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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.


The alien depected in the movie MISSION TO MARS

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


The "face on Mars"

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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