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| Gary Sinise, Connie Nielsen, Tim Robbins,
Don Cheadles, Jerry O'Connell |
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Anamorphic
widescreen |
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Dolby Digital
5.1 |
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DTS |
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Trailer(s) |
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Featurette(s) |
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Documentary |
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Audio commentary
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Deleted scenes
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Concept art
/ storyboards |
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Multi-angle
feature |
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Jim
McConnell (Gary Sinise): There's pressure in here.
Terri Fisher (Connie Nielsen): Above Mars atmospheric? That's
impossible.
Jim McConnell: We're millions of miles from Earth inside a giant
white face. What's impossible?
A
rescue mission is sent to Mars to save the sole survivor of the first
manned mission.
 Marking
a new low point in director Brian de Palma's increasingly shaky career,
Mission to Mars was given a big push as the first of a series
of Mars expedition movies, but failed to go anywhere with either critics
or audiences. Borrowing liberally from 2001: A Space Odyssey,
The Abyss and Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Mission
to Mars represents yet another attempt to fuse audience-pleasing
effects work with thoughtful ideas about extraterrestrial life into
a summer blockbuster, but gets completely stuck in the middle and ultimately
fails to leave very much of an impression at all. It also fails to add
anything to the clichéd notion of aliens that first wreak havoc
and generally scare the bejeezis out of everyone before revealing their
benign intentions in the last reel.
The movie's screenplay, full of jovial bonding moments, melodramatic
dignity and redundant explanations, is constructed around two pivotal
effects sequences. The first, featuring a kind of sandstorm tentacle,
is impressive, though much of the intended effect is diminished by the
bizarre lack of reaction from the characters in the movie: they seem
to stand there and watch as a lethal tornado slowly builds and then
reaches out for them. The second sequence comes close to the end of
the movie, and offers the explanation to the film's central 'mystery'
surrounding life on Mars. It contains some nifty digital animation,
but presents such an overly obvious ending that it is more likely to
provoke sniggers than to elicit gasps of awe. |
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Identical
releases are available for Region 1 and Region 2.
The
anamorphic widescreen image is framed at an aspect ratio of approx.
2.35:1. The picture is very pleasingly rendered, though contrast levels
are sometimes a little high. There are no distracting compression artifacts
or other serious flaws in the transfer.
The Dolby Digital 5.1 sound mix is strong, with good directional effects
and spatial consistency.
Not
even touted as a Special Edition, this DVD release comes with a very
respectable set of outstanding features that succeed in adding some
interest to an otherwise disappointing film.
The team of four special effects supervisors did an audio commentary,
which was exactly the right choice for this movie, as the visual effects
make up the only aspect of the film that holds very much interest. It's
a very lively track that adds a huge amount and depth of information
about how the film was made and how various shots were achieved, and
it certainly passes the time much more agreeably than having to site
through the movie's dialogues.
The 20-minute documentary 'Visions of Mars' also focuses mostly
on the technical challenges of this production, and offers much more
than the standard promotional pieces usually included on DVD releases.
It is clearly structured, entertaining and informative. Two special
effects sequences are available in an animatics-to-film comparison
that would have worked better had it either made use of the angle function
or presented the rough and final versions within a single frame. Three
other major effects scenes are provided with commentary by the different
effects supervisors in the Visual Effects Production Analysis section.
Various conceptual art galleries and trailers round out
this excellent selection of extra features. Though
nicely designed and easy to navigate, the menu screens are disappointingly
static.
Dan Hassler-Forest
Reviewed: 2001
Click
here for IMDB info on Mission
to Mars.
Click here
to return to the front page.
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