Bob_of_Mars

Robert Isbell

A good chunk of the proceedings take place on Mars, but it is insanely surreal, with Mars' transformation into the Olympos of the Greek Gods in the hands of an AI. Although it is a post-human / post singularity story, it's heart is really in the "fantasy of pre-exploration of Mars for real camp scifi" with it's fantastic tale of greek heroes and gods reliving the mythical past of the Iliad on Mars... for real. I can't make this shit up, people!

Needless to say it would have to be a "300" type production, realism be damned, but the great characters and narrative strength of the novels and would hopefully rise way above the digital bedlam.

Pham Nuwen

Basic mars movie plot line: Go to mars. Find alien. Have alien kill people. Kill alien. Roll credits.

Lazarus

Pouncer

I'm jumping on the bandwagon of the fad being killed by the unremitting suck of the movies themselves.
-Kle.

Klebert L. Hall

Plague

Another really great basis for a Mars movie, primarily because it happens to be a great book that includes a very interesting and super unlikely plot element (bubble drives) is John Varley's Red Thunder. Reason I could see this working is because it's for one shorter and less involved than doing a KSR based movie, but it has typical movie fodder, like underdog college students and drunk astronauts that hollywood could gloss over but still not ruin the movie doing it.

JaiMak

Time to move on to something more interesting, like Europa.

EBone

PVIII

Jeff-Minor

Jaffey

Though a more fun film to make might be CS Lewis's 'Out of the Silent Planet' complete with a teeming Martian jungle, the 'Hrossa' bipedal seals that live in Ewok like villages and the Sorns, giant grey scary aliens, who really don't mean you any harm.

johnrivers

God, I hope you are right. But, from the stuff being made today, I really wonder.

Maybe there are some "ET" version of a Roddenberry or Bradbury or Kubrick or Clarke out there, beyond the stars, waiting to start a new franchise. On second thought, Didn't the man say that true Science Fiction is based upon the understanding of the Human experience? Maybe there are still a couple of good tales left to tell.

"Originality: the final frontier!

(Swish!)

Zantor

Zantor

In spite of several other egregious science errors, I still enjoy the film and like the soundtrack even more. Actually, its one of the few albums, excuse me, CD's I have that keeps returning to my player, even after a decade.

Chrysla

As far as Ghosts of Mars, don't knock it too hard. A turd from John Carpenter is better from gold from just about anybody else.

brundlefly

She does really like Kim Stanley Robinson's "Mars Trilogy", which I thought were pretty awesome, but somewhat dry and way too long. The beauty of the Mars Trilogy however is that it is as realistic as this sort of thing gets. Might be a nice template for future Mars movies. Quality speculation, good drama and... rebels who bring down space elevators.

Pham Nuwen

The original Capricorn One WAS about a fake mission to Mars. That was one of my favorites as a kid.

Pham Nuwen

MaxTwice

Belabras

madflava

Garrison Dean, King Awesome

Probably the best Mars SF film ever made was "Robinson Crusoe on Mars" (1964). It's a bit hokey in places and has some retrospective science problems. But it's still a great film, and it could be remade today with a few tweaks and some rewriting -- and it would be heads and shoulders above all the films listed in the post above.

One other thing (and here's a suggestion for a post here on io9) -- there's some really bizarre terrain on Mars, a lot of which we're still trying to figure out (and I'm not talking about the 'Face on Mars'). A smart screenwriter could weave a great story around some of these. ..bruce..

bfwebster

Another movie I would have walked out on had I not been 30,000 feet up at the time.

Evil Tortie's Mom

scifipie

Final

Total recall was a Martian movie or was that a little to before the timeline?

Final

Charlie Jane Anders

Charlie Jane Anders

doctor_cos

tezby

WordVsVoid

The first cut was understanding the Moon. With that knowledge, a "world" of fantastic possibilities was dealt a crushing blow. No more "Solarnites", Green women in space bikinis, evil Moon empires bent on Earth conquest or even giant mice. Once we knew that none of this was no longer possible, all that remained was little more than the challenge of man surviving in a hostile environment. That adventure wore thin pretty fast, ending a 50 year legacy of fantastic films and adventures made when on the Moon, anything was possible.

Now the possibilities for "Angry Red Planet" have fallen beneath a similar fate.
The more we learn about our neighbors in space, that same curse follows us, restricting what can be presented as fantastic and possible.

Although the Universe is endless, the laws of nature and physics are not. Sci-fi may ultimately be stifled by the fulfillment and understanding of the vision it seeks to explore.

I feel we are seeing the early "cuts" of Science Fiction's deadly transformation into Science Speculation, based upon too much knowledge to allow for innocent fantasy. Eventually, as we continue to move outward and learn about our Universe, I fear it will become little more than Fiction with cryo-pods.

Sometimes, growing up really sucks.

Zantor

+ Watch video

Haha, and one of the "Lone Gunmen" was on it, very young in the opening credits.

Garrison Dean, King Awesome

Garrison Dean, King Awesome

92BuickLeSabre

goldfarb

aspiringexpatriate

Nebris

Is John Carter of Mars in production yet? Who's playing Dejah Thoris?

Seth L

Garrison Dean, King Awesome

Gyrus

I mean, each of these films was awful in its own way.

I think I remeber the UPN one. It ends... Randomly.

Seth L