Settlers

Is this what a Martian will look like?

(2021) Science Fiction (IFC Midnight) Sofia Boutella, Ismael Cruz Cordova, Brooklynn Prince, Nell Tiger Free, Jonny Lee Miller, Matthew Van Leeve, Natalie Walsh. Directed by Wyatt Rockefeller

 

The pioneers of the American west learned brutal self-sufficiency out of necessity. There was nobody close by to help if they got into trouble; they had to learn to do for themselves. So it was then; so it will be when the time comes to colonize Mars.

Reza (Miller) and Ilsa (Boutella) are eking out a life on a desolate Martian plane. Earth, as Reza explains to their young daughter Remmy (Prince), is not what it used to be. In the meantime, they go on feeding their pigs, raising what vegetables they can in a small hydroponic garden. They entertain themselves with word games and singalongs. It isn’t much of a life, but it’s a life.

Then one morning they awake to the pigs squealing in terror. On one of their windows the word “LEAVE” is written in bold red paint. Remmy’s reports that there were strangers nearby, which her mom and dad had discounted, suddenly seems much more likely. Then comes Jerry (Cordova), a soldier who claims that the land was his and that Reza and Ilsa are squatters living in the home that is rightfully his. The couple are ready to defend their home with knives and guns; it doesn’t end well for them as Jerry kills Reza in a shoot-out.

Reza moves in, allowing Ilsa and Remmy to stay and at first it seems that he is trying to make a better life for them, much to Remmy’s anger. Ilsa seems more inclined to accept the presence of Jerry than her daughter, although at first, she is just as wary. But as Remmy grows into becoming a young woman (Free), Jerry begins to look at her much differently.

This is a different kind of sci-fi movies. There is an elegiac feel here, a feeling that humanity is on its last legs, but there is also a sense of realism; these are the obstacles that colonists on the Red Planet would face; this is what a Martian farm would look like. The production design, Noam Piper, does a bang-up job here.

Rockefeller does a credible job here, but the story is a bit long-winded and the movie a touch too long. One gets the sense that Rockefeller is trying to make a point about colonialism, but I’m not sure if he’s successful on that front. Mostly, this is a movie about relationships, about loneliness, about doing what one has to in order to survive. Jerry seems to genuinely trying his best to be fair and kind, but he’s no saint and towards the end of the movie a darker side is revealed.

The problem here is that the pacing is very turgid, to the point where it seems like nothing of note goes on for ten, fifteen minutes at a time. Living on a Martian colony is, no doubt, hard. Watching a movie about it shouldn’t be. However, Rockefeller gets points for trying to do something a little bit different, and while we watch billionaires like Richard Branson and Jeff Bezos heading off into space to promote their own commercial ventures there, it reminds us that when actual colonization comes, it won’t be the wealthy feeding their own egos that will accomplish the feat; it will be ordinary men and women who will give everything, to struggle and die far away from out ancestral home, who will make our first footholds on other planets actually stick.

REASONS TO SEE: Impressive production values.
REASONS TO AVOID: Well-intentioned, but ultimately dull.
FAMILY VALUES: There is profanity, violence and sexual situations.
TRIVIAL PURSUIT: The movie was filmed in South Africa’s Namaqualand desert, subbing for Mars.
BEYOND THE THEATERS: Amazon, AppleTV, DirecTV, Google Play, Microsoft, Spectrum, Vudu, YouTube
CRITICAL MASS: As of 7/18/21: Rotten Tomatoes: 56% positive reviews; Metacritic: 58/100.
COMPARISON SHOPPING: The Martian
FINAL RATING: 6.5/10
NEXT: Joe Bell

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Aniara

A glimpse of a bleak future.

(2018) Science Fiction (Magnet) Emelie Jonsson, Bianca Cruzeiro, Arvin Kananian, Anneli Martini, Jennie Silfverhjelm, Emma Broomė, Jamil Drissi, Leon Jiber, Peter Carlberg, Juan Rodríguez, David Nzinga, Dakota Treacher Williams, Otis Castillo Ǻlhed, Dante Westergårdh, Elin Lilleman Eriksson, Agnes Lundgren, Alexi Carpentieri, Unn Dahlman, Laila Ljunggren. Directed by Pella Kagerman and Hugo Lilja

 

We like to think we pretty much have a handle on our lives. We more or less know what we want, where we’re going and what we want to do along the way. We know we have a world of endless possibilities to explore. What happens though when we don’t?

In the future, climate change has made Earth unlivable and the human race is moving to Mars. Giant transport ships – essentially city-sized cruise ships – ferry passengers from the dying world to the new one. The Aniara is one such ship, loading up with passengers many of whom have family awaiting them on the Red Planet. The three-week journey is made easier by the presence of 21 restaurants, many more bars and nightclubs, a luxury spa, a massive mall – all the amenities of home.

Mimaroben (Jonsson) whose name is often abbreviated as “MR” runs the virtual reality room MIMA which essentially scans the brain waves of the users and picks out pleasant memories for them to relive. At the beginning of the journey she isn’t getting many customers. She shares a cabin with the Astronomer (Martini), a jaded science officer who doesn’t have much use for people.

But what is to be a routine voyage becomes something completely different in a heartbeat. A field of space junk debris penetrates the hull and forces the crew to jettison the fuel for their nuclear propulsion system. Without it, they are unable to steer or slow their momentum, leaving them to drift through space. Captain Chefone (Kananian) puts a brave face on things and tells the passengers and crew that there will be a delay in getting them to Mars – about two years instead of three weeks – but get there they will because they have a plan to use a celestial body as a slingshot to put the crippled ship back on course to Mars.

As it becomes clear that the Captain is lying through his teeth and that the Aniara is doomed to drift endlessly through space going nowhere, things change aboard the ship. The captain becomes paranoid and power-drunk; MR starts of a relationship with Isagel (Cruzeiro) and suicides become a big problem. Several cults are formed, some hedonistic, most fatalistic.

This is a beautiful film to look at with superb special effects and clean production design. I’ve seen the movie described as Passengers if it had been directed by Ingmar Bergman and it’s not that far from the truth. The tone is extremely fatalistic – it’s Scandinavian, after all – and bleak as all get out. There is some commentary on the excessive consumerism of modern society but in essence, the main theme seems to be that without a destination firmly in mind there is no point to life. I don’t know if I can agree with that.

The film isn’t helped by the bland personalities of the main characters. They are all somewhat one-dimensional, especially MR who is pushed and pulled by the eddies of life without apparently much care as to where they are taking her. She certainly doesn’t seem inclined to do any swimming of her own. While Kananian physically resembles Clive Owen, he’s no Clive Owen and gives the Captain again a fairly one-dimensional portrayal.

There is a lot of intellectual content to unpack here and those who are into cerebral sci-fi are going to find this a big win. Those who prefer their science fiction to be space operas may take some delight in the production design but are going to be bored silly – as many of the passengers are. This is the kind of movie that will appeal to a fairly narrow band of moviegoers but those that are inclined to like it are likely to like it a whole lot.

