John Carpenter is a legend in the horror genre, but even his diehard fans would admit 2001's Ghosts Of Mars was a long way from his best work. The movie was essentially a greatest hits collection of his other movies, combining The Thing, Assault On Precinct 13 and Escape From New York into one very uneasy stew. The movie has a woefully miscast Ice Cube playing the universes toughest criminal Desolation Williams, who teams up with some space cops to fight off aliens/angry Marilyn Manson fans. If the character bears an uncanny resemblance to Snake Plissken right down to the sleeveless t-shirt and camouflage trousers thats because Ghosts Of Mars was intended to be the third Escape movie. Titled Escape From Mars, the movie would have been exactly the same except it would have featured the always awesome Kurt Russell reprising his greatest role. Since the previous Snake movie Escape From L.A. failed to recoup its budget the project was canned; only for Carpenter to go back over his script with a red pen and replace Snake with Desolation. He should have left it alone really.
