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@ The Movies: 'Red Planet' More Science Fact Than Fiction?

Film Enlisted Help Of NASA To Make Idea Authentic

Tim Lammers, Staff Writer
November 10, 2000, 5:35 p.m. EST

While NASA recently announced that its revamped Mars exploration program plans may result in more data and samples from the red planet as early as 2011, Hollywood isn't content to wait that long. So, while the real project waits to get off the ground, will we keep having to settle for science fiction instead of science fact in our trips to the local multiplex?

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Red Planet
  • "Red Planet" stars Val Kilmer and Simon Baker tell Tim Lammers what makes their space movie different from the rest.

    • Not according to Val Kilmer, star of the new outer-space thriller "Red Planet," which descends upon theaters Friday. Kilmer plays a mechanical science engineer who accompanies a crew of scientists and civilians (Carrie-Anne Moss, Tom Sizemore, Simon Baker, Benjamin Bratt and Terence Stamp) on a mission to salvage a colonization effort on Mars, where unmanned probes planted algae on the surface of the planet to produce oxygen.

    "The reason I called it 'science fact' is because the theories and speculation of what may happen to Earth and what it will take to get to Mars were all thoroughly researched," Kilmer recently told a round of journalists in, oddly enough, cyberspace. "The design for the ships and costumes were all worked on with NASA and other experts. Everything is possible."

    Granted, a robot gone awry and other things that go bump in the night dramatically enhance the crew's mission in "Red Planet." However, the back story of the film -- which finds Earth depleted of all its resources a mere 50 years from now -- added a humanistic element for audiences and a fresh perspective for the genre of space films as a whole.

    "I was able inside of the story to think about things larger than life, which is the best thing you can have in a movie," Kilmer said.

    Carrie-Anne Moss in Red PlanetWhile NASA's large plans include searching for life, too, it doesn't intend on using manned missions -- at least for the time being. Instead, six robot missions, which will be launched separately from 2003 to 2007, will search for water, other forms of life and rock samples.

    An independent analysis found that flawed engineering resulted in the failure last year of two of NASA's Mars exploration robot craft, the $125 million Mars Climate Orbiter and the $165 million Polar Lander.

    "Red Planet," coincidentally, includes a scene in which Kilmer discovers the "abandoned" Mars Pathfinder Sojourner Rover, which sent back arresting pictures from the planet in 1997.

    Catch up with Tim Lammers on these recent @ The Movies interviews:

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