REASONS TO SEE: The special effects are stunning. The filmmakers get the herd instincts of the passengers right.
REASONS TO AVOID: The main characters are devoid of personality.
FAMILY VALUES: There is some graphic nudity, graphic sexual content, some drug use, a few disturbing images and a bit of profanity.
TRIVIAL PURSUIT: The film is based on a poem by Swedish author Harry Martinson.
CRITICAL MASS: As of 5/21/19: Rotten Tomatoes: 61% positive reviews: Metacritic: 58/100.
COMPARISON SHOPPING: Passengers
FINAL RATING: 7.5/10
NEXT: Nona

A Space Program

A tea service on Mars.

(2015) Comedy (Zeitgeist) Tom Sachs, Hailey Gates (voice), Pat Manocchia (narrator), Mary Eannarino, Sam Ratanarat, Chris Beeston, Evan Ross Murphy, Patrick McCarthy, Nick Doyle, Van Neistat, Kevin Hand, Jeff Lurie, Jared Vandeusen, Gordon Milsaps, Sarah Hoover, Bill Powers, Sarah Vasil, Greg Vane, Sarah Sachs, Arthur Sachs, Max Ellenbogen, Aunt Irma, Lila Ellenbogen. Directed by Van Neistat

 

There is art and then there is Art. The difference between the two is that art is reflective, stimulating, inspiring and Art is pretentious and arrogant. Art talks down to people; art brings them into the conversation. Art is made for the artist; art is made for the people.

Tom Sachs follows the dictates of bricolage, in which the artist uses mainly found materials and a fairly strict list of other materials to create. In this case, at a large space (normally used for things like basketball games) in New York City, he decided to do something about the space program and NASA. Using mainly plywood, steel and other mediums, he and his team crafted an environment of Mission Control, a lunar landing and a faux Mars to merge performance art and bricolage into a kind of art environment. Not being the sort of person who pays much attention to art (other than the cinematic kind), I’m not certain if this is innovative or not but something tells me it’s been done.

Probably not in this manner and on this scale, to be fair. The storyline posits a manned mission to Mars in which two female astronauts (Eannarino, Ratanarat) are sent on a mission to the Red Planet to research whether life exists there. While they are there they perform a traditional Japanese tea service and plant poppy seeds (off of a hamburger bun) in order to grow poppies so that heroin can be distilled, helping NASA defray the costs of sending an expedition to Mars. You have to give them points for out-of-the-box thinking.

There are certainly elements of whimsy here and some of the constructions are quite clever. I’m never quite certain whether the artist is poking fun at man’s pretensions of space conquest, or honoring human ingenuity through ingenuity of his own. As with all art – or even Art – it is open to the interpretation of the viewer and there is no wrong interpretation.

One of the problems I have with the film is that it almost has an obsessive-compulsive disorder in certain ways, endlessly discussing the materials used by the bricoliers in constructing the installation (do we really need to know why plywood was an ideal medium?) which does little to enhance our appreciation of the artwork and quite frankly feels like it’s being used to pad out the film, which clocks in at a short 72 minute running time, but feels much longer – also thanks to assigning each character a code name using military call signs based on their first and last names (Evan Murphy becomes Echo Mike, Tom Sachs becomes Tango Sierra and so on). They also flash to a faux ID badge for each cast member. It gets monotonous.

I will admit freely I’m not the intended audience for this; I am neither a hipster nor an art geek. People who are into art, are into trends or are into more intellectual pursuits might well find this fascinating. There is certainly some reflection on the process, although it is mainly in the execution rather than of the conception; the film doesn’t go into at all why Sachs chose this subject, or how he got the idea of creating Mission Control and Mars in a performance space. I would have liked to have seen a little bit more from that angle.

So not my cup of tea really, but as a document of an important work of modern art, it can be said that this is vital work. From the aspect of the layman however, there is an air of self-important smirking that didn’t really go down well with me. Maybe because I’m a bit of a space buff, I found it a little more irreverent than I was comfortable with. Then again, good art does make you reconsider your position while skewering the icons of culture. In that sense, this is a successful film.

REASONS TO GO: A record of an important piece of modern art.
REASONS TO STAY: The obsessive discussion of the materials used is pretentious. Not sure if this is hipster art snobbery or an attempt at sacred cow tipping. Despite a 72 minute running time still overstays its welcome.
FAMILY VALUES: There is some profanity and a few disturbing images.
TRIVIAL PURSUIT: The film is a recording of Sachs’ 2012 installation at the Park Avenue Armory.
CRITICAL MASS: As of 4/8/16: Rotten Tomatoes: 89% positive reviews. Metacritic: 71/100.
COMPARISON SHOPPING: The Forbidden Zone
FINAL RATING: 4.5/10
NEXT: High Strung

The Martian

Matt Damon takes a break.

(2015) Science Fiction (20th Century Fox) Matt Damon, Jessica Chastain, Kristen Wiig, Jeff Daniels, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Michael Peňa, Sean Bean, Kate Mara, Sebastian Stan, Aksel Hennie, Benedict Wong, Mackenzie Davis, Donald Glover, Nick Mohammed, Chen Shu, Eddy Ko, Enzo Cilenti, Jonathan Aris, Gruffudd Glyn, Naomi Scott. Directed by Ridley Scott

The exploration of other planets is a dangerous undertaking, maybe the most dangerous thing that humankind can do. So many things can go wrong. When compounded with human error, life or death can rest on a single decision made not always by ourselves but by others as well.

The Ares III manned mission to Mars is going well into its 18th day but then mission control in Houston detects an oncoming storm, a massive one that will force the crew to end their mission early and blast off into space. Already the escape vehicle is tipping over dangerously in the Martian sand. As the crew struggles to prepare for an emergency liftoff, the storm hits with brutal wind force. A piece of debris slams into astronaut Mark Watney (Damon) who is blown into the storm. His beacon and life signs indicator both are off. After a brief search in the storm fails to turn up Mark or his body, expedition leader Melissa Lewis (Chastain) is forced to leave Mars without him.

Except Mark isn’t quite dead yet, to quote Monty Python. Yes, he’s injured and his suit electronics non-functional but he’s alive. He gets back to the habitat and assesses his situation. He has food rations and water for a further 30 days but it will be four years before NASA can mount a rescue mission, assuming they realize that he’s still alive. As Mark says in his video logs that are to chronicle his struggle to survive, he’ll have to science the shit out of things in order to create drinkable water out of rocket fuel, grow potatoes from some vacuum packed spuds in an environment where nothing grows (let’s just say that he utilizes both the shit and the science), and manage to keep the atmosphere breathable in the habitat. It’s a daunting task.

Mark has a doctorate in botany so he’s a pretty smart guy. However, he knows that any one of a million things can go wrong. He has to contact NASA and once they realize that he’s alive, he has to stay that way until they can get there. However, it isn’t going to be just Mark on the line; when his crew discovers he’s still alive, they will put their own lives on the line to get their colleague and teammate back and what could be more heroic than that?

