Talk:Mission to Mars/Archive 1

Technical error

 * Spoiler alert!

In the scene where the signal from the 'dome' (actually the 'face' on Mars after millenia of dust is removed) is discovered to represent DNA, they conclude that the key is to come up with the last two chromosomes, which would have a huge number of possibilities.

What's shown is they need to figure out the final two BASE PAIRS in the sequence of DNA. There are only two possible pairs of molecules and two orientations for each base pair, plus four possible orders of the two pair combinations. Adenine only pairs with Thymine, Guanine only pairs with Cytosine.

The complexity of the task is drastically less than the dialog says, but the absurdity of the situation is still nearly infinite.

There are many other techincal problems in the film, but this one should stand out quite badly to anyone who has had the most basic instruction in molecular biology.

What brian de palma saw in the script to mission to mars is beyond me. This is basically a rescue mission and in the last ten minutes we get an embarassingly simplistic answer to how life originated on earth from mars. Once again de palma makes an elegantly beautiful movie with no substantial story behind it's empty narrative. I've always wanted de palma to do a sci-fi movie. This wasn't it. It took steven spielberg to make the sci-fi movie that de palma never made in minority report. A film like mission to mars belongs to a sci-fi audience of a bygone era, namely the 50's. Todays sophisticated audience crave for mindbending and mind altering sci-fi that takes them to a new level of experience. If brian de palma is going to tackle sci-fi again I just hope it will be based on the novel "the demolished man". The sci-fi movie he was expected to direct straight after "the fury". That definitly would be a movie event to watch out for! HARRY GEORGATOS.

Additionally, the disaster which kills the first crew in this movie is patently ridiculous. As anyone who has studied mars (or even played Doom 3) can tell you, the martian atmosphere is very thin: atmospheric pressure is about 0.0056 atm, or 0.5% that of Earth. Now I'm no scientist, but with air that thin, does it seem likely that the sandstorm which killed 3 people would even have been able to toss rocks around, much less tear some poor guy into a jumbo order of Astronaut McNuggets? PAUL JENNINGS
 * I'd have to agree with you there. This is a horrible movie, the WORST one I have ever seen. Science takes a beating in this moive. Also why does the guy's head turn to stone when he (stupidly) takes his helmet off? That makes no sense. Yet another thing this movie "got wrong", and I am not even going to get into the "ending" - Prede (talk) 06:10, 23 April 2008 (UTC)

That's interesting. I didn't take it as his head turning to stone. To me, it looks more like his head is the result of being frozen. The face of when he opened his helmet visor, to let out all of the Oxygen & decompression, his face basically looks what would possibly happen in Space. But, again that's Hollywood for you.

Rayghost (talk) 12:13, 23 August 2008 (UTC)

Would it be useful to include a short section on technical errors? There are many examples of 'bad science' in the film. One that I personally was annoyed about was that during Mars Orbit Insertion, when the spacecraft malfunctions, the crew enter orbit by simply grabbing hold of another spacecraft that is passing. If this were ever attempted, the crew and the orbiting spacecraft would be traveling at a relative velocity of at least 1000m/s! 81.153.151.114 (talk) 12:56, 22 May 2008 (UTC)


