might've had early signs of life. But, for whatever reason, all that liquid water on the surface just disappeared, as well as the Earth-like atmosphere, and whatever early life might've been there.
Scientists think it was become the Sun ☀️ destroyed Mars's ozone layer or that the planet didn't have a strong enough magnetosphere, and solar winds just blew away the planet's atmosphere, evaporating the water, and whatever life was there (if there was any). Whatever the cause, Mars was left a desolate, barren wasteland, while Earth 🌎 got to have all the water and life. Mars is pretty much a desert planet like Tattooine from Star Wars.
But, despite the theories about why Mars became the way it is now, there are people who think we can still terraform it, or at the very least, built colonies on the planet, and create an underground society or whatever. We even found liquid water 💦 that shows up during the spring and summer seasons, when the ice melts, and creates streams or rivers that flow as water 💦 does here on Earth 🌎.
There's some people who have proposed that life on Earth 🌎 originated from Mars. It's called Panspermia, and the basic idea is that life on Earth 🌎 was seeded by an asteroid or a meteor from the asteroid belt or from another planet; either as microbes or just as the building blocks. And people have proposed that planet might be Mars, the idea being that a meteor broke off from the planet, carrying either microbes or the building blocks to life, and that meteor landed on Earth 🌍, leading to life evolving here as we know it. If that ever turns out to be true, then that means we're all technically Martians, which would greatly change our place in the universe, and change the perception about ourselves.
Anyway, that's all far from the perimeters of this journal, let's get to the movie. But, just keep in mind that we know a lot more about Mars than we did back when this movie was made. So, they choose Mars as the planet start a new life on, and begin sending algae on unmanned probes to begin the terraforming process. However, something goes wrong, and all the algae disappears and the oxygen levels that were building up from the algae being there drops down seemingly back to where they were before they started terraforming. So, they decide to send a manned mission to Mars to figure out what went wrong, and how they can fix it if they can.
That's where the Mars One mission comes in. They send a six person crew consisting of Bowman (played by Carrie Ann Moss), Santen (played by Benjamin Bratt), Burchenal (played by Tom Sizemore), Gallagher (played by Val Kilmer), Chantilas (played by Terrence Stamp), and Pettengill (played by Simon Baker). They also have two non-human crew members. They have Lucille, who is the ship's AI computer, every spaceship in a sci-fi movie has to have one. She's basically like the Siri or Alexa of this movie. Or, if I were to use an anime reference, she's like the Gilliam II of this movie.
And they have AMEE (Autonomous Mapping Exploration and Evasion) who is basically like a dog robot that was created by the US military 🇺🇸, specifically the Marine Corps; which is probably why she has a military mode, despite being intended as a navigator on this particular mission. She's kind of looks like those Boston Dynamics robots that you always see on YouTube, except way cooler and maybe a bit more terrifying. I mean, she is a military robot built for military applications, whereas the Boston Dynamics robots are meant for civilian purposes.
So, they all go on this mission to find out what caused the terraforming enterprise on Mars to go completely sideways. However, the mission almost immediately goes wrong when the Mars One ship is hit by a gamma ray burst. This creates an EMP (Electromagnetic Pulse) that disables the ship's power supply, artificial gravity, and artificial atmosphere, and just makes everything several times more difficult. So, they have to rush to get down to the planet before the whole ship is inoperable, and the launch mechanisms are disabled.
Of course, when things are rushed, they tend to sloppy, and poorly handled, and that's what happens with the Mars ground mission. They blow their landing by several miles, they start losing crew members left and right, and their robot navigator, AMEE malfunctions and goes a murder spree, picking the remaining crew members off one by one.
But, despite all the technical problems with the mission, and the harsh and dangerous environment of Mars, they manage the uncover the mystery behind the red planet, which may hold the key 🔑 to restarting the Martian terraforming process, and even perhaps, saving Earth from total ecological destruction.
