This movie was lousy. Go see Pitch Black instead.

Oh, and you can't give any details?

Like, why would the Mars One mission team just STAND THERE while a TORNADO is forming fifty yards ahead of them?

Like how you can't just push up a launch window for an interplanetary flight, no matter how much more fuel you load up you still have to wait until the planets are in the right positions?

Like, why they don't have a sensor to record fuel pressure in the main thrusters before they blow the backside off their spaceship?

Like how you don't use continous thrust to move in an EVA situation? Or that they only have one auxilary thuster pack?

Like how the canyon systems are no where near Cyndonis?

And I won't even get to the silly parts...

(I did like the survivor becoming Coyote, and a hundred quatloos to anyone who gets that reference.)

Why should I waste my time nitpicking a piece of garbage?

How about these as nitpicks.

1. Why in the future do people seem to get stupider and stupider. 1st we have the sandstorm camera crew who don't figure out its wise to get indoors. Then we have Tim Robbins floating uncontroled in space. His wife risks her life to save him. They have a 10 minute agrument then she FIANALLY decides to shoot the cable at him. If they didn't bicker for 10 minutes he would have lived.
2. Why do the aliens have a silly password system that if you enter the wrong data you die. First off there was nothing in that building that was worth creating this deathtrap for anyway. Assume there had been why not just tell the doors don't open. I mean I have hotmail if I enter in the wrong password I don't have to worry about the computer frying me it just won't let me in.

Alien security system:

Did the tornado collect the bodies (or remnants thereof) of the two missing explorers? If so, it should have been able to do a genetic analysis on the remains and determined that these were humans who messed up the secret password. Its next step would be to apologize or wait another fifty million years until beetles have developed intelligence enough to travel to Mars.

Would the aliens who bugged out of the Solar System (when there was a perfectly good, uninhabited planet next door) even remember or care about a collection device they left a hundred million years ago? I can see them (if they haven't gone extinct): "Look Morgo. A monkey in an antique space ship. Let's dissect it."

Please, don't encourage me...

When liquid is ejected into space, like Dr. Pepper or rocket fuel, wouldn't the liquid disperse into more of a gas than freeze into an icicle in the vacuum of space? I thought it should turn into a crystalized fog or something.

I saw it about a week ago, and it's a c*rap-fest.

Nits:

Sound in space, but that's a given in almost any movie now. Still, would have been cool to have no sound when things are exploding. Just eerie silence.

The fact that there is little to no friction in space, and firing that grapple would propel the fire-er back at the same time that the grapple was fired forward. They would each have an equal force applied to them. While the grapple has less mass, and needs to build up less momentum, it would travel faster, but the fire-er would still be propelled backwards.

There are no noxious gasses on Mars? How is that little tent holding in all the oxygenated air? And isn't pure oxygen bad for you, at least over an extended period of time? How'd he get nitrogen in there?

Seriously: Why was Tim robbins in the movie?

I was also screaming at her to use the grapple earlier. It's pretty silly that she didn't.

That's all I can remember right now.

Hated the way the team was suddenly on Mars and about half way through the film I realised they would have had to show a black man taking the first steps on Mars. Wonder if it was to not upset certain sectors?

The computer voice bugged me in this: it reminded me of Marvin the Paranoid Android from Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.

What was Tim Robbins' reason for "overshooting" the space capsule? Was there some kind of time limit and he had to get there quickly?

As pointed out above by our friend Spornan, there is little to no friction in space. Once an object (or a person) starts moving, there's very little slowing them down. Tim could have just fired up the thrusters, used up half or even more of his fuel, shut off the thrusters, and drifted to the capsule. Once there, he could use his remaining fuel to slow down and to do some final maneuvering.

Of course, if he were sensible and did that, we wouldn't get the treat of the dramatic scene with him and his wife (and the grapple).

I just thought of something else... The space suits have no visor on them to block sunlight. Without a visor, the sunlight will cause blindness and other problems.

