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Cinescape
Articles
Recently,
Cinescape.com
posted several articles featuring the upcoming movie
MISSION TO MARS. The articles pretty much explain
the thinking process behind the movie's production
and filming. 3.3.2000
Article
1:
Why
2 Mars Movies?
Mission To Mars producer seems to be
pretty relaxed regarding the much ballyhooed Mars
movie race between his film and Warner Bros. own
Mars production, Red
Planet... perhaps since he won. But why
two Mars movies at one time?
While
talking to the Hollywood Reporter’s Martin
Grove, Jacobson gave his opinion on why two films
based on the same subject had happened at the same
time, saying, "I don't know the development
history of Red Planet, I know this idea started
(to do) Mission to Mars four or four and
a half years ago. I think their script was around
for a while. My understanding is we were greenlit
and heading into production before them, but that's
not the most uncommon thing in the world. I think
Mars is in the cultural Zeitgeist. I think it's
a strong idea. We had started working on our script
and were into the first draft or the second draft
-- I can't remember which exactly -- when Pathfinder
landed on Mars and sent back its first images on
July 4, 1997. There was a huge amount of public
interest in it. There were a hundred million hits
on the NASA Web site that day, which was the most
to that date in the history of the Internet. So
we knew we were on to something. We knew we had
tapped into something that was very popular."
Article
2:
Jacobson
On ‘M2M’
The first of the big spring movies, Mission
To Mars, is just about here, and the film’s
producer, Tom Jacobson, is talking all about it.
In a conversation with Hollywood Reporter columnist
Martin Grove, Jacobson gave details of the film’s
genesis as well its production and the decisions
to do what they did.
Regarding
the creation of the project, Jacobson revealed,
"I had always been interested in doing a classic
adventure story set in space, but like adventure
stories in any genre -- like a western (or) a war
movie -- a tale of people against impossible odds.
I was very interested in doing that as a dramatic
science fiction space adventure. I sat down with
a writer named David Goyer [also a co-producer],
and we talked about that. And pretty immediately,
we hit on Mars -- it should be about the next frontier…
We came up in an hour or two with the bare bones
of a story. The idea (was) a mission that goes to
Mars in the near future as close to modern day as
possible. Something catastrophic happens to them.
A rescue mission is launched to find any survivors
and find out what happened. We had the title. We
pitched the idea to the studio. They loved it. They
said, 'We'd love to do a movie like that. Get the
script right and we'll make it.' And so it began."
Eventually,
Jim Thomas, John Thomas and Graham Yost wrote the
film’s script. Not long afterward, director
Brian DePalma came on board the project.
What
may not be completely conveyed in the film’s
trailer
(which seems to show quite a bit) is another secret
of the film… which is likely to be a spoiler.
For those of you who would rather not know, read
no further, but instead move on to another story
by using one of the links to the right.
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The alien depected
in the movie MISSION TO MARS
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Still
there? You were warned!
"Brian
always had the idea that he wanted to depict an
alien in the movie," the producer revealed.
"He thought the audience had an expectation
of finding something, especially if we were talking
about finding life on Mars. Brian wanted to show
an alien life form as part of the plot in the movie,
so he worked with ILM on what he thought was a good
design. He wanted the design to be beautiful. He
wanted it to be serene and gentle. He did not want
to play it scary… We used a lot of research
on different artistic looks. The idea of using the
popular culture of the 'face' on Mars also came
from Brian. In the original script, it wasn't really
described what this artifact looked like. It was
a giant mound. It was a circle. It
was
a hemisphere. The writer left it up to the filmmaker's
imagination. And Brian said, 'There's this popular
myth of this face on Mars. That's what we should
do.' But again, he didn't want it to look scary
or threatening."
ILM
handled the effects for the film’s alien.
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