Ridley Scott is a prolific director who has a history of making screen worlds come to life, from ancient Rome to rural Provence to a doomed spaceship. Here the Red Planet – desolate and arid, although a mere four days before this movie opened NASA announced that water flowed on Mars – becomes a living creature, deadly as a cobra and majestic as a moose. Shot in Tunisia on red desert sands, The vistas are bleak and alien but realistic.

He got NASA’s cooperation on the movie which while it doesn’t come off as a two hour advertisement for the space agency, does portray it in a heroic light in much the same way Apollo 13 did. NASA doesn’t do movies that don’t have the right science; here they made something like 50 pages of notes in order for the solutions to the various problems that Mark Watney come up with are grounded in real science and are the lot of them quite ingenious.

Scott also had the good sense to put a stellar cast in place. While this is Damon’s movie without a doubt (more on that in a minute), he gets plenty of support including Daniels as a beleaguered NASA chief, Wiig as a press officer trying to spin the story the right way, Bean as a project manager whose first and only loyalty is to the crew who have placed their lives in his hands, Ejiofor as a NASA manager tasked with getting Watney home and Peňa as Watney’s closest friend on the crew. All of them do memorable work in parts that have in many cases much less screen time than they are used to.

But as I mentioned, this is Damon’s movie from start to finish and he responds by turning in maybe the best performance of his career. Certainly come Oscar nomination time he will have a very good shot at making the short list. He gives us exactly the heroic astronaut we’re looking for; one who is lonely and vulnerable but who faces his issues with intelligence and aplomb. He is a man who absolutely refuses to lie down and quit where many would have. Dying 145 million miles away from home is simply unacceptable.

The science in the film has been vetted by no less a personage than Neil deGrasse Tyson (who also recorded a trailer for the film) who proclaimed it accurate for the most part other than some minor details; for example, the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena doesn’t work on manned missions, but the one element that doesn’t pass the science test is the storm that scrubs the mission; because the atmosphere on Mars holds 1% of the air pressure than the atmosphere on Earth, the dust storms there (and there are dust storms on Mars) are much less violent and only pick up the lightest of dust. Having a wind storm on Mars that has the capability of picking up debris and slamming it into the body of an unsuspecting atmosphere doesn’t work but of course it is necessary to the plot that the crew believe that one of their number is dead, otherwise they would never leave without him. Like our military, NASA leaves nobody behind.

But what we have here is a rare movie that promotes intelligence and individual scientific knowledge. Granted, we are unlikely to ever be put in a situation in which our science IQ is all that stands between us and oblivion, but it is a reminder of how important science is not just into making new cell phones for us to use but to our own survival as well. The kind of problem solving Watney exhibits is the kind of problem solving we need for our own future as our global climate changes, which may lead to famine and starvation. We’ll need a lot of Mark Watneys to get us out of that one. Nonetheless any movie that gives us this kind of portrayal of science and scientists and does it in a story that is this compelling gets the highest praise I can offer.

REASONS TO GO: Damon is brilliant. Gripping story with real life science. Maintains tension throughout. Realistic-looking Mars (other than the storms).
REASONS TO STAY: Not everyone likes science fiction..
FAMILY VALUES: Some foul language, images of injuries and brief male posterior nudity.
TRIVIAL PURSUIT: Ridley Scott delayed filming on his Prometheus sequel to make this film.
CRITICAL MASS: As of 10/18/15: Rotten Tomatoes: 93% positive reviews. Metacritic: 81/100.
COMPARISON SHOPPING: Gravity
FINAL RATING: 10/10
NEXT: Pan

Red Planet

Val Kilmer gets a little face time with a killing machine.

(2000) Science Fiction (Warner Brothers) Val Kilmer, Carrie-Anne Moss, Tom Sizemore, Benjamin Bratt, Simon Baker, Terence Stamp, Jessica Morton, Caroline Bossi, Bob Neill (voice), Neil Ross (voice). Directed by Antony Hoffman

It’s 2025 and do you know where your atmosphere is? Yup…hopelessly poisoned, the soil sterilized by toxins, and our planet has less than a century of sustainable life left in it. That’s just a bad day for everybody.

All eyes turn to the Mars terraforming project; everything seems to be going well, but something odd’s been happening up there; the algae that had been sent to the planet to create a breathable atmosphere seems to be failing, and the oxygen levels on Mars are dropping fast. It looks like we’ll have to take care of this in person or else learn to hold our collective breath.

Mission commander Bowman (Moss) (Nyuck nyuck nyuck on the name, guys, open the pod bay door Hal?) leads a crew to examine the Mars problem. A habitation has already been sent to Mars and should be up and running. The mission is going smoothly, although one of the scientists (Stamp, who is wasted in a too-small role) is showing signs of wigging out, philosophically speaking. The “space janitor” — or systems engineer, (Kilmer) lacks respect from the crew, but has the eye of his commander (and apparently a bunch of other body parts).

Once in Mars orbit, things go wrong as they normally do in space movies. A severe solar flare cripples the mother ship and forces an early launch of the Lander, which promptly crashes (don’t you hate when that happens?) far away from the habitation. Commander Bowman, who had to stay behind in order to get the Lander away, is managing to repair the mother ship for the return to earth, but the mission looks junked, especially when the survivors from the Lander reach the habitation to find it completely destroyed, and only 15 minutes of oxygen left in their tanks. They wait around to die, only to discover something strange — there IS a breathable atmosphere on Mars after all. There is also a pissed-off robot who has gone military on their butts. What’s an astronaut to do?

Well, make chest-beating speeches about duty and sacrifice, for one thing. Kilmer and Stamp are terrific; Moss could have been the big action heroine that Linda Hamilton chose not to be; as it is she’s had a pretty solid career thanks to performances like these. Sizemore and Bratt are solid in support, and the effects are pretty nifty. The script, however, is pretty lame. It’s one Deus ex Machina after another, one amazing miraculous coincidence piled atop another until you’re screaming for mercy, but sadly, in Hollywood, nobody can hear you scream.

Red Planet  is fair enough eye candy, but could have used a plot that didn’t have quite so many holes in it  – the destruction of the habitation is never fully explained; when you figure out what caused it, you wonder how a station that was designed to withstand an F5 tornado could have succumbed to what destroyed it, for example. Kilmer is as laid-back as action heroes go; Sizemore makes a pretty good second banana, but it’s Moss who captured my attention here, as she will yours  and she would have without the somewhat obligatory, unnecessary nude scene.

This came out the same year as Brian de Palma’s Mission to Mars which was slightly better than this although I think Mission stands up better over time, despite the Kubrickian noodling of its ending.  I’m as big a fan of sci-fi adventure movies as you’ll find but even I couldn’t find a lot of positive things here. This was one mission I could have done without.

WHY RENT THIS: Decent special effects. Carrie-Anne Moss rocks.

WHY RENT SOMETHING ELSE: Poorly written. Too much chest-beating. Kilmer too laid-back for the role.

FAMILY MATTERS: There’s a fair share of violence and foul language and a brief nude scene.

TRIVIAL PURSUITS: Many of the Mars scenes were filmed in Wadi Rum, Jordan – a desolate narrow valley.

NOTABLE HOME VIDEO FEATURES: None listed.