Right off the bat, one of the things that struck me about watching this movie again recently is how awesome the soundtrack is, and how beautiful the movie looks. Not only does it have an awesome score by Graeme Revell, you also have awesome licensed songs like "A Thousand Years" by Sting, or "The Tower That Ate People" by Peter Gabriel or a remix of The Police song, "When the World is Running Down (You Can Go Wrong)" by an artist called Different Gear. You also have original songs created specifically for the movie like an Italian artist named Emma Shapplin 🇮🇹.
The cinematography is excellent in this movie, like it looks immaculate, top notch. This movie didn't get nearly enough praise for how it looked because it looks beautiful. It even looks better than The Martian in certain spaces, in my opinion.
This is also one of those movies that was released the same year as a similar movie with a similar title or premise. You see those all the time, whether it's Antz and A Bug's Life, or Armageddon and Deep Impact, or Olympus Has Fallen and White House Down or Hercules (2014) and The Legend of Hercules. It happens a lot in Hollywood, and it happened with Red Planet as well. It came out the same year as Mission to Mars, which is another sci-fi movie about astronauts 🧑🚀 going to Mars, and finding aliens 👽 (spoiler alert 🚨 ).
Except, the aliens in Mission of Mars were actual intelligent aliens with advanced technology, while the aliens in Red Planet are just a bunch of insects essentially 🦗, they're literally called Nematodes in the movie. Which is actually a bit more realistic or plausible, like if we actually found life on Mars, it probably be either microbes or insects 🦗. Anyway, I actually tried watching Mission to Mars once, like I tried watching it as a kid and I just couldn't get into it.
Maybe, I would feel about it now watching it as an adult, but as it stands, I don't really like Mission to Mars that much. Like, if I had to choose between Red Planet and Mission to Mars, I would choose Red Planet every single time. I'll take Val Kilmer, Carrie Ann Moss, and Tom Sizemore over whoever's in Mission to Mars. Also, Red Planet has a killer dog robot that has a drone detachment and makes cool noises, so there.
It's kind of like The Abyss in a way because like The Abyss, most of the movie is them dealing with technical problems involving their ship or their equipment or their Hab or even their navigator robot who turns into a killer murder robot because she has a military mode installed into her. They deal with technical problems way before they encounter any extraterrestrials 👽.
There's even a guy who goes crazy and betrays the crew from being there too long, away from home, in an hostile environment that they can't escape from. The Abyss had Coffey and Red Planet has Pettengill. They even kind of hint early on that he won't be able to handle the stress of the mission, and something will go wrong because they say he's a civilian and not a NASA astronaut, and he talks about missing Earth 🌎. They also say that he's also a last minute replacement and not the first choice. He's just the lucky guy who happened to get picked next as he put it. Then, when he accidentally knocks Santen off of that cliff, it causes him to deteriorate even further, as he not only has to deal with being homesick and the overall stress of the mission, but he has to also deal with the guilt of killing a man.
Then, when Gallagher breaks the bad news that the Russian spacecraft 🇷🇺 🛰 can only fit one person or two people at most, Pettengill just goes off the deep end, and betrays Gallagher and Burchenal, trying to take the spacecraft for himself. But, he ultimately pays for his betrayal, as when he leaves Gallagher and Burchenal behind, he immediately gets murdered by AMEE. Like, she just tears him up, and then his body gets scavenged by the Nematodes, like they're just crawling through his arms, legs, chest, and through his nose, mouth, and other orifices, eating him from the inside out. A pretty fitting death 💀 for him to be honest.
The difference between The Abyss and Red Planet is that there's no political undertone about the Cold War or anything like that in Red Planet like there was in The Abyss. The Abyss is a Cold War movie through and through, like the Cold War stuff is integral to that movie's plot and its message. The only thing that you could kind of construe as "political" is the fact that they say the Earth 🌎 is dying from pollution or climate change. Neither of those should be political issues (they should be scientific issues), but yet, they are.
If this movie had been made today, or was made 10 years from now, in like 2030 or something, there probably would've been some Cold War political undertones. Like they have to get to Mars first before the Chinese 🇨🇳 get there, or there's a war going on Earth 🌎 between the United States 🇺🇸 and China 🇨🇳, and the only thing the Mars One crew can do is just watch or hear about it on the news.
