Here’s the deal: 50 years from now the population of Earth is a testy 12 billion and the environment is a trash heap where we’ve killed all the frogs, so our only hope is to send Val Kilmer to Mars. His job is to figure out why there’s no oxygen up there. Which we already know in our time, but in 50 years we will have been seeding the fourth planet with algae for a few decades (great – we’ve screwed up our own world, so let’s ruin another one by turning it into an extraterrestrial landfill for our pond scum) and made it partially breathable, until without explanation the oxygen suddenly vanishes. That’s where Val comes in. He’s on the first manned expedition, part of a predominantly neurotic crew that includes Carrie-Anne Moss (rowrrr), Benjamin Bratt (when the future of humanity hangs in the balance, you always want to have someone along who was on a show called “Homicide”), Tom Sizemore, and Terence Stamp as a Brit whose only apparent purpose is to be on hand in case there’s a hull breech and all the crew’s philosophical arguments leak out. These are the people entrusted to save Earth. Oh, and there’s also a transforming ex-Marine terminator combat robot with a little helicopter that flies out of its back to scout ahead for fresh meat. Good grief, why didn’t they just clone Jeffrey Dahmer, or put a space suit on Freddy Krueger? Seriously, if you were going to modify a machine to look for oxygen on Mars, wouldn’t you start with something a little more benign, like maybe a vacuum cleaner, or a foot massager? Does the human race want to extinct itself? No wonder NASA wouldn’t sign off for technical support on this thing.
Anyway, they fly to Mars listening to the first Police album and unimaginatively flanged crunchmusik (you know, I’d trade my Monkees CD collection for a chance to see a futuristic movie where someone at least tries to conjure up a fresh idea of what we might be listening to then; on the other hand, that’s probably what wrecked the biosphere: an accumulation of too much classic rock). Once there, more technobabble mishaps occur in the first five minutes than in ten years-worth of “Star Trek,” each crisis providing further opportunity for glossy mayhem. Worst of all, they make the mistake of showing that, some time in the next half-century, we’ll develop artificial gravity. Now, if you wanna ask Stephen Hawking, he’ll tell you that if you can overcome the force that holds the universe together, solving any other problem is a snap. You can make your own frogs. You can bring another planet here if you want, and not leave the comfort of your own garage.
Red Planet is, however, fast-paced, action-packed, pretty, and has a funny line about algebra, which is worth noting when you consider that good math jokes are hard to come by. C-
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