BOX OFFICE PERFORMANCE: $33.5M on an $80M production budget; the movie flopped big time at the box office.

COMPARISON SHOPPING: Mission to Mars

FINAL RATING: 5/10

NEXT: The Host (2013)

John Carter

 

Taylor Kitsch is stunned when Lynn Collins gives him the box office numbers.

(2012) Science Fiction (Disney) Taylor Kitsch, Lynn Collins, Samantha Morton, Mark Strong, Ciaran Hinds, Dominic West, Willem Dafoe, James Purefoy, Daryl Sabara, Polly Walker, Bryan Cranston, Thomas Hayden Church, Rupert Frazer, Nicholas Woodeson, David Schwimmer, Jon Favreau. Directed by Andrew Stanton

 

As a young boy my father introduced me to Edgar Rice Burroughs and his Tarzan books. I read all of them eagerly, but it was the Barsoom series that intrigued me the most. I wasn’t alone in this – notable writers such as Ray Bradbury and Robert A. Heinlein were also heavily influenced by the books, as was scientist Carl Sagan. It has taken more than 79 years of development – from a proposed feature length animation – for the book to finally make the screen.

There is good reason for that. Burroughs had a terrific imagination but was not a gifted writer in many ways. His books were more like travelogues, particularly this series and the plot meandered quite a bit. I can imagine potential screenwriters being plenty frustrated by the lack of inertia as they tried to adapt A Princess of Mars, the first book in the series. At last however, they managed to and the result is one of the more anticipated movies of the Spring.

Ned Burroughs (Sabara) is summoned to the home of his Uncle only to find out that he had passed away shortly before Ned arrived. The instructions left for Ned were cryptic; his Uncle wished to be buried in a crypt that could only be opened from the inside, and a journal was entrusted to Ned which was not to be read for two years.

Ned being a compliant sort follows his Uncle’s wishes to the letter and then begins to read the journal. His uncle, John Carter (Kitsch) had been a cavalry officer in the American Civil War and a good one – but his side had lost. Carter had lost a lot more than that however; his wife and daughter perished in a fire while he was away from his Virginia farm and the grief-stricken Carter went West to find his fortune, a cave of gold that would set him up for life.

He finds that cave, but a lot more as well; a strange bald man with an amulet that transports Carter to Mars accidentally. Well, at first he doesn’t realize he’s on Mars; he just thinks he’s in the desert somewhere. Oddly, he is able to leap great distances (owing to the gravity). Carter is found and captured by green men with four arms and tusks who call themselves Tharks. This particular group is led by Tars Tarkas (Dafoe),who spares Carter because of his amazing leaping ability which Tarkas thinks might be useful. Carter, however, isn’t disposed towards fighting for anybody. He is given to Sola (Morton), a Thark who has a somewhat checkered past but like Tarkas, a good heart.

There is a civil war going on here as well, between two city-states – Helium, led by the noble Tardos Mors (Hinds) and Zodanga, led by the bloodthirsty Sab Than (West). The Zodangans have developed a high tech energy beam that is a devastating weapon wiping out most of the navy of Helium. In order to put the war to a halt, Mors offers Sab Than his own daughter in marriage – Dejah Thoris (Collins).

Despite being a princess, Dejah Thoris is also quite the scientist and warrior herself, not to mention having a will of her own. She has her own ideas of what she wants for her life and they don’t include being married to a bloodthirsty tyrant she has no feelings for. So she does the sensible thing – she runs away. Her intended also does the sensible thing – engages in a battle with her floating barge and shoots it down. She is saved by John Carter and his new friends the Tharks. Seeing how strong he is and how high he can jump gives her ideas – ideas that can lead to an end to war but on Helium’s terms.

However, unbeknownst to either of them there are factions within the Tharks who have a vested interest in Carter meeting an untimely end. Also the Zodangans are getting aid by a mysterious group of wizards who mean to maintain the balance on Mars the old-fashioned way – by installing a puppet dictator who will put an end to strife and rule over the dying planet with an iron fist. However, their plans won’t come to fruition if John Carter has anything to do with it.

Stanton is known for his work with animated features at Pixar – he has already directed Finding Nemo and Wall-E, the latter one of my favorite movies of the last few years. This is his first live feature (although given that a good chunk of his cast is CGI as is much of his environment, it isn’t far from an animated feature) and he acquits himself fairly well. He knows how to tell a good story.

The trouble is, A Princess of Mars isn’t a particularly good story. Once you get past the novelty of being transported to Mars, Carter doesn’t really do a whole lot other than fight and give stirring speeches and Thoris is little more than a damsel in distress. At least both characters are better written here, particularly Thoris.

The problem is that Taylor Kitsch, best-known for his work in “Friday Night Lights,” doesn’t carry the character well. Sure he looks good shirtless (which Carter is for most of the movie) but honestly the movie needs a lead who can do more than jump and posture. John Carter needs to inspire confidence and project heroism and Kitsch does neither. Bill Goodykoontz of the Arizona Republic characterized him as “generic” and that is a perfect description of his performance.

Collins fares better. She might be guilty of trying too hard sometimes but at least she doesn’t phone her performance in (as others do here). She at least makes her character memorable which is hard to do in a movie like this sort.

Too often these days adventure/action films of this sort place an overreliance on special effects and little or none on character. What point is there to all these pretty images if we don’t care about the characters who inhabit them? Sure, the cities and aircraft of Barsoom (Mars) are amazing to look at. The Tharks are impressively realistic. The interiors are sufficiently alien. The movie looks nice.

The action sequences are pretty fine as well, from an arena scene in which Tars Tarkas, Sola and Carter fight a Martian white ape (which is gigantic, furry and not at all ape-like) to a battle aboard a barge where Carter goes leaping about like the Incredible Hulk. That leaping, by the way, is a little bit distracting – it looks silly in places.

Still, while definitely flawed it’s kind of fun as well. If your expectations are too high you’re bound to be disappointed – and quite frankly being a fan of the original novel, I had hoped for better even though I shouldn’t have. After all, as I said earlier, this isn’t an easy story to film.

That doesn’t mean this isn’t worth seeing though, and it most certainly is. There is a lot to admire here, from the vistas and cityscapes to the old-fashioned swashbuckling. Yeah, there are ray guns and swords and sorcery and flying ships and bare-chested heroes – I just wish there might have been a bit more to the characters as well.

REASONS TO GO: Lots of swashbuckling action. Some pretty nifty CG effects.

REASONS TO STAY: Little to no substance. Battle sequences often confusing.

FAMILY VALUES: There is plenty of action and violence, not to mention a good deal of royal blue blood and ichors.

TRIVIAL PURSUIT: Most of the movie was filmed in Utah because of its barren landscape with unusual rock formations giving it an otherworldly look. Edgar Rice Burroughs wrote A Princess of Mars on which the movie is based while residing in Utah.

CRITICAL MASS: As of 3/19/12: Rotten Tomatoes: 51% positive reviews. Metacritic: 52/100. The reviews are about as mixed as you can get them.