 * Oh come on! I could not disagree more with what's been said here, firstly to my memory (and admittedly I haven’t seen this movie in a few years) the DNA problem they work on is nothing to do with base pairs, they same Chromosomes don't them? Well there's a big difference between a chromosome and a base pair. Besides, the missing DNA element, whatever it was, may not even be natural or real DNA, the whole thing was created by the Martian aliens as a sort of test for any intelligent species to work out, it was purposefully designed to be mathematically challenging, it's not a technical error.
 * As for the "Tornado" thing that kills the astronauts, it would be ridiculous if it were supposed to be a natural weather formation on Mars, but that is not the case, if I remember correctly it was in-fact an artificial defence mechanism created by the Martian device through some unknown advanced technology.
 * As for the guy who gets his head frozen, it's meant to show what might happen if you expose human skin to temperatures bellow -100 c (or whatever the temp is that far from the Sun) and zero pressure, the result is instant freezing and death. He does it because he doesn't want to be slowly buried up in the atmosphere or asphyxiate. Weather that is actually what would happen to the human body when exposed to freezing vacuum I'm not sure, but it seems quite possible.
 * As for the difference in velocity when they try to enter Mars orbit, well the entire fuel tank did explode didn't it? And the engines were facing the right way for their burn, so it's possible that the explosion itself slowed the spacecraft down enough to be at a similar enough relative velocity to the other ship (which was itself moving at a pretty fast speed around the planet), so the spacewalk and grappling is not entirely impossible.
 * As for the other criticisms, I cannot understand that, were we watching the same movie? This is one of my favourite Sci-Fi movies (at-least from that period) and indeed is 100 times better than that awful Red Planet, it's much more intellectual, it's a sci-fi movie rather than an action movie and is in-fact not only much more scientifically accurate than Red Planet, but one of the most realistic depictions of a mission to Mars that's ever been made. I'd compare Mission to Mars favourably with 2001: A Space Odyssey (similar themes), it's the Deep Impact to Red Planet's Armageddon. Oh and Minority Report? Seriously? That's a pretty average movie at best, and it's and action movie not really science fiction. --Hibernian (talk) 16:12, 1 October 2008 (UTC)


 * Another technical error is how inertia and momentum vanish during the scene of the failed rescue. What's her name fires her thrusters continuously until she's almost out of fuel then comes to a quick stop with just a little reverse thrust. The videogame Asteroids had better science than this. Bizzybody (talk) 12:25, 20 August 2011 (UTC)

Worst film in Cannes that year
True that, back then Mission to Mars had as much success in Cannes as The DaVinci Code this year.


 * And I just wanted to point out that although arguably bad, this movie is still vastly superior to Red Planet. Mainly because it has Tim Robbins and Gary Sinise instead of Val Kilmer.  Anyway, sorry to use up this space with useless comments, but it doesn't seem to be that important ;)71.61.64.113 18:45, 7 August 2007 (UTC)


 * I went to see this at the movies, at it was literally booed by the audience at the end. The only time in my life I can recall such a bad reaction. 125.238.240.2 (talk) 08:47, 6 April 2010 (UTC)

Trivia Section
Interesting bit of trivia - Real life astronaut Story Musgrave not only was a technical consultant for the movie, but also had a small cameo in the scene where they celebrated the Gary Sinese character's birthday. Would that be appropriate for an encyclopedia article? JimZDP 17:42, 6 January 2007 (UTC)

yeah that would be perfect! wow, u left this two days ago, what're the odds i'd stumble upon it 24.69.67.173 07:49, 9 January 2007 (UTC)

Fair use rationale for Image:Mission to Mars.jpg
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BetacommandBot (talk) 19:33, 2 January 2008 (UTC)

Critical reception
It is hard to believe that only US reviewers loathed this dungheap. Some scathing Canadian, British and Australian reviews would also be delightful to read. Varlaam (talk) 21:51, 19 January 2012 (UTC)

Wiki pillar objectivity?
Biased reviews rather overpower facts? AnEyeSpy (talk) 03:06, 25 July 2012 (UTC)

Poorly written
For example, how does one witness a sound? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.48.0.104 (talk) 03:11, 9 September 2012 (UTC)

"A Martian then appears before the group." Is it a true Martian or merely a holographic image of such, i.e., part of the Martians' programmed display? Orthotox (talk) 06:11, 14 October 2013 (UTC)
 * I'm pretty sure it's a projection. DonIago (talk) 06:13, 14 October 2013 (UTC)

Cultural differences
Not few movies from Hollywood received differently throughout geographic regions. This movie looks like one of them. Usually some movies get bad review at home but unexpectedly get good review in eu or asia. Orgio89 (talk) 05:42, 8 October 2012 (UTC)

Link deletion Tuesday, April 8
A deletion has been made to Trans FX to your section of filming of Mission to Mars. --Jutty10 (talk) 23:30, 8 April 2014 (UTC)