Mission to Mars (2000)

The year 2000 found Brian De Palma directing a science fiction adventure suggested by a Disney theme park attraction, an origin story that explains rather a lot about the finished product. Mission to Mars follows a rescue crew dispatched after the first manned expedition to the red planet encounters a curious metallic formation and a vortex that kills most of the team. The film was a critical and commercial disappointment, though Cahiers du Cinema ranked it fourth among the year's best, proving that taste remains a renewable resource.

The cast is notably varied. Don Cheadle and Elise Neal appear in substantial roles, and the Danish actress Connie Nielsen plays Terri Fisher, an astronaut who attempts to save her husband and later serves as the emotional anchor of a rescue subplot. This is ensemble building of the old studio kind, undertaken without editorial comment. Nothing in the screenplay addresses race, and the film makes no argument about gender roles or patriarchy. Fisher is competent because the plot requires a competent astronaut, not because the filmmakers wished to make a statement. We can respect the restraint.

The film reaches for grand themes of human origin and cosmic humility. It delivers them through awe, sweeping camera moves, and dialogue that critics at the time found clunky. The revelation that Martians seeded Earth with DNA is a speculative conceit, not a reinterpretation of anyone's history. There is no environmental sermon, no critique of corporate greed, no lesson about bodies or brains. Just a visually striking film that wants us to feel small before the universe. It mostly succeeds at the visuals.