Rating: 
Summary: (...) This was AWESOME!
Review: Come on guys! How can you not love this movie? If you people are only concerned with the special effects and the settings (...), how do you ever enjoy movies? Seriously, I dont even notice that stuff in movies unless it is absolutely horrible! (...)
It's not very often when a movie is made that has everything anyone could want and still be clean. The actors are some of the best and they do a very good job. And how can anyone bash a movie with Gary Sinise in it? Im only 14 and I can tell how good he is! I've been waiting for 2 years for his movie Impostor to come out (which im happy to say comes out on Christmas Day!) And it has Tim Robbins! They are great on screen together! The plot is great and I was interested the whole time. I absolutely love this movie and I would HIGHLY recommend it to everyone. (...)
Rating: 
Summary: Not at all great, but not worthless either.
Review: This is certainly a kinder, gentler De Palma than what we had in the good old days of "The Fury," "Dressed to Kill" and "Scarface." At any rate, everybody knows that this movie doesn't really work. I found it interesting more for what it actually ISN'T than what it is, and for what De Palma attempts - but doesn't necessarily succeed at. The script is a big nothing - not that De Palma hasn't made a silk purse out of a sow's ear before. There just isn't a solid idea here for him or anyone to grab onto. The rather languid pacing (helped along by Morricone's gently deliberate score) was an unexpected and pleasant surprise - even if it never pays off. It's a different kind of movie for De Palma - as if one of his beautiful slow motion sequences were stretched out to feature length - and someday he will probably do this right. I hope so, anyway. I rather like the mystical De Palma. It’s tantalizing to think what he could do with the right material. The camerawork is stunning. For this reason alone I was glad to sit through this movie. (It's more than most Hollywood films have to offer.) As CG-mation movies go, this one actually looks pretty good a lot of the time - although I really wish we hadn't seen the alien. I can't wait for these effects to go out of vogue. The conceptual art of these sequences often look better than the finished scenes. (It may be a few years before audiences realize how bad most of this stuff looks.) Normally I would avoid any movie that glorifies the distasteful business of flag planting, but I didn't hate this one. Then again, I didn't expect it to be good. It isn't really good, but it's visually compelling a great deal of the time - sometimes even when it shouldn't be, given the lameness of the script. Anyway, it's all about the camera with De Palma, and there's something new here - however undeveloped. I give it three stars for the spirit of hope it inspires. There may yet be another masterpiece around the corner from this incredible filmmaker who is as gifted as he is uneven. (Both more so than Lucas or Spielberg.) Watch for restaged spinning bits from "The Fury" and "Carrie."
Rating:
Summary: Characters count!
Review: Mission to Mars has been trashed by almost every imaginable film critic, and by most audiences as well. The question remains: "Why would Brian de Palma and Gary Sinise work on such an awful film?" My response is that Mission to Mars (M2M) is not an awful film,but it could have been so much better if it was aimed at a broader audience. For starters, let's establish right now that M2M is a family-friendly version of "2001" without the homicidal computer. I don't want to risk giving anything away, but the plot is rather simple: man travels into space and discovers that he is not alone in the universe. Rather than simply rip off Kubrick and Clarke, de Palma could have aimed at producing a more realistic story that had the same message. Instead he took the message, wrapped it in some excellent special effects, and fed it to children. In the movie, we are given four astronauts that we could have cared about. There are some threads of subplots that could have been developed to make this movie interesting and make the characters more appealing. The introduction to the film is similar to "Apollo 13" but leaves a lot to be desired. But at a length of 113 minutes, there just isn't enough time to weave a better story. Thie film's producers probably figured that the children watching it would have trouble staying awake for that long in a dark theatre. Viewers miss many important scenes, like the departure of Mars One, that would have made this film much more interesting. But Brian de Palma and crew do deserve some credit for salvaging this lost mission. There are two scenes in the center of the movie that are genuinely suspenseful. Even if the rest of the movie was a complete wash, I would recommend renting it anyway just to watch those two sequences. Alone, they are almost enough to save M2M. The other accomplishment in this movie is the special effects. In a way, viewers seem to lose the awe and wonder of another world because there isn't any kind of fantastic quality to it. Everything about Mars looks like how NASA presents it. The spacecraft are also well done. They are heavily rooted in the various methods that have been discussed for bringing humans to Mars and they look and act very realistic. The "Visions of Mars" documentary and the other DVD extras are a nice touch that help to repair the damage that the underdeveloped characters cause. Don't get Mission to Mars and expect it to match "Apollo 13" or "The Right Stuff." And it doesn't fare very well next to either "2001" or "2010." But it's still the best cinematic look at Mars that we've received in a long time. If you have children that sre interested in science, get them this flick. The rest of us can wait for James Cameron to finish his own Mars movie.
