It's beyond me what a director like de Palma is doing with this turkey, other than paying off the Christmas credit card bill. A good cast is likewise wasted on a formulaic, derivative, silly film.
What's bad about it? It's an alien artifact on Mars film which contributes nothing new to the genre. It's dumb. IF a manned mission to Mars went wrong, there is no way a rescue mission would be launched 2 days later off the back of true grit and "we can't leave our buddy to die". This film plagiarises clumsily from 2001 without giving anything back, and **SPOILER** throws in a cutesy benevolent alien progenitor without any build-up. Because there is no build, and the film doesn't develop it's own mythology, this just appears laughable when it happens.
And what's with the flooding scene at the end?
What's bad about it? It's an alien artifact on Mars film which contributes nothing new to the genre. It's dumb. IF a manned mission to Mars went wrong, there is no way a rescue mission would be launched 2 days later off the back of true grit and "we can't leave our buddy to die". This film plagiarises clumsily from 2001 without giving anything back, and **SPOILER** throws in a cutesy benevolent alien progenitor without any build-up. Because there is no build, and the film doesn't develop it's own mythology, this just appears laughable when it happens.
And what's with the flooding scene at the end?