COMPARISON SHOPPING: Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time

DOG LOVERS: You wouldn’t think there would be dogs on Mars but there is an adorable dog-like creature that runs unbelievably fast. Like, autobahn fast.

FINAL RATING: 6/10

NEXT: A Thousand Words

Mars Needs Moms

 

Ki, Gribble and Milo look at the box office bomb descending on their heads.

(2011) Animated Feature (Disney) Seth Green, Dan Fogler, Joan Cusack, Elizabeth Harnois, Mindy Sterling, Kevin Cahoon, Tom Everett Scott, Adam Jennings, Amber Gainey Meade, Julene Renee, Seth Dusky, Jo McGinley, Daniel James O’Connor. Directed by Simon Wells

 

Director Simon Wells has also done The Land Before Time and The Time Machine. This is significant because he’s the great-grandson of the legendary writer H.G. Wells who not only wrote The Time Machine but also War of the Worlds which depicted an attempted invasion of Earth by Martians. Here, they’re only after one specific Earthling.

Milo (Green, voiced by Dusky) is a stubborn, self-centered 11-year-old boy. That is, typical. He hates doing homework, won’t eat broccoli, lies to his mother (Cusack)  and says particularly cruel things to her. Dad (Scott) travels a lot so he’s not around much to help. When Milo voices the wish that his mother would not be around so that his life would be easier, his wish is granted – not by a kooky angel trying to earn his wings but by the Martians.

You see, they have a litter of hatchlings come to term every 25 years. Their mothers are far too busy to take care of the kids so they are entrusted to nanny-bots. Unfortunately the programming needs rebooting every 25 years or so, so an Earthling mom who shows the right stuff (the Martian culture is a rigid disciplinarian one) is kidnapped to download her memories into the nanny-bots. Unfortunately, the process destroys the mother forever.

Milo sees his mom being kidnapped and manages to stow away on the Martian spacecraft. On Mars, he meets Gribble (Fogler) whose mom was also kidnapped 25 years previously. He lets Milo know that he has until sunrise to save his mom or else poof. Unfortunately, Gribble was too late to save his mom, so he had to grow up all by himself without mom, dad or family, hiding out from the Martian police in a trash dump.

Aided by Ki (Harnois), a rebellious Martian girl that Gribble is sweet on, Milo sets out to rescue his mom from the clutches of the Supervisor (Sterling) but that is much easier said than done. He must overcome his somewhat less-than-reliable new friend and the cruelty and ruthlessness of the Martian police if he is going to save his mom – and even then, getting her back home may take even more doing.

This was badly mismarketed as a science fiction spoof rather than as a family adventure as it should have been. There are some truly poignant moments that work far better than the humorous ones, even though the film was based on a graphic novel by Berkeley Breathed, the creator of “Bloom County” and other politically-oriented strips.

Part of the problem is the motion capture technology used to animate the film. While there have been some decent motion capture films, one of the problems is that they never really get facial expressions right, giving the humans a kind of robotic emotion-less look. The same holds true here; there is no sparkle of life in these characters so they look kind of like re-animated dolls. It’s a bit creepy and I’m not alone in thinking that.

Cusack holds her own but Fogler’s comic relief is a bit lame – he doesn’t have the personality to pull off the rather weak dialogue. This became a major bomb for Disney and in a lot of ways has killed the motion capture subgenre altogether (plans to make a motion capture remake of Yellow Submarine were quietly shelved by Disney after Mars Needs Moms tanked) which might be a good thing – I think the technology has to improve before it becomes a viable artform.

Critics were surprisingly easy on the film, given some of the wooden performances both onscreen and vocally. The movie certainly has its champions but I think the public got it right on this one. It really isn’t a very good movie.

WHY RENT THIS: At times very moving, a treatise on the importance of family.

WHY RENT SOMETHING ELSE: Motion capture still doesn’t quite capture facial expressions.

FAMILY VALUES:  There is some minor sci-fi action and peril, nothing that’s too rough for most kids except for the very youngest.

TRIVIAL PURSUIT: Disney’s worst box office loss ever and the fifth biggest bomb of all time (unadjusted for inflation).

NOTABLE DVD EXTRAS: None listed.

BOX OFFICE PERFORMANCE: $39.0M on a $150M production budget; the movie was a major financial bomb.

FINAL RATING: 4/10

TOMORROW:Hannibal

The Box

Frank Langella really needs to buy himself a better razor.

(Warner Brothers) Cameron Diaz, James Marsden, Frank Langella, James Rebhorn, Holmes Osborne, Sam Oz Stone, Gillian Jacobs, Celia Weston, Deborah Rush, Lisa K. Wyatt, Mark Cartier, Keith Robertson, Michelle Durrett. Directed by Richard Kelly

Our lives are often a test, one in which we are called to make choices between short-term self-interest and the long-term benefit of the entire species. It is a test we continue to take over and over again, not always successfully.

It is 1976, and the Mariner project is sending data back to NASA at their Langley research facility in Virginia (and if you’re not sure what state you’re in, the filmmakers helpfully tell you in big bold letters at the beginning of the film). Arthur Lewis (Marsden) is a scientist who worked on that project (he helped design the camera that sent back those shots from the surface of the Red Planet) who dreams of being an astronaut, dreams which are dashed when he receives a rejection letter from the powers-that-be.

His wife Norma (Diaz) is a teacher at a ritzy private school where their son Walter (Stone) also attends. Norma walks with a limp and has to take pain pills because of a doctor’s who left her foot under an x-ray machine until it charbroiled. She’s just been told that the school is eliminating employee discounts for student tuition, which means that the already-financially strapped family (since when does a rocket scientist not make enough to make ends meet?) will have to live even more within their means.

Enter the Mysterious Man, in this case Arlington Steward (Langella). With a severely disfigured face that looks like one of his zits might have had C4 in it as a teen, Steward bears a mysterious wooden box that contains nothing except a glass dome that can only be opened with a key, and a large red button. He gives Norma the key and explains, in clipped cultured tones, that pushing the button will accomplish two things. First, someone unknown to Norma and Arthur, somewhere in the world, will die as a result of them pushing the button. Second, they will be paid one million dollars, tax free, in large crisp hundred dollar bills. In order to demonstrate his sincerity, he gives Norma one of them “for her trouble.” The two of them have 24 hours to decide whether or not to push the button – otherwise the offer is withdrawn and the box will be given to someone else.

The couple goes back and forth. Their conscience dictates that it is never all right to kill, even for a large sum of money but their immediate needs say that a million dollars can make their lives a hell of a lot less complicated. As the minutes tick down to the deadline, one of them will make an impulsive decision that will change their lives forever, put them all in mortal danger and introduce Arthur to a mysterious conspiracy between the NSA, NASA and other governmental organizations that may affect the future of the human race.

This is based on a short story by the great Richard Matheson (and was later developed into an episode for the 1986 version of “The Twilight Zone,” albeit with a different ending) who has given us stories that have become movies like I Am Legend, What Dreams May Come, Somewhere In Time and numerous episodes of “The Twilight Zone” and “Night Gallery,” to name a few. He is one of the most imaginative writers of the 20^th century. Here what he has is a morality play that is as relevant now as it was the day it was written – the battle of short-term gain and long-term care. In other words, doing the right thing vs. doing the easy thing.

