Red Planet (2000)

You thought Mission to Mars was lame? Hold Red Planet's Tang.

Before we get into it, I’d like to say a quick word about Twin Movies (not the movie Twins, although that picture does fit our brief). Instead, I refer to separate films made on very specific, and eerily similar subjects that just happen to come out in close temporal proximity and often in the same calendar year. You can probably think of a dozen examples from the 90s alone, starting in 1991 with Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves, and its British-made doppelgänger, Robin Hood, and rolling right along with the dueling Wyatt Earp biopics, Tombstone (1993) and Wyatt Earp (1994), competing pig pics Gordy (1994) and Babe (1995), and a massive outgassing of Austen with Clueless, Emma, and Emma (1995 through 1996 inclusive). There were more, certainly, but 1998 and ‘99 were particularly big years for this phenomenon, as Hollywood closed out the 20th Century by chasing a bunch of fertility drugs with a shot of Wild Turkey and giving plural birth to a ton of twins: Antz and A Bug’s Life, The Truman Show and EdTV, those two Steve Prefontaine biopics nobody asked for and nobody remembers, dueling animated films The Legend of Titanic, and Titanic: The Legend Goes On, and of course, the classic pairing, Deep Impact and Armageddon.

Personally though, my favorite example—not because it’s yet another instance of corporations racing to cash in, but because it’s inspired by personal spite—dates to the very dawn of the Nineties, when Lambada and The Forbidden Dance (AKA The Forbidden Dance is Lambada) came out on the very same day, produced by competing cousins Menahem Golan and Yoram Globus.

I mention all this because I know we just did a Morons Go to Mars movie last week, but there’s a lot of them to get through, and I figured I’d just rather pull a double shift than come in on Saturday.

Red Planet (2000)
Directed by Antony Hoffman
Written by Chuck Pfarrer and Jonathan Lemkin

It’s the future, and we’ve got the usual apocalypse in progress: pollution, over- population, ozone layer, reality TV, etc., etc. On the bright side, we’ve been sending algae to the Martian ice cap for twenty years, where it’s supposed to grow and produce oxygen. Suddenly, however, the O2 levels have begun to drop, and a team is assembled by the international community to fly to Mars and determine if the algae is being killed off by global climate change, meteor strikes, or a visit by the pool guy.

Now let’s meet that team, shall we? Carrie Ann Moss is “Mission Commander Bowman,” just like Keir Dullea was in 2001: A Space Odyssey, except she doesn’t get old and become a baby. The chilly, dead-eyed Terrence Stamp is Chief Science Officer, and “the soul of our crew.” (Maybe it’s just me, but casting Terrence Stamp as your “soul” is like casting Christopher Walken as The Singing Nun. Not to say I wouldn't pay to see that.). Along with the Tang, NASA has also stocked the ship with dehydrated beefcake in the form of co-pilot Benjamin Bratt, who’s apparently the testicles of our crew. Carrie claims that her team represents humanity’s “finest minds,” although it plainly contains Val Kilmer, who is some kind of space janitor, and the “descending colon” of our crew. Rounding out the cast is AMEE, a larger, meaner version of the Aibo, that stainless steel robot dog from Sony. AMEE is on loan from the Marines, and is supposed to help them navigate on Mars—but since she’s a military killing machine, and worse, has been programmed to recognize bad acting, things are likely to get gruesome.

In an amazing case of synchronicity, the filmmakers of Red Planet, like the creators of Mission to Mars, envision a future in which NASA is staffed entirely by hillbillies. Earth’s “finest minds” spend the entire trip making moonshine, getting plowed, and baying like hound dogs at their shapely commander. Once again, the gods are displeased, and just as in Mission to Mars, the ship promptly blows up once it nears the eponymous red planet.

Commander Carrie sends the boys down to explore the planet so they won’t get in her hair while she watches This Old Plot Contrivance and tries to renovate the spaceship. She also conducts an illuminating symposium on Newton’s Third Law (for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction), which Carrie demonstrates when she tries to use a fire extinguisher in zero gravity, and it sends her pinwheeling down the hall.

The guys predictably wreck their vehicle (“Mom said not to play ball in the landing craft”), and must now wend their way across Mars to the Motel-6 where they have reservations. But Terrence decides he’s creeped us out enough, and thoughtfully fakes a spleen injury so the others will leave him behind. Meanwhile, AMEE climbs out of the wreckage, and boy, is she pissed.

The survivors reach their lodgings, but like in Mission to Mars, it’s also apparently been hit by a tornado, and looks like an Oklahoma mobile home park. So they all sit down to die of suffocation, each man privately mourning the lack of foresight that would have allowed him to fake a ruptured spleen and get out of the film twenty minutes ago. Val is the first to run out of oxygen, which is surprising—considering the lackluster performance he’s been giving, he can’t have been using much—and looks like we can all go home shortly, when he opens his visor and finds that he can BREATHE!