I don't think that would have added anything to the movie since it's about them trying to figure out why the algae disappeared, not trying to land on Mars for the first time first before China 🇨🇳 or Russia 🇷🇺. Though, the fact that it's a Russian spacecraft 🇷🇺🛰 that's their salvation, and they have to get to, and mention how they're collaborating with the Russian scientist or engineer who built it to get it to work, is a bit political.
Like, it shows a greater cooperation and friendship between America 🇺🇸 and Russia 🇷🇺, which was kind of going on at the time when this movie came out, thanks to the leadership of Boris Yeltsin, who was more pro-American 🇺🇸 and pro-West in general than previous Russian leaders were in the Soviet era. Before, Russian and American relations 🇺🇸🇷🇺 pretty went back to what they were in the Cold War, under Vladimir Putin.
But, since I talked a bit about one of characters, why don't I talk about the other characters. I like most of the characters in this movie. They're all entertaining and likeable, or at the very least, interesting. The only two characters I don't like are Santen and Pettengill. They're both assholes, and they both caused way more trouble and made the mission even worse than if they didn't fuck shit up. Sure, Burchenal is a bit of an asshole too, but he's a likeable asshole, he's an entertaining asshole. These two, Santen and Pettengill, they're not very likeable. Burchenal's a guy I'd be willing to hang out with, while Santen and Pettengill are guys that I just want to punch in the face 👊.
I already talked about Pettengill in length, so I just I'll just focus on Santen in this section. The reason why I don't like Santen is that he's a big reason why the ground mission on Mars goes so wrong. Santen is the one to blame for why AMEE malfunctions and goes on a killing spree, picking off the crew one-by-one. By making the asinine decision to dump the landing gear, which is not something they were supposed to do (at least, not when he did it), just because they blew their landing and were off target by several miles.
AMEE was inside of a module in the landing gear, because she supposed to be the navigator for the mission, but when Santen dumped it and it crashed landed on the Martian surface several miles away from the guys landed, it caused damage to AMEE's hardware components. This of course, led to the malfunction where AMEE would switch to military mode on her own (through her artificial intelligence), and perceive anyone as a threat that needed to be eliminated, including the very crew that she was supposed to be navigating.
Burchenal didn't help matters either by talking about killing her and stripping her down for parts, which is why she targeted him first. But, if Santen hadn't made that split second decision to dump the landing gear too early, none of that AMEE drama would have happened. She would not have become a danger to the crew, and the mission.
He's not even that great of a commander either, like he's not that great of a leader. He's too hot-headed, too much of a jock, thinks he's hot shit, and is just a dick to everyone, except Bowman and Chantilas. He knows he can't boss them around or be a dick to them because they're more senior in the NASA command structure than him, so he listens to them, and doesn't bother them around that much. Bowman is a way better leader than him, and the mission would've probably went better if she went on the planet, and he stayed on the ship.
But, besides him and Pettengill, I liked the characters in this movie. It goes without saying that I like all of the actors in the movie, I even said so at the beginning of this. They all do a great job, even the actors who play the characters I don't like do a good job. Tom Sizemore is great as always. Sure, he basically plays the same type of character that he usually plays in movies, but he does a fine job at it. I liked him in this movie, I thought he was cool. He brings some much needed levity to this movie. It's a shame that he fell from grace due to alcoholism 🍷🥃, but I guess he's doing fine now, he's appearing in movies again. That's what my Dad told me at least.
Carrie Ann Moss does a great job as well. She's mostly known for her role as Trinity in the Matrix films, and there is a bit of Trinity in Bowman as well, but she does enough to distinguish Bowman from Trinity so that they are different characters and not the exact same. She plays strong female characters, and she does it pretty well here. I mean, I follow Bowman into battle, like I wouldn't having her as my leader on a dangerous mission like this.