Rating: 
Summary: This film shoul fly! Throw it somewhere!
Review: It's difficult to add anything new to the comments already made here. Hollywood should be given some credit for trying to educate the American public in science issues. JURASSIC PARK, DEEP IMPACT and ARMAGEDDON made some effort to use biology or astrophysics in dealing with scientific matters, no matter how feebly or ineptly. Scientists' objections to these portrayals make the job tougher. Dinosaur DNA is unlikely to produce anything, even if it could be recovered. Nuking comets may be credible, but a solid iron asteroid would be a tougher nut to crack. Unfortunately for the scientific themes, the chief purpose of making films is to provide entertainment, whether dramatic or comic. Which is precisely where this film falls down. It's hard to know which category fits. It's clear that DePalma wanted to bring together a number of scientific themes - Martian exploration, the idea that DNA in some form is ubiquitous where it can survive, personal relationships in long-term space travel, and, the BIG question; where do WE come from? Given all that, why is the whole cast forced into such expressive constraints? Having seen Tim Robbins only in Shawshank Redemption, emotional outbursts weren't anticipated. Astronauts have to appear professional, but Woody Blake looked more alive when he was dead. Stiff characterization seems to be the prevalent undercurrent when making films about science. As much as we all adored Sigourney Weaver, other than lopping Ash's head off, she remained pretty subdued in ALIEN. A wealth of minor aspects of this film were unnecessary irritants. The time jumps were clearly necessary to move things along, but did we really have to go through yet another last minute rescue that almost didn't happen? That's become such a tired theme, especially in space travel. Why did the little Sojourner keep bumping into isolated rocks, even when it was under guidance? The images of Mars certainly don't match the photos transmitted back from Viking or Pathfinder. Why the tired old cliche of but one survivor of the first mission? The Force swallowed them up one at a time [and why did the first two simply dawdle as that thing formed?] a little haste in that low gravity could have spared another. Why did Luke go cracked? A professional astronaut is steeped in survival training. Wartime solitary survivors are commonly told stories. And Luke would know how many people were keeping an eye on his mission. The list seems endless and it's depressing that a man of DePalma's talents flopped so miserably. Perhaps a little less money on FX [heresy!] by diverting it to editing and giving the actors something other than clichés to say might have redeemed M2M. A parting note. 2001 - A Space Odyssey, doesn't really fit in this genre, although it set the pattern for how to make such films. 2001's theme of human evolution driven by outsiders has always offended me. It makes evolution something that can be tinkered with and the fossil record denies that tampering. Those who've seen M2M will detect the final source of my irritations with the science of this film. Borrow M2M from someone to watch it once, but don't make their copy fly!
Rating:
Summary: Boring, emotionless, and just plain bad.