Director Kelly has an affinity for science fiction and, well, creepy stuff. He creates an atmosphere in which anyone at any time can be “an employee” as Steward terms it, his eyes and ears on the subjects of what he labels “a test.” I know I’m being a bit vague, but I don’t want to ruin any of the twists that give the movie some of its spice. One of the things I can talk about is that he nicely re-creates the era.

Langella is fabulous as the mysterious Arlington Steward. He is creepy and not quite normal but at the same time urbane, polite and charming. He tips his fedora at a jaunty angle and walks with the deliberate pace of a man who knows exactly where he needs to be and is quite sure he isn’t in a hurry to get there. Marsden also does a fine job in the lead role of the disappointed rocket scientist who goes from financial problems to fighting for his survival.

I’m not usually a big fan of Cameron Diaz – for some reason she seems a little neurotic to me usually – but she does a solid job here. There are some nice supporting roles here too, particularly the veteran character actor Rebhorn as Arthur’s boss.

One of the biggest problems with the movie is the score. Members of the Montreal-based rock band Arcade Fire are responsible for it and I was frankly quite disappointed. It’s intrusive, overbearing, somewhat cliché in places (I don’t know about you but I am quite tired of having an Important Event or a Big Scare announced with screeching strings) and comes damn close to ruining the movie. I would have preferred something toned down a bit; a bit more minimalist.

Kelly, who wrote the movie, chose to flesh out the script with a good deal of business involving the government agencies mentioned above as well as a series of nosebleeds, slack-jawed observers, a wind tunnel and mysterious gates that may very well lead to Eternal Damnation. These sideshows, while visually effective, tend to take the focus from what was the main crux of the original short story, to the detriment of the film. That’s a shame because it might have gotten a higher rating otherwise.

There are elements of science fiction, horror, political thriller and historical drama here, so you can’t say that you didn’t get your money’s worth. What you can say about The Box is that it’s got the best use of Sartre I’ve ever seen in a horror/science fiction/thriller/drama before. Hell is other people according to Sartre but in Richard Kelly’s vision, we are all caught in our own boxes that we are stuck in until we’re planted in a pine box, and what we make of it can be Hell – or it can be something else. It’s a test that the human race continues to take – and fail.

REASONS TO GO: You can’t go wrong with Richard Matheson. A modern morality play that is an essay on human nature that is even more true and contemporary now than it was when the original short story was written. Langella gives a marvelously creepy performance.

REASONS TO STAY: An overbearing score is intrusive and nearly ruins the film. Some of the action is a little bit over-the-top. It feels like the script was fleshed out with some unnecessary business.

FAMILY VALUES: Some horrific images and a few good startle scares are sure to give the little ones nightmares. Okay for teens though.

TRIVIAL PURSUIT: Director Kelly is best known for directing the cult classic Donny Darko.

HOME OR THEATER: There are a few grand effects shots and a couple of other sequences that would look better on the big screen but otherwise just as effective at home.

FINAL RATING: 7/10

TOMORROW: He’s Just Not That Into You

What These Eyes Have Seen

I have flown the skies over the Rocky Mountains. I have seen the sun rise over the Tetons. I have been to the moon and built its cities. I have seen the Earth from orbit. I have ridden the fire into heaven.

I’m an astronaut, if you haven’t already guessed or I was. My name is Sumner Kaine. As we have begun to leave the confines of our planet and take our first, small steps into a larger universe, I have been a part of that process, and very proud of it. I have lived on Gagarin Station and on Lunar Colony 1, now called Armstrong. I have spent significant time separated from my wife Amy and my children, but I always deemed it worthwhile.

The program was in the process of choosing astronauts to be on the first manned spaceflight to Mars, the Explorer mission. I was one of the final candidates when during a routine training flight mission, the simulator I was in suffered a major malfunction and a panel exploded, sending shards of glass and steel into my face, shredding the corneas of both eyes.

Amy and the kids were with me constantly in the hospital, helping me through my pain and depression. Doctors told me I would need a corneal transplant and attempted to grow some from my own tissue, but there wasn’t enough to make it viable. I would have to have a transplant from a cloned or donor source. Cloned tissue would obviously be preferable in most cases but the time it would take to grow it would be prohibitive and I might miss my window of opportunity to fly to Mars. I’ve been an astronaut for some time now and there are only a few manned missions available during the years I’m likely to have left in my career.

It seemed like an eternity, but it was only a few weeks before I was informed that a compatible donor had been found for a corneal transplant. I would have to accept a new color for my eyes – the donors eyes were blue whereas mine had been brown but I figured as long as they worked everything was a-okay.

The surgery took place on a rainy Monday. I could hear the rain falling outside my window before I went in; Amy told me it was a gray, miserable day. Every day had een gray and miserable as far as I was concerned. I don’t mind telling you I was wallowing in self-pity a little bit. It certainly wasn’t attractive I know, but that wasn’t much of a concern at the time. Still, I was eagerly awaiting a pair of new eyes and I didn’t care where they came from, not really. I should have.

The surgery went very well according to Dr. Sharma. My vision had to be in tip-top condition in order to be able for me to function effectively as an astronaut, so I had specified – as had the Agency – that the donor eyes had to be perfect 20/20 or else the deal was off. It was all a little ghoulish – we were talking about people who had recently died, after all, and were bartering for their organs like they were spare parts for a lawnmower. Still, I tried to justify it to myself by believing that at least this person’s eyes would live on and get to see Mars, whereas they probably never would have in their original body.

A day or two later the bandages came off. I was nervous and excited. I couldn’t see much at first – everything was extremely blurry – but I could see. Dr. Sharma assured me that my new eyes would eventually readjust and work just fine. All the tests indicated that the transplant had taken. There was always a chance of tissue rejection, Dr. Sharma warned, but assured me that those cases were very rare indeed with the sophisticated DNA matching tests that are run in this day and age.

Dr. Sharma’s optimism proved to be well-founded and in a matter of days my vision was as good as it ever was, if not better. Even Dr. Sharma was impressed at how well things were working out. “I’ve never seen such a rapid readjustment from a corneal transplant in my entire career,” he said stroking his moustache (an affectation of his I gathered – I didn’t see him doing it before the surgery of course), “It’s almost miraculous.”

That really didn’t mean anything to me. I was focused on one goal alone. “When will I be able to get back into the program, Doctor?” I asked. He shrugged. “Ordinarily I would say you need at least a month to recover and for your eyes to get adjusted to their new environment, but it seems reasonable that you’ll be back much sooner than that. I’d like to monitor you for the next week or two to make sure there is no late tissue rejection indications, but otherwise you should be able to get back just as soon as the doctors at the Agency clear you.”

I was on the phone with the Agency medical division as soon as I got home. They were astounded by my progress, but after getting the download of my medical files from Dr. Sharma they told me to come in the next day for an evaluation. I was ecstatic. Despite the setback, I had a real chance to catch up with the other candidates in training. I still had a shot at Mars.