At least we will still be listening to Van Halen in the future.

I thought this was a decent movie. It was different from most movies that end in either a sappy kiss fest or a violent blood bath. This ended with something that made you think. (I know it didn't make me think very hard, but it's still better than "Battlefield Earth")

I'm always reminded of Lieutenant Dan's line from Forrest Gump:
"If you become a shrimp-boat captain, I'll be an astronaut. In fact..."

Well I guess he did.

TUE

This is the second time Sinise he has played an astronaut. In this one he is an astronaut who gets scrubbed from the mission, but has to save the day after some unforseen problems, just like he did in "Apolo 13".

Ok, I know this isn't the right board, but... Mission to Mars. She didn't have to lose her husband. Why? Because, even if she only had enough fuel to get to her husband and get only halfway back, one of the other two guys could have traveled to where the two of them were waiting and rescued them. Sorry for the digression.

Some friends and I paid full price to see this film at the cinema, and wanted our money back...
For all the setup of the opening scenes, we never get to SEE the first manned Mars landing. When the film shows a rover on Mars, I thought it was going to "watch" the landing. Instead, we see that the crew has already been there for some time.
Uh, that's a TORNADO, folks. You might want to take cover. (Maybe they'd all watched "Twister" as kids and thought you could actually be that close to one and not get hurt!)
Oh, God, no! Not the "face on Mars!" *sigh* OK, fine, I'll do my best to go with it for the sake of the story, but...NOOOO!! I can't! It's just too much. *sob*
The dance scene was cool...I'd love to do that! As for why they had a "space wasting" room big enough to conduct such an activity, I imagine it's for psychological purposes...a multi-month journey in a sardine can would drive the crew insane. Remeber, this isn't a submarine that can just surface for the crew to get a breath of fresh air. (By the way, I also thought the use of Van Halen was cool, but do you realize that such a song would be more than an "oldie" by then? Yeesh, I feel old!)
The air's leaking out of the ship! I'm reasonably certain I'd be able to take a few seconds to put on a spare helmet, if the leak were slow enough to allow me to go to the mess hall and rip oopen a Dr Pepper packet. (The Dr Pepper plug reminded me of all the plugs that appeared in Godzilla 1985, but I digress...)
The death scene in orbit...what more can I add that hasn't been discussed?
The flash of insight about DNA results in a flashback to a scene (the floating M&M DNA) we'd just seen twenty minutes ago! Just in case we were out getting more popcorn and missed it, I guess.
Hyper-realistic holograms of the soloar system, death of Mars, proliferation of life on Earth, followed by the most cartoony-looking alien I've seen since Lost in Space (the movie). Should have used a puppet in this scene.
Wait, don't tell me...she gave Jim (Sinese's character) her dead husband's rocket locket. How'd I guess?
Whoa, the survivors almost got hit has Jim leaves. "Buh-bye!" And just in case you don't get it flash the words "The End" on screen.
I thought something would be done with the fact that the stranded astronaut told his son he'd read a copy of the same book his son was reading...when the rescue crew arrived, it would have been nice to have him show them his now-tattered copy of the book, and say something like "It made me feel like he was here, in a small way, helped me fight the lonliness."
The fairly poor musical score was a bit overpowering in some scenes (the air leak in particular). Music should enhance a scene, not dominate it. (I'll concede that perhaps the specific cinema I was at may have had its sound system improperly balanced...anyone else notice the problem?)
OK, OK. Harsh nits on my part, I suppose, so here's a few of the things I liked:
The hardware. Very well done extrapolations of existing tech; other than thruster pack misuse in the orbital death scene, I never was distracted by the hardware presence or use.
The above mentioned dance scene (guess I should have put that down here).
The Martian vistas...I've often wondered what some of those planetary dust storms that plague the red planet must look like from the surface. Awe inspiring, and a bit scary, as handled very nicely in this film.
The actors, even though they had little to work with. I mean Tim Robbins and Gary Sinese are two of the reasons I wanted to see this film in the first place.
I loved Sinese's retort regarding the mental instability of the stranded astronaut...how would YOU be after going through all that?
I guess part of my dislike may be from having had too high hopes going in, but the nits I've listed (as well as those posted by the rest of you) just doomed this film.
The friends I saw this with agreed to see Red Planet (which was due out the same year, but was delayed...maybe the Red Planet producers wanted people to get over Mission To Mars), just to see how THAT film handled Mars. We figured it couldn't be any worse, and besides, Val Kilmer's in it. (Though upon actually seeing that film, I thought Tom Sizemore stole a few scenes rather nicely!)
Could we start a Red Planet board?