Val Kilmer is great in the movie. This is probably my favorite role that I've seen of his. I've seen two movie that's he in, this and Top Gun. And Gallagher and Iceman are certainly vastly different characters. He's a true master of his craft, and it's awful what has happened to him recently with his throat cancer. He survived it, he's getting treatment for it, but he can't talk good anymore. He has to talk with one of those speaker things that have to hold to your throat and talk through, and the voice sounds all computery and distorted. He probably had to retire from acting entirely because of his health condition, which means that Top Gun: Maverick may in fact be his final role.
Anyway, with Val's tragic life aside, he is really good in this movie. I liked Gallagher, I thought he was a very likeable character, pretty witty and pretty good natured. He's a character that you're willing to follow as a protagonist, and you want him to succeed and survive. I even like the little romance between him and Bowman. Like, they're flirting here and there throughout the movie 💕, and then they kiss at the end 💋 when they're the last survivors and they're flying back to Earth 🌎. Val Kilmer and Carrie Ann Moss certainly had great chemistry on screen 🧪⚗️. Granted, not as good as Keanu Reeves and Carrie Ann Moss's chemistry 🧪⚗️ in the Matrix movies, but still really good.
Granted, it is a bit Hollywood for the main guy and the main girl to hook up in the movie, I'll give you that. I mean, ideally, if you're choosing people to go on a manned Mars mission, and it's a female and male mixed crew, you want to make sure they're not in love 😍, and there's no sexual tension between them. You'd want the relationship to be as platonic as possible. That is one thing that The Martian has over this movie, the fact, one of the male and female crew member hook up with each other, especially not Mark Watney (Matt Damon's character) and Commander Melissa Lewis (Jessica Chastain's character). They all have boyfriends and girlfriends to return to back on Earth 🌎. So, it is more realistic than Red Planet in that sense.
But, because they show Earth or show any one of the Mars One crew's life before the mission, they couldn't give Gallagher a girlfriend on Earth 🌎 or Bowman a boyfriend on Earth 🌎, so they just had them hook up while they're in space 😘. It could be a case where Bowman and Gallagher didn't have any feelings for each other at first, but as the mission went along, being cooped up together, and after they went through such a dangerous ordeal to complete the mission, they ended falling for each other 😍. That adrenaline rush that increases certain hormones that leads to lust and eventually love 💕.
They even kind of hint at that in the opening narration when Bowman kind of dismisses Gallagher by saying that he wasn't her first choice. But, after he sees her naked after the shower, and probably some other stuff that we didn't see prior that incident, they start flirting each other 😘, and after going through the stressful experience of carrying out the mission, they ended up falling in love 💕. That's my theory, and I think I'm on the money 💵.
So, yes, it's not completely realistic for the female astronaut of the crew, and one of the male astronauts to fall in love each other while they're on a mission (especially if the female astronaut is the commander), but there is a reason behind it. Maybe, Bowman and Gallagher's relationship is what gets the both of them court marshaled or discharged from NASA or whatever after they return to Earth 🌎. Who knows 🤷♂️?
Of course, you have the legendary actor, Terrence Stamp, who's had long and distinguished acting career. Older generations will probably know him as General Zod in the first two Christopher Reeve Superman movies from the 1970s, while younger generations will know him as Chancellor Valorum in Star Wars, Episode I. He was also in the Jim Carrey movie, Yes Man, which isn't too relevant to this journal, but I thought I would mention it since I've seen that movie and Terrence Stamp is in it.
He's kind of the faith based one of the crew. They call him the "soul of the team," but really he's the more spiritual, philosophical, or religious one of the team ✝️. He talks about how he didn't think that science could answer the "interesting questions," so he turned to philosophy, leading him to God 😇. So, he's like the faithful theist (or deist) of the group, while Burchenal is the skeptical atheist of the group.
They do kind of bud heads, where Burchenal is the more secular, hard science kind of guy while Chantilas is the more spiritual or faith-based kind of guy who thinks there's a high power at work. Gallagher ultimately takes more of Chantilas's side on the issue, stating that a spiritual life is more difficult than a purely scientific one, but it isn't a full God believer. He's kind of in-between the two extremes of Chantilas and Burchenal, which is probably where I would be.
