What would have happened if "2001" weren't made until after Arthur C. Clarke dies? See "Mission to Mars" and find out.

Better yet, if you don't see one movie this season, don't see this one.

From the excessive product placement starting in the first scene, to the recap at the end (in case you forgot all of the films atrocities), this movie is an unmitigated disaster. The only thing that made it worth my time was that I saw it in a room full of fellow MIT students who were shamelessly mocking the movie the entire time.

I hardly know where to begin. This movie starts out promising (except for the glaring product placements from Isuzu, Dr. Pepper, etc.), at a slow but even-keeled pace to introduce the characters and their emotional backgrounds. Then everything starts to go wrong.

An exploration team on Mars sets off what appears to be an ancient booby-trap, almost certainly killing all four members. Instead of calmly planning a next move, the team on the World Space Station swings into action to form an emergency rescue team to leave the next day, even though it will take 13 months to travel to Mars. Are you following this logic?

On the way to Mars, the rescue team encounters contrived incident after contrived incident. An encounter with a micrometeorite field serves to show that not a single one of the characters is in control of themselves, let alone remotely qualified to be an astronaut. As oxygen leaks from their ship, the computer voice announces the falling oxygen in a slower and slower voice, as somehow this has forced the ship's computer to fail. I fully expected to begin to hear the strains of "A Bicycle Built For Two" from the dying computer. With lines like "Has the reboot sequence been tested? Are you kidding? These computers are too expensive to test!", screenwriter Jim Thomas shows that he still has no understanding of technology, even after his last disaster "Wild Wild West".

Alas, the pain doesn't end there. The script goes on to defile biology as well, mysteriously representing DNA as a double helix of double strands, and bandying around terms like "chromosome" in the same way that Star Trek uses "tachyon inverter". The plot is barely sensible; a terrible attempt to capitalize on better SF such as "2001" and "Contact."

All through the film I grasped at straws to find any redeeming feature of this film at all. I failed. Many of the graphics were amateurish by today's standards, and generally did little to advance the film. The cinematography and direction were utterly nonsensical at times, even for Brian De Palma. Incongruous cuts and absurd segues were the norm.

And then there is the tragedy that was the soundtrack. At its best, the soundtrack faded into the background. At its worst, it stuck out like sore thumb pierced by a micrometeorite. From demonic organ music to frenetic oboes to melodramatic harps, this movie had it all... especially when it least fits in.

The sad thing is, the genre will be judged based on movies like this. If this movie flops, the studios will claim that there isn't a market for science fiction, and the genre will suffer just a little bit more.

As a friend commented afterwards, "Howard the Duck" was a better movie. It was at least trying to be funny. This movie scores a big zero from me, not merely on the basis that it was bad, but because the people responsible have absolutely no excuse. For shame!