Hey, I forgot to ask a question...did anyone else get the idea that Gary Sinese's character DIES at the end of this film? I'm sure most people who's stuck with the film through the end assumed that the liquid that encases him does so to protect him from the harshness of interstellar (intergalactic?) travel, sort of like the bubble that protects characters in the film Galaxy Quest. But it looks like he DIES. I don't wholly buy suspended animation, either...his life (or recent moments of it) flash before his eyes, and he gets a slack-faced look of peace. Seems like a death scene to me.
Kind of lends credence to Dr Fidelius's March 2000 post about disecting a monkey...

I also forgot to mention another thing I like: The twist on the asteroid impact extinction theory was nice, having it wipe out Mars instead of Earth. As desolate as Mars is, this is an easy plot device to accept.

Like how you can't just push up a launch window for an interplanetary flight, no matter how much more fuel you load up you still have to wait until the planets are in the right positions?

Just a quick note here, it is possible to bump up an interplanetary launch ... it's just not feasible. The optimal angle between the plantes only minimizes the energy expended to get into a successful transfer orbit. If you're willing to expend more energy you can get in a faster transfer orbit and thus launch during unoptimal alignments.

There would be a technological limit on how fast of a transfer orbit you could get into, but for a rescue mission you could push it to the limit and get into the fastest one possible instead of opting for the lowest-energy one.

I assume that's what they meant by "pushing up the launch window". They still have to wait something like 8 months before they launch, so it's not like they instantaneously decide to hop on over.

Check out http://www.inspacepropulsion.com/teachers/fun.html and scroll down a little ways until you get to "Mars Mission Trajectory Planner" and you can run simluations of all kinds of transfer orbits.

Mission to Mars was one of the most inspiring films I have ever seen. The tears flowing down the alien's face touched my heart. There was such sadness on its face.

...it's still better than Battlefield Earth.

Isn't watching paint dry or wood petrify more exciting and fulfilling than watching Battlefield Earth?

Where should I begin?

Why did the entire team leave the base? Shouldn't someone have been left behind just in case something goes wrong? If you are having a colony on another planet, everyone should know how to do everything.

There is no way the DNA model would have stayed in place. Any movement would have created air currents that would have moved the candy around.

When the ship was slowly decompressing, they should have had a system that automatically ejects a colored mist into the atmosphere to see where the leak is. Or they could have shut the hatch. Another point would be that the "ballroom" is a horrible waste of space.

It looked like the frozen fuel, ignited by the engine, was what blew up the engines. I am just wondering why, since there would be no way for the shockwave to have been transmitted to the engines through the vacuum.

Did the rescue ship remind anyone else of the Discovery from 2001?

Even with its faults,I enjoyed the humanity of this movie.Though I felt badly when I got to thinking that the 3 astronauts who return to Earth will have absolutely no proof regarding the Martian face-building,what they discovered inside,& what happend to the astronaut portrayed by Gary Sinise. I realize that the 3 returning astronauts will have some credibility when they report their story due to their peers respect for them. However,scientists require evidence & the reality is that the 3 of them have nothing to offer but their testimony.

Of course, the whole "Face on Mars" has been debunked.

Still an enjoyable film though, IMO.