I used be that kind of hardline atheist type just like Burchenal, where I thought only science 🧪 could answer the "interesting questions" of life, the universe, and everything, and I didn't really tolerate any religion or spirituality. But, now, I'm at that stage where I don't really care what other people believe, and I don't have blind trust in science alone 🧪. I'm not saying that I'm spiritual or that I believe in God or some higher power, but I am more tolerant of religions and spiritual beliefs, and an adherent to the "live and let live" philosophy.
I may become more spiritual in the future, but I just don't know at this stage in my life. If I were to believe in God or some higher power or being, I would probably be deist, which is a belief that God exists, but he doesn't directly intervene or interfere in the affairs of man (as in mankind, which is humanity) as described in the Bible. Or I would hold more vague belief where there is some high power that created the universe, and controls and guides it, but it isn't necessarily a god as we think of one. I would not become a Bible thumping Christian ✝️, that's for sure.
One philosophical or ethical question that part of me kind of wishes the movie addresses, or at least, more movies like it addressed is the ethics of actually terraforming Mars and turning it into an Earth-like planet. You know like, why should we terraform Mars and turn it into a copy of Earth 🌍 just because we didn't take good care of the actual Earth 🌍? Why should get to decide what happens to that planet? Are we taking away something from Mars by terraforming it, are we taking away what makes it special just to fit our selfish needs? Are unintentional destroying the old remnants of life that existed on the planet before it became desolate by replacing it with our life? Or are we denying the evolution of current existing or potential new life that may emerge by plopping Earth life 🌎🌍🌏 on there?
These are serious questions to consider if we are ever going to terraform Mars in the future. Some people out there don't even think we should terraform or colonize Mars. They believe that we should just leave it alone as is, to preserve its uniqueness, and just use the planet for research only, not as a new home for humanity. But, I don't mind that question wasn't addressed in this movie. I could always add that ethical question into my own Mars novel in the future *hint* *hint*.
Anyway, he's also the first one to die in the whole movie. He gets severely injured on the drop down, like when the landing craft is just bouncing around with those airbags deployed. His seat gets dislodged when the craft did a rock while tumbling down a mountain, and his spleen gets ruptured, causing internal bleeding 🩸. He decides to stay behind at the crash site, believing that he would just become a burden to the other guys, and he would just weigh them down.
They try to convince him to go with them, believing the Hab that they've supposed to rendezvous with is up and running and has medical supplies 🏥. But, Chantilas doesn't budge, and the guys ultimately decide to just leave him behind per his request. So, he just sits there against a rock, and dies where he sits, drawing pictures in the sand with his finger. Why they even thought bringing a man his age on such a dangerous manned mission to Mars was a good idea is beyond me.
Leaving Chantilas behind would turn out to be the right decision because they finally reach the Hab, it's all completely destroyed and destitute. They don't know why it's destroyed, or who or what destroyed it, it's just another thing that adds to the mystery that they need to solve about Mars. If they had actually brought Chantilas along with them, he would died anyway because they didn't have the medical supplies 🏥 to actually fix him up. So, leaving him behind, as fucked up as it is, was the right decision.
It would have been more cruel to actually bring him along because they would've basically been giving him false hope that they could patch him up at the Hab. But, when they get there, and the Hab is destroyed, then it's like, "Well, there's nothing we can do, you're fucked. I guess, you're just going to have to sit around with us and bleed to death 🩸💀." But then again, that's what the other guys were doing anyway.
They kind of lost hope, and were just sitting around the wreckage and debris of the Hab, waiting to die. Only, they were waiting for their air to run out, and to suffocate to death 💀, whereas Chantilas had a ruptured spleen and was internally bleeding 🩸. So, he would have died from spleen damage and internal bleeding, and he would died much sooner than the other guys would have. He wouldn't have had time to suffocate to death 💀 from a lack of oxygen.
But, luckily, the guys took off their helmets, and Mars had oxygen, so they didn't have to suffocate to death 💀. Of course, at this point in the movie, they are utterly bewildered by why Mars has oxygen. There's no algae on the surface, and therefore nothing to produce oxygen, so where is it coming from? Again, it just adds to the greater mystery of Mars.
