In the year 2000, there were two major sci-fi movies about the planet Mars in theaters. Neither did well, and neither is well remembered today. The first was Brian De Palma’s Mission to Mars, a kind of sideways Disney project, loosely based on the 1975 Disney World ride of the same name. The second was Red Planet, a Warner Bros. effort that attempted to present itself as a hard science fiction movie, which, strangely, feels like the pilot of a somewhat decent TV series today.
Was the world just not ready for a movie like Red Planet? Does it deserve its embarrassing 14 percent on Rotten Tomatoes? The answer is somewhat complicated. While it’s very difficult to say Red Planet is a great sci-fi gem, it’s utterly unfair to say it’s a bad one.
