This film from 2000, featuring a group of astronauts traveling to Mars to find out what happened to their experimental terraforming project, really features a Luddite message. If you place your faith in technology, you will be royally screwed. This runs concurrent with the film's vague philosophical/religious discussions that there may be bigger things at work than the plans of mice and men, so to speak.
The philosophical character, Chantilas, doesn't make it pass the first thirty minutes of the film, and another wonderful Terence Stamp cameo bites the dust. The rest of the cast include Val Kilmer, Carrie Ann Moss (fresh off "The Matrix"), Tom Sizemore (in his least sleazy role yet), Simon Baker (pretending to be unattractive and awkward), and Benjamin Bratt.
Most of the rest of film's dialogue revolves around the hypothetical discussion of this proposed terraforming of Mars and what went wrong. The film tries its hardest to stay in the realm of the plausible, and even had NASA advisers onboard the project, until their relationship became strained when NASA objected to one of the astronauts becoming a murderer.
When the surviving characters aren't talking about terraforming, they're usually troubleshooting by Macgyvering up something from whatever they have around them. Need to establish a contact with the orbiting shuttle? How about taking apart an old probe lying around since 1997 and making a handheld, solar-powered radio? Cool!
Maybe that's what I like about this movie: that can-do, do-or-die, human inventiveness that never gives up.
Or maybe it was Val Kilmer giving Mars the finger...
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