Which brings me to the Martians in this movie. The extraterrestrial lifeforms that the ground crew encounters on the Martian surface that Burchenal dubs "Nematodes." They don't look like nematodes on Earth, nematodes in real-life on Earth are more like worms 🪱, and these thing certainly don't like worms 🪱. So, calling them "Nematodes" isn't all that fitting. They look more like aphids to be honest, like they look and behave like aphids. They're killer alien aphids. So, I went there, and found these things, I would call them "Aphids," not "Nematodes."
But, anyway, they're cool little creatures. They're the some of most plausible alien life 👽 that I've seen in any sci-fi movie. They're basically the cause of everything that happens within this movie's storyline; except for why AMEE malfunctions, that's Santen's fault. They're the reason why the algae disappeared, and they're the ones that destroyed the Hab. They're basically these creatures that just eat everything and anything in sight, and there were likely living dormant on the Martian surface until the humans start dropping algae on the planet.
The algae caused these Nematodes to wake up from their suspended animation or dormancy, and began feeding on the algae, until most of it was gone, causing the oxygen levels to go down. But, the reason why the oxygen levels went back up, and the Mars One ground crew are able to breathe on the planet without their helmets, is that these things produce oxygen as a waste product, similar to trees 🌳 and other plants 🌱.
Only these things are animals, not plants 🌱, so that makes them a bit strange and unique. And because they produce oxygen as a waste product, they are extremely flammable 🔥. Burchenal found this out the hard way when trying opening Pettengill's helmet with a torch when he heard one of the Nematodes crawling inside.
As soon as they were exposed to the sparks produced by the torch, they immediately ignited and starting exploding and popping out like firecrackers 🧨. Then, when they started attacking Burchenal, Burchenal decided to sacrifice himself and immolate himself to avoid being eaten alive like Pettengill was; though Pettengill wasn't actually eaten alive. He was killed by AMEE, and then the Nematodes started feeding on him on his corpse when he was already dead 💀.
Speaking of which, as I stated before, they don't just eat algae, they eat pretty much anything and everything they see, which is why they destroyed the Hab. They ate it, they ate the Hab, and all the hydroponics inside of it, leaving only debris in their wake. They're also perfectly willing to eat flesh as demonstrated when they started scavenging on Pettengill's body, and when they started attacking Burchenal after drinking some of his blood 🩸.
Someone in the comments of this scene on YouTube said that these things would not actually beneficial to life on Earth, despite the Mars One crew and NASA believing that they're the key 🔑 to Earth's survival 🌎, and I completely agree with that. It's kind of implied that these things are the reason why Mars is so lifeless. They basically killed all the other life forms and ate all the organic material that was on the planet, until they was nothing left except them.
If these things were brought to Earth 🌎, like NASA found a way to breed them or clone them or whatever, and plopped them down on the Earth 🌎 to start making oxygen, they would eat all the organisms on Earth 🌎, and leave the planet as desolate and lifeless as Mars. These things are a world-ending threat, and NASA isn't nearly as concerned as they should be. Unless, they just kept the Nematodes inside of a controlled environment, and had them produce oxygen that they would then disperse into the atmosphere, then the danger to our planet could be averted. But, if they just plopped them in Earth's environment 🌎 and had them live off the land, they would kill everything.
I actually kind of interpret the Nematodes as a metaphor for humanity itself. They basically fit in with Agent Smith from The Matrix's assessment or speech about humanity, where they're an organism that's native to the planet, and yet, they are a threat to that planet just by their mere existence.
The Nematodes are native to Mars, and yet, they are incapable of balance. They just consume, consume, consume until there's nothing left. Then once they've depleted every natural resource, they have to spread to another area in order to survive. Just like humanity in a lot of ways. I mean, the humans in this movie literally destroyed Earth's ecology with pollution, climate change, and overpopulation, and had to move another planet to survive. So, it fits in that way. But, that's just my personal interpretation.