Amy seemed pleased as well but as quiet as Amy always was it was hard to tell. That night, when we went to bed, I noticed that there was a bit of a glow about Amy, a red one. It wasn’t anything terrible, just a slight red glow around the outline of her figure, like she was standing in front of a red light. It wasn’t an especially bright glow, but it was unusual. In the pit of my stomach I wondered if that was something that indicated a problem with the new eyes, but I decided not to say anything. Maybe I was pushing myself too hard.

After seeing the Agency doctors the next day the proclaimed me fit. George Ellis, the doc who had been flight surgeon on my last two missions and coincidentally, my closest friend, pulled me aside. “I’ve spoken with Dr. Sharma and we’re arranging for him to see you while you’re in training. No sense in delaying your progress any further when we can kill two birds with one stone.” That was the best news I could have hoped for.

That night as I was packing, I noticed the same glow around Amy. It was still red but darker now, with flecks of black. She told me how proud she was of me and that she just knew I would get picked. After all, if I could overcome this, nothing could stop me from getting what I wanted. The way she put it was a little strange but I just put it behind me. My mind was in Florida on the simulators. 

I flew back to Port Canaveral the next day. I noticed that Amy’s aura (which I had begun calling it in my head) had grown slightly darker than it had been the night before. She seemed nervous and distracted; she almost made the wrong turn driving me to the airport and I had to ask her a couple of times if she was all right. “Yes, honey, I’m fine. I just hate seeing you go. The last time you went you could have been killed.” 

At the airport I gave her a hug and a kiss. She seemed curiously withdrawn. I took her in my arms and told her “I know you’re worried darling, but the odds of something like that happening again are astronomical. I’ve had my glitch for the mission.” She laughed at that but it almost seemed token. I knew something was wrong but I couldn’t put my finger on it. I thought I knew at the time, for I told her “You know, if I get the Explorer mission, I’ll be gone for three years. Once I come home, it will be for good. It’s my last mission.” She looked at me a little strangely. “You know, honey, that would be nice but I can’t even think about it now. Just…go train and be safe.” She kissed me on the lips and turned and left. I thought she might have been crying. I hate goodbyes.

Training went well. Despite having been out for almost a month after the accident I really wasn’t as far behind as I might have been. It didn’t take long before I was back up to speed, and soon back at the front of the pack where I belonged. I was happy, so much so that I decided to give Amy a vid-call that night.

I hadn’t seen the aura on anyone else but Amy, so I didn’t think it necessary to tell anybody about it. When I called Amy though, I was jolted by shock. The aura was very apparent, even given the vid-phone distortion. It was also completely black, like someone had outlined her shape in dark black marker. She was also wearing a very tight mini-skirt and a low-cut top, the same outfit she’d worn to our anniversary dinner in Cancun three years ago but hadn’t worn since. Of course, I hadn’t been home for any of our anniversaries since.

“Sumner,” she said, and she seemed a bit out of breath, “I wasn’t expecting you to call.” The nervousness I’d detected a week before was much more apparent now. Something was definitely bothering her. “Really? You look fantastic. If I didn’t know better I’d say you had expected me to call and were dressing for the occasion.” Her laugh was a bit hollow. “I was just calling you to tell you that everything was going really well with training darling. It looks like I’m back in the drivers seat for the mission.” She looked anxious, wringing her hands…was that nail polish she was wearing? “That’s nice honey, I knew you could do it. You always do.”

She was wearing lipstick, too. She never wore make-up. “Are you expecting somebody darling? You really do look…” The expression on her face told me everything I needed to know. “You are, aren’t you?” She nodded, and the look of shame on her face didn’t make me feel any better. “Why?” was the only thing I could ask. “You’re never here. You haven’t been since the day you joined the program. Even if you’re home, your mind is on the next mission. I tried to be a good astronauts wife, but haven’t you noticed that most of your buddies in the program are divorced?”

There was a terrible feeling in the pit of my stomach. “Is that what you want?” I asked in a strangled voice. She was crying. “No, Sumner, that’s not what I want. I want you. I want you here. With me, and the kids. They want their daddy and I…I want a husband. And since I can’t have one for at least three years, I have needs that I can’t put off any more. I want a life. I want to live, and not just in your shadow.”

She hung her head. “I know I’ve hurt you, and I didn’t want to do that. I was hoping I could just have something on the side and when you got back from Mars, we could be together, we could work things out. If…if you still want to work things out, that is.” She couldn’t look at the screen. A million emotions were ping-ponging through me and I didn’t know how to stop the game. “Amy, I don’t know what to say.”

She looked up for the first time. “Just say you love me Sumner, and you want to work this out.” The trouble was, I did love her…just not very much at that moment. “I love you Amy, but right now my head is spinning and I’m not sure what I want. I’m not sure of anything. I’m due back in Houston next week…we can talk then.” She nodded. “I guess that’s the best I can hope for given the circumstances.” In the background, I could hear the doorbell ringing. “I guess that’s him,” I said. She nodded. “Look, let me take care of this. I’ll call you again later.” I said okay and hung up. I was feeling like someone had kicked me in the stomach but even in my pain I had noticed one thing. Just before the connection was broken, I noticed that her aura had increased and strange tendrils were flowing from it towards the door, and in that last millisecond I swore that the aura had enveloped her whole body.

She didn’t call in the next hour and I tried calling her, but there was no answer. I figured she was letting the guy down easy – typical Amy and bided my time. But when she didn’t call the next hour and the next hour after that, I grew worried. I kept calling and calling and there wasn’t an answer. I called Amy’s parents, who were watching our kids for her; she couldn’t get ahold of Amy either.

I grew angry. I felt betrayed. I figured at this point she’d decided to go through with it with the guy and to hell with her. I went to bed, furious at Amy and furious at myself for not having seen it sooner.

I was awakened the next morning by the door ringing. It was Dr. George, and his expression told me there was something wrong right away. He was accompanied by an MP. I sat down, dreading what he was about to say. As it turned out, I had reason to.

Amy was dead. The man she was meeting was someone she’d met on the Net, and he turned out to be a sexual predator. Apparently, she’d tried to send him away and he wasn’t up for taking no for an answer. He spent the night doing what he came there for, which apparently included torturing my wife to death. He’d even brought sound dampeners so the neighbors wouldn’t hear her screams. The only reason the police even knew what had happened, George told me, was that my call to Amy’s folks had worried them to the point where they had called the police and sent them to the house, where the bastard who murdered her was still cleaning up.

I was devastated, but once again I noticed a black aura on the MP. I hadn’t seen it on anyone else but Amy, but again I was a bit too distracted to really put two and two together.

The next days passed in a blur. I flew back to Houston for the funeral. The kids were inconsolable and so was I. I didn’t know what to do. Suddenly, Mars didn’t seem to be anywhere near as important as it had been. I was beginning to wonder if I should pass on the mission to stay with my children.

