10 Terrible Mars Movies That Don't Bode Well For The Martian
3. Red Planet
Rotten Tomatoes score: 14%
Box Office: $33.5 million ($80 million budget)
Just like with Dante's Peak and Volcano or Armageddon and Deep Impact, ropey disaster movies seem to arrive in pairs. For the new Millennium, Martian expeditions were the unimaginative blockbuster du jour and Red Planet took the Dante's Peak role of being so bad that it made its dreary competitor look entertaining in comparison.
Helmed by commercials director Antony Hoffman, Red Planet doesn't even have the occasional flashes of style that De Palma could produce even on an off day.
Once again, it's basically a survival movie with a crew unable to leave Mars, but this time the local insect life have conveniently made the air breathable. To say that The Martian's acclaimed interest in finding plausible scientific solutions to being stuck on the planet has no place in Red Planet would be as big an understatement as to say this film isn't worth your time.