There is some really dated CGI in this movie to be sure, but it's a 21 year old movie, what do you expect? Of course it's not going to look as good as CGI in movies today. CGI has come a long way since the year 2000. Besides, I don't actually think the CGI is as people make it out to be. I think a lot of the CGI in this movie still looks pretty good, especially on AMEE, AMEE is probably the best looking CGI thing in this whole movie. It's really the CGI in the beginning with the opening narration by Carrie Ann Moss, and the CGI in some of the parts with the Nematodes that look wonky.
But, the actual landing scene where Gallagher and the rest of guys drop down on the planet, and they're bouncing around the rough Martian mountainous terrain with those airbags, that was all practical. They probably used some kind of miniature or trick photography or compositing in that scene, like there's very little CGI, if any.
That's why that whole sequence, that whole set piece still holds up and looks real because it was real essentially and wasn't all digital. But, the CGI that is in this movie still holds up for the most part for being a 2000 movie, but there are moments where it looks very dated and very wonky and unreal. Like, it just looks completely digital and doesn't look real or convincing at all. But, to me, those moments are few and far between.
The sound design is on point though, like there's nothing quite like a sci-fi with great sound design and there is some great sound design in this movie. I like the sounds that AMEE makes like those whirrling noises or those beeps or hissing sounds that she makes. Those sounded really cool, like they reminded me sounds from The Matrix, which came out one year before this. Her little drone detachment also had a cool sound to it. The Nematodes make cool sounds too, sure, like they're insect crawling sounds, but they're pretty cool. The sounds on the ship, during the landing sequence were also pretty cool as well.
I also like the Russian voice 🇷🇺 on the Cosmos, the Russian spacecraft 🇷🇺 that Gallagher uses to escape. There's this little computer, cartoon bear 🐻 wearing a cosmonaut suit that appears on the screen of the ship when Gallagher activates it, and it voices what appears on screen. I thought that was pretty cool, like I liked the way the Russian computer voice sounded.
I kind of wish that I knew someone who spoke Russian 🇷🇺 so that they could translate what the computer cosmonaut bear 🐻 says. Like, I wish I had Nick from the Nick & Cory YouTube channel to translate for me. Maybe, those two would be willing to watch this movie with me, you know, watch and react to a good movie for once.
Here's another little anecdote, I didn't know until recently that the movie was rated PG-13. I thought it was rated R all these years. I don't know why, I guess it just seemed like it would be rated R. The Matrix literally came out the year before, and that had Carrie Ann Moss in it and that was rated R, so I figured that this must be too. But, even though it is PG-13, it's not a soft PG-13 by any means.
You know, there's blood 🩸 and there's some nudity with Carrie Ann Moss. You don't really see anything, like you don't see her boobs or even her ass that much, but it's there. There's also one "fuck" and it's uttered by Gallagher when he says, "Fuck this planet," while giving the finger 🖕, but you are allowed to have one "fuck" in a PG-13 movie. Two or three or more F bombs will be going too far, and the movie will automatically be rated R. That's why you sometimes see R rated movies that are only R rated because of language, or you'll see R rated movies that are R rated for language, but they only have a few cuss words in them, like maybe 5 "shits" or 3 "fucks."
There's one scene where Santen calls Pettengill a "pussy," and the two of them get into a fight which results in Pettengill accidentally knocking Santen off a cliff. Fun fact about that scene, there is an alternate version of that scene where Pettengill intentionally pushed Santen off of the cliff. Obviously, they cut that scene out and made it accidentally in the final movie, to make him less of an asshole, but I don't mind it. It would've made him much more of a villain, and would've shown how crazy and unhinged he was becoming from being on Mars for too long.
Anyway though, if Quentin Tarantino or Neill Blomkamp wrote that scene, it would have at least three or four "fucks." It be like, "Well, fuck you! I don't need forgiveness from a fucking pussy like you. Get out here!" I know that has only "fucks," but you get my point. If Santen had used some f bombs in that scene with Pettengill, and you combined that with the "Fuck this planet 🖕" line, this movie would rated R. It would be rated R for language only because there isn't a lot blood or gore or nudity in this movie. There's some, but it's not explicit enough to make it R. Yeah, I know, it's kind of dumb, but that's just how movie ratings work in the US 🇺🇸.
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