This week I went and saw John Carter and last night we watched Total Recall, two films that take place on Mars but are two totally different animals. Now most movies about Mars seem to fall into two easily defined categories with very few that step out of them.

1) Exploring Mars.
2) Mars attacks.

The recent John Carter is one of the rare breed that is about neither but simply an adventure story that takes place on Mars and could as easily take place at the Earth's core or the world of Neverwhere, but I'd say ninety percent of movies about arriving on Mars or the Martians arriving on Earth. Total Recall is a bit blurrier on it's take on Mars as really it's more about corporate douchebaggery than it is about alien landscapes, that and the whole "Dream or is it?" aspect.

So I thought with the release of John Carter we could have a nice thread discussing our favorite Mars movies and of course the ones that fail.

I will always have a soft spot for the Angry Red Planet. Whenever I see the mono-optical blob alien attack, his eyeball lazily spinning like a broken police siren, for a few, brief moments, all is right with the world

Invaders From Mars (1953) is a great and very bizarre impressionistic movie that gives us a very creepy child's nightmare, kind of a Wizard of Oz meets Salvador Dali. The aliens themselves are goofy as hell but the real chills come from the changed and violent parents.

Back in pre-VCR days, when you watched a TV broadcast in real time, or you didn't watch it at all, the original War of the Worlds was one of the very few things that could get me out of bed early on a Saturday.

As much as I like Steven Speilberg's movie his version of War of the Worlds doesn't hold a candle to the charm provided by George Pal's. Also Gene Barry is much more likable than Tom Cruise, but then again his character wasn't saddled with annoying children. So he had the edge there.

Yeah, but the panic stricken female lead with the 'scream of ear wax melting' should make up for that.

Rating on annoyance factor my money is on Dakota Fanning and her backseat hysterics.

I know it's not really a movie, but my favorite Mars-related film will always be the classic Daffy Duck short, Duck Dodgers.

Okay, so it didn't actually take place on Mars...But it had a Martian, who wanted to claim a planet in the name of Mars. Isn't that enough?

I haven't seen John Carter yet, but I want to, someday.

I liked Total Recall very much, and watch it almost every time I know it's going to be on TV. And I don't even like Swarzenegger much. I just like some of the movies he's in, especially this one. (As far as individual actors go, I'm more of a fan of Total Recall's villainous henchman Michael Ironside.)

I think I liked all of the Mars/Martian movies (and cartoons) already mentioned in this thread, especially the original Invaders From Mars, zippers-up-the-back and all.

I like this thread.

Even Arakkis in the various screen versions of Dune is kinda, sorta, a little bit like Mars, in that it's really arid and has two moons. (Of course, on the other hand, it does have near-Earth gravity and a breathable atmosphere, and generally higher temperatures.)

True.
Of course, if you looped the two together, the combined effect could be lethal. Might lead to a contract with Homeland Security.

Or save the day

"The Martians had no resistance to the hysteria in our women to which we have long since become immune."

Oh, I forgot to mention the anime series, Cowboy Bebop. Spike Spiegel, the chief protagonist of that, is a native son of a colonized Mars (specifically of the domed Martian City of Tharsis, IIRC), and thus technically a Martian by birth. Some of the better episodes (and a lot of flashback/implied backstory material) take place partly or completely on Mars.

It might be worth noting that unlike several of the other colonized planets and large Jovian moons in the future Bebop solar system/'verse, Mars has not be terraformed. Instead its human population seems to be confined to sealed, domed cities, with their own self-contained (generally rainy) atmospheres.

There also was the 1980 TV mini series The Martian Chronicles which had some interesting production design elements. Other than that it wasn't very memorable.

Oh, yeah, I vaguely remember that. The book is WAAY better. Bradbury was a hell of an imaginer and even a kind of poet in his way, in his day.

And how sad is that I already speak of him in the past tense, though he still lives?