Well. Apparently that whole the-oxygen-is-gone thing was NASA’s way of dropping 50 trillion dollars on an interplanetary snipe hunt.

So, everybody’s okay! But just then, AMEE shows up and starts kicking the crew’s ass with Northern Crane-style Kung Fu before padding off into the bushes to do her business.

Carrie has now repaired the ship, and decides to have semi-nude flashbacks to scenes that never happened. Seems she and Val got a bit flirty in the locker room—kind of like Val did with Tom Cruise in Top Gun. There’s apparently something about the smell of damp towels and old jockstraps that lights his fire.

Meanwhile, the filmmakers borrow a plot twist from Marooned, as Carrie informs Val that there’s an old Russian probe they can jump start to get back to the ship, but only two of them will fit inside. So, predictably, we spend the next half hour thinning out the cast.

Sensing that our interest is flagging, Carrie skins out of her space suit and sits around in a thin tanktop, letting her painfully erect nipples carry the plot for awhile. Finally, one of the cracker astronauts catches a bad case of subcutaneous moths, which sizzle and burst out of his carcass like so much Jolly Time Popcorn. (Actually, if the bugs weren’t so obviously computer generated, this would have been a horrifying scene. As it is, it’s sort of like watching a grown man devoured alive by the little dancing mushrooms from Fantasia).

At last, the mystery of the oxygen is solved. It seems the bugs have been eating the algae and, well, breaking wind. Enough wind to create an atmosphere. So according to the filmmakers, mankind’s ultimate salvation will depend upon flatulent fireflies.

Eventually, Val reaches the broken Russian probe, and AMEE, Hound of HAL, reaches Val. He devises an elaborate deathtrap using liquid oxygen, rocks, and a parachute, and manages to slay the rabid Teddy Ruxpin. He then uses its Duracells to jump-start the probe and blast off. Still, even with the assistance of a solid-fuel rocket engine, Val’s escape momentum is measurably less than the velocity achieved by the audience in exiting the theater. The end.

So, Red Planet. Not just a deeply felt paean to flatulent fireflies, but also a meditation on Carrie Ann’s nipples. At least, that’s all I got out of it. But don’t despair, because following the movie, we assembled a panel of experts (master carpenter Norm Abram, Heloise impersonator Mary Ellen Pinkham, homemaking felon Martha Stewart, and trash-to-weapons-of-mass-destruction guru McGyver), to answer your questions about tackling home and garden projects like those in the movie. It goes a little something like this:

First Caller: Hi. I’m a beautiful young woman and I like to lounge around in my skin-tight T-shirt, my breasts straining against the material, nipples jutting...

Norm Abram: I’ll handle this one!

Mary Ellen: I don’t think she’s asked a question yet.

Caller: Well, my question has to do with repairing my spaceship after a solar flare caused it to explode.

Norm: Use high quality lumber, and Old English furniture polish.

Caller: Um, okay.

Norm: And call me at home, anytime, if you want me to come over and show you some wood...

Mary Ellen: Let’s hear from another caller!

Second Caller: Hi. I’m Bob from the Department of the Exterior. I’m trying to terraform Mars, and just don’t seem to be getting the results I’d hoped for. I keep sending rockets full of algae, but lately the oxygen levels are going down. What am I doing wrong?

Martha Stewart: Bob, lush, green algae is a Good Thing, but it isn’t enough to make an entire planet interesting and inviting to guests. Have you considered farting bugs? They not only add oxygen, they also eat any surplus astronauts you no longer have a use for.

Caller: Sounds great, Martha! Where do I get some?

Martha: They will just evolve. From rocks or something.

Caller: Thanks!

Third Caller: Greetings. Much like what happened to Val Kilmer in today’s film, my Furby is trying to kill me. I wonder if McGyver could share some ways to kill it, using common household objects?

McGyver: Have you tried putting a potato into its exhaust pipe?

Caller: Yes, but it doesn’t seem to have an exhaust pipe and my wife won’t let me have any more potatoes—she says they’re for dinner.

McGyver: Then I’m stumped. Sorry.

Mary Ellen: Caller, did you do anything to cause the Furby to have hard feelings towards you?

Caller: Well, I guess it could be annoyed because I stopped it from mating with the Dust Buster.

Mary Ellen: I suggest polishing it with Wonder Bread, to get a sparkly shine for just pennies! This will also relieve its sexual frustration.

Caller: Thanks, but my wife won’t let me have any Wonder Bread. She says it’s for lunch.

And that’s all the time we have today for this installment of The Experts Answer Your Home and Garden Questions About Mars. And if we didn’t want our crappy Sci-Fi action pics turned into boring reality TV programs, I guess we shouldn’t have let the Discovery Channel buy Warner Brothers. Oh well.

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