The funeral was awful. It was a closed casket affair – apparently the carnage done had been so severe that the police had suggested that nobody see the corpse. I was fine with that. Then, after the reception, I sat down with Amy’s folks and the kids. I asked them if they wanted me to stay home with them, and our daughter Lynne, who at 13 looked the spitting image of Amy (so much so it hurt to look at her) looked me in the eye and said “I don’t think mom would want you to give up on your dreams on account of her. Tom-tom (our son) talked it over with me and he agrees.” I saw Tom nodding and I started to cry, as did Amy’s parents. We all hugged.

It took a few days to take care of Amy’s affairs. I arranged for Lynne and Tom to stay with Amy’s parents and flew back to Houston. The mood there was somber. I asked George about it at a local bar over a beer, and he said “Well, there’s what happened to Amy. Everyone feels terrible for you; a lot of people didn’t think you’d continue on with the program. I’m frankly surprised you did too.” I told him what the kids said and he nodded. “Frankly,” I sighed as we sat at the bar, “it’s probably for the best. They know her folks better than they know me. I haven’t been around much.” George nodded and we continued drinking.

It was a bar frequented by members of the program, and there were pictures all over the walls of those who had died in service for the program. Throughout the night people would stop by and pay their respects; it actually helped a lot more than I would have guessed. As George and I were leaving for the night, I noticed a new picture on the wall that brought me up short. “Isn’t that the MP who came with you to tell me about Amy?” George stopped and said sadly “Yeah it is. He was killed in a jeep accident on the base.”

A cold wave coursed through me. Suddenly I remembered the black aura on both Amy and the MP. Could it be related? I had never seen anything like it before the transplant; I thought it was a side effect. Could there be something else going on, something unanticipated?

I sat up all night thinking about it but being a pragmatist – as an astronaut it’s a real necessity – I decided it had to be a coincidence and the actual aura effect was explainable somehow. I kept telling myself over the next days and weeks as I continued training up until the day the Agency director called me into his office. When I walked in, I was shocked to see the black aura around him. I heard him tell me that I had been selected as commander for the Explorer mission but that didn’t matter much. What did matter was that he looked pale and was sweating profusely. “Hey chief, that’s great news,” I said, trying to keep my voice light, “but I’m a little concerned. You don’t look so good. Are you all right?” He shook his head, smiling wanly. “Must have ate too many jalapenos at lunch,” he said shaking his head, “I’ve got a touch of indigestion but I’m sure it’ll be fine after I take some antacids.”

I went directly from the director’s office to George’s. He gave me the thumbs up. “I heard already. Congratulations! Wanna go out and celebrate tonight?” I shook my head and closed the door behind me. “There’s something I have to tell you,” I said and I told him about the auras I was seeing. He listened gravely, and then he looked at me and said “First off, we’re going to see Dr. Sharma and make sure there’s nothing wrong with your transplants. But don’t you think even if there is something going on that it’s just coincidence? You’ve only seen it twice, after all.” I shook my head. “Three times, George. I saw it again today around Director Stone.”

George’s eyes bugged out a little then and I knew there was something he knew that he wasn’t telling me. All he did do, however was pick up the phone and call Dr. Sharma’s office and arrange for an appointment for me.

I flew back to Houston for the first time since the funeral and went straightaway to Dr. Sharma’s office. He and his staff ran a battery of tests on my eyes. I told Dr. Sharma for the first time about the auras and he looked at me quizzically when I asked him if it was possible that this was a side effect of the surgery. He said slowly, choosing his words carefully “I suppose it could be but I have never heard of anything like this before. I will do some research…you say you only see it on certain people, not everyone?” I looked him straight in the eye and said “Everyone I’ve seen the aura around has died within 24 hours of me seeing it.”

Dr. Sharma got up and shut the door to his office. He sat back down and looked at me with measuring eyes. “You my friend are a pragmatic sort, so let me tell you that it is logical to accept that we do not know everything that is knowable, do you not agree?” I nodded. That made sense to me and I told him so. He looked at me squarely and said “There are things that are scientifically provable and things that are not. That which has to do with death is a great mystery and nothing is provable, other than that we all die.” He stood and paced around the office. “There are some, Mr. Kaine, who believe that the time of our death is pre-determined. Perhaps, if that’s true, our bodies recognize that fact and give off a sort of energy that signifies it. Perhaps you are able to see that energy where others can’t. But that kind of ability isn’t unknown. I have heard of others who possessed it, the ability to see auras, or specific energies that others cannot. Let me do some research and I will get back to you.”

The next day when I got back to the Cape, George was waiting for me. “Director Stone died last night. Massive coronary. Get in the goddamn car.” We drove to the Astronaut training center in silence. We would not speak about the auras again.

The rest of the mission training went on with the team of 8 astronauts that would be going to Mars and their back-ups. I didn’t see any other auras and told nobody else about them. Dr. Sharma called me once to tell me he was still researching the condition but didn’t have anything concrete to give me. I didn’t expect that he would.

The mission team was sent to Lunar Base 1 for final preparations for the journey. The spacecraft Explorer 1 would launch from lunar orbit, using the lunar and earth orbits to slingshot it to Mars. Explorer 1 was the most sophisticated spacecraft ever made. It had special radiation shielding to protect the crew from months of exposure to solar radiation, as well as enough renewable fuel, water and food to last the 8 person crew the journey to Mars and back.

The launch went by the numbers; we had drilled for more than a year to get to that point and the training was worth every moment. The slingshot manouvers went perfectly and we were on our way. Most of the trip to the Red Planet was boredom followed by tedium. We had some science experiments to conduct but for the most part we didn’t have a lot to do. We did a lot of training exercises preparing for the landing that was almost a year away. Every so often we got messages from Earth and it was nice to see my children, but it was hard seeing them; I was reminded of Amy each time I saw them.

Eventually we arrived at Mars orbit and the mission changed dramatically, from tedium to suddenly being insanely busy. We all were preparing the various scientific equipment for transport to the Martian surface and the habitat we would live in on Mars for more than a month. There was also a Mars Rover vehicle that would allow us to explore up to 100 miles away from base camp. We wanted to make the most of our time there.

The time came at last and we strapped into the landing vehicle, which had been nicknamed Eureka. We were making final preparations for Eureka separation when I finally looked up and felt my heart stop. Around every one of the other seven astronauts was the same black aura, with the tendrils.. With a sudden decisive snap I shut my helmet and locked it even though we weren’t supposed to do that. Just as I did, the explosive bolts detonated a full five minutes early and the lander separated with the hatches still open. There was explosive decompression and all eight of us were blown into space.

The other seven hadn’t shut their helmets and were dead before they even knew there was a problem. I was blown away from the spacecraft travelling hundreds of miles of hour, the newest satellite orbiting Mars. I watched as the Explorer 1 imploded. I wondered how long it would take for the Agency to realize that there was anything wrong. I wondered if they would ever know what happened. They might recover one or two of the bodies if they remained in orbit long enough. Chances are we wouldn’t; we would fall slowly into the atmosphere of Mars and burn up in a spectacular re-entry.

I wouldn’t live long enough to burn alive, however. I would suffocate when my oxygen ran out. I probably wouldn’t wait for that though. At some point I would open my faceplate and be flash frozen, quickly and painlessly. Right now, I’m just enjoying the view.