Review: Watching this film was something like watching "Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace": I watched the entire thing, hoping to find something that could save the film in some way. But while "Episode I" had some saving grace, "Mission To Mars" had nothing to help it in the least. From beginning to end, this film is terrible. What's the biggest problem with this movie? Hard to tell. Everything is a big problem with it. Plot, characterization, acting, everything! Oh, special effects were pretty good, but we all remember "Episode I", "The Haunting", "The Mummy Returns"...the point being, good special effects don't mean anything if everyting else doesn't work right. The plot (I won't go into detail about it) has to be one of the most ridiculous things I've ever seen in science-fiction. The movie is littered with bad science that someone without a PhD in astronomy could pick up. Many of the scenes just "don't work," meaning they are frustrating and poorly done. And the scenes that do work have no substance whatsoever. What's worse is that "Mission To Mars" conveniently "borrows" ideas from several other science-fiction movies, especially the brilliant "2001". What makes the plot even more terrible is the horrendous acting and characterization. Characters development was zero, and acting ability was in the negatives. When someone tried to say something emotional or dramatic, it sounded so overacted and so overemotional that it was plainful. Of course, the bad acting could be attributed to the less-than-bearable script, but only partially. Emotionless acting with a poor script doesn't adhere to the "two negatives make a postitive" idea; here, it takes everything to subzero. All in all, "Mission To Mars" is just flat out a terrible movie. There is nothing here that can ultimately save it from its overpowering flaws, and while it does have some interesting eye-candy, its effect on you will wear off quickly. Simply put, don't bother with this movie, or it will bother you!
Rating: 
Summary: Alien Guys with Big Heads
Review: This film is unbelievable. It brings the audience all the way to the end of the film and then the filmmakers really don't have an ending. You essentially get another ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE type ending, which has been used too many times now. After seeing MISSION TO MARS I can now appreciate a film like EVENT HORIZON which chose a graphically violent alternative but dared to be different and challenge the viewer.
Rating:
Summary: Very entertaining
Review: I don't understand why this film took so much criticism. The same people who are crying about how unrealistic the movie is are the same people who don't think twice about warp speed, light sabers and mental telepathy. For a movie in the science fiction category, it seemed a lot more realistic than other popular science fictions movies. It was also nice to see a film without people shooting each other, killing aliens or blowing things up. It's not that I don't enjoy action films, but I found it very refreshing. This is definitely a film you can take the kids to. I'm not a real family film type of guy, so I'd rather take the young ones to see this than a Disney film.
Rating:
Summary: NOTHING HERE
Review: People wanna see masterpieces where there is nothing !! THis MISSION TO MARS is just another bad movie. The only thing that surprised me was Tim Robbins acting on it, he normally doesn't act in bad pictures.
Rating:
Summary: FORGET IT.
Review: It si horrible, just that. From the acting thourgh the direction to the plot, everything is awful. How can people of the calibre of Robbins, De Palma and Sinise do a thing like this is beyond my compreension...
Rating:
Summary: Mission To Nowhere
Review: Over the years, Brian DePalma had made movies of diverse genres: Drama, Horror, Suspense, Political Paranoia, Comedy, Crime Thriller, War, and Espionage. His latest film, "Mission To Mars," is the director's first genuine science fiction movie. Sadly, this movie is also one of DePalma's worst pictures. A group of scientists(Including Don Cheadle) go on the first manned mission to Mars and are largely wiped out by a mysterious tornado. A rescue team(Including Gary Sinise and Tim Robbins) goes to the planet. They find that Cheadle is still alive and also discover the origins of life on Earth. "Mission To Mars" is one of DePalma's worst pictures. This movie isn't as bad as "Scarface" and "Raising Cain," but that isn't saying a whole lot; DePalma hasn't made a good movie since "The Untouchables." The special effects are great but this one element can't save the movie. In the past, DePalma has borrowed a great deal from Alfred Hitchcock. For "Mission To Mars," DePalma borrows a significant amount from Stanley Kubrick's "2001: A Space Odyssey," but this movie doesn't come close to matching Kubrick's masterpiece; please don't even try to compare these two movies. DePalma's film is an uneven blend of science fiction, religious theology, and evolution theory. "Mission To Mars" is a science fiction thriller for the first three-quarters of the story but abruptly becomes a quasi-religious drama in the last quarter; this sudden transition is both awkward and heavy-handed. The tornado in the movie sounds like a dinosaur. An extraterrestrial in the film looks like an MTV-inspired version of the alien from Steven Spielberg's "Close Encounters Of The Third Kind." The movie also ends as if it were unfinished. In addition, "Mission To Mars" is a bit too violent at times for its PG-rating; a PG-13 rating would have been more suitable for the picture. "Mission To Mars" is only for diehard science fiction fans, older children, and those who feel that they need to see every Brian DePalma movie.
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