Metascore

Generally unfavorable reviews - based on 27 Critics What's this?

User Score

Generally favorable reviews- based on 20 Ratings

  • Starring: Carrie-Anne Moss, Val Kilmer
  • Summary: Mission Commander Kate Bowman (Moss) is the pilot and commander of the most important mission of the 21st century: saving the human race. It's 2050, Earth is dying, and colonizing Mars is the only alternative to obliteration. (Warner Bros.)
Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 2 out of 27
  2. Negative: 11 out of 27
  1. 75
    To like that kind of story is to like this kind of movie.
  2. Reviewed by: Greg Burk
    60
    A fun movie. Not scary-fun. If you're a male over 10 years old, that should be enough.
  3. Reviewed by: Marc Caro
    50
    The slogan for Red Planet could be "In space no one can hear you yawn."
  4. 38
    The characters aren't convincingly written, rarely if ever behave like believable humans, and consequently don't matter to us in the least.

See all 27 Critic Reviews

Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 4 out of 8
  2. Negative: 3 out of 8
  1. This review contains spoilers, click expand to view. I'm writing because I absolutely loved this movie and cannot for the life of me understand why the user scores, at least, are not much higher. It has a fine cast, excellent production values, mostly credible science, an intriguing and suspenseful plot mixed with action that is not for its own sake, a theme of survival and accomplishment in a bleak universe that is very serious, and some credible romance at the end. Just wonderful. This is a classic, right up there with "The Fifth Element", watchable again and again over the years. I confess that there is a major credibility glitch at an important turn in the plot -- with a lot of equipment already on the ground, nobody saw to it that there was an oxygen detector to report that they weren't all going to die after all. They could have injected a word or two saying that their oxygen detectors were fried in the solar flare that caused their premature escape launch to the planet. But I don't care. I supplied that piece of information myself. As for the critics, always remember what a bunch of snobs they are, save for a few with eclectic tastes, notably here the great Roger Ebert (long may he liv). Anytime I see a great disparity between the user scores and the critics', I know that either Metacritic isn't counting the latter fairly (which often happens) or the users have seen the worth of a movie the critics were blind to. We should be grateful that a movie like this was made. I sure am. Expand
  2. Patrickb
    10
    Best Mars movie there is. Some unrealistic science facts.. yeah.. but also some part of it IS realistic and fun to watch, I especially like the ship design how they actually make an artificial intelligence and make it work with G-forces, oh well. Expand
  3. TM
    1
    A basic tenet of scifi flicks is that they should at least get the science right. Great ones take accurate science and extrapolate to create fantastic but not improbable results. This movie can't even bother to get the genetic code right (A,G,T,P???)or to figure out that insects aren't nematodes much less be creative about life and human existence might happen on Mars. Expand

See all 8 User Reviews

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