This decent space adventure might have been a hit, if another Mars-themed movie hadn’t bombed a few months before. Cocky astronauts journey to what is supposed to be a partly terraformed Mars, only to experience mission snafus that make survival unlikely. The plot complications cherry-picked from the best of sci-fi are mostly exciting; the actors remain lively and engaging: Val Kilmer, Carrie-Anne Moss, Tom Sizemore, Benjamin Bratt, Simon Baker & Terence Stamp.

Red Planet — 4K
4K Ultra HD
Arrow Video
200 / Color / 2:39 widescreen / 106 min. / Street Date November 18, 2025 / Available from Arrow / 49.99
Starring: Val Kilmer, Carrie-Anne Moss, Tom Sizemore, Benjamin Bratt, Simon Baker, Terence Stamp.
Cinematography: Peter Suschitzky
Production Designer: Owen Paterson
Art Directors: Hugh Bateup, Catherine Mansill
Costume Design: Kym Barrett
Spacesuit Design: Steve Johnson
Film Editors: Robert K. Lambert, Dallas S. Puett
Visual Effects Supervisors: Jeffrey A. Okun, Erik Nash, Cosmas Paul Bolger Jr., Grant McCune,
Composer: Graeme Revell
Screenplay by Jonathan Lemkin, Chuck Pfarrer story by Pfarrer
Produced by Bruce Berman, Mark Canton, Jorge Saralegui
Directed by Antony Hoffman

Space adventures set on the planet Mars scored one big hit in 2016 with Ridley Scott’s The Martian, but earlier efforts didn’t fare as well. Fifteen years earlier, Antony Hoffman’s expensive  Red Planet tried and failed to find a giant audience. Its chances are said to have been dulled by the flop performance of Brian De Palma’s Mission to Mars earlier in the year. We’d bet that millennial moviegoers were drawn to the escapist, upbeat fun of the Star Wars prequels.

The movie industry has changed a lot in 25 years, and a look back at Red Planet reveals a picture that’s not bad at all on its own terms. Great science fiction, no, but it’s not part of the trend to make the next big variant on Ridley Scott’s Alien, adding to the mix zombies and other ever more gooey monsters. Kubrick-like space movies were stalled as well. 1995’s  Contact proposed a marvelous concept for a Voyage To The End Of The Universe, but all of its fuss and bother boiled down to an insulting homily about ‘make room for Daddy.’

Red Planet begins rather shakily, with expository voiceover narration by the mission Commander Bowman (Carrie-Ann Moss of  The Matrix). We then meet her five male crewmembers. All have with specific mission functions, all of which we forget except that of Gallagher (Val Kilmer). He’s dissed as ‘the janitor’ because he’s in charge of making everything function, but he’s also the main star and the one who gets cozy with female mission Commander. When trouble comes, the crewmen are as true-blue as the astronauts of the (fictional and real)  Apollo 13 mission. Burchenal (Tom Sizemore) is a macho joker and Pettengil (Simon Baker) less aggressive and thin-skinned. Astronaut Santen (Benjamin Bratt from TV’s Law and Order) seems to have a latent hostile streak. Standing apart from this rough bunch is the older Chantilas (Terence Stamp), who tries to inject a vibe of philosophical calm.

The Earth is becoming uninhabitable, but the world is doing something about it. Instead of sending  a forest into space, robotic space missions are terra-forming Mars. Decades-ago missions nuked the Martian icecap, causing a global warming trend; the Martian plains were seeded with algae, which is expected to convert CO₂ into Oxygen and make the air breathable. The present mission is to check on progress. The team will live in a survival lab already landed on the planet.

The mission is supposed to be taking place in 2025, but the technology we see looks more like 2125. That’s okay as not all of the tech miracles are impossible. The spacemen certainly come prepared. At one point Kilmer’s technician is able to interface with old Mars probes from the 1970s, both U.S. and Russian.

Why do all space movies have to become Space Disaster movies?  When the ship reaches Mars orbit, the noble mission dissolves into a cascading series of survival crises. A blast of gamma ray radiation fries much of the ship’s circuitry. This forces Commander Bowman to stay on board while the other five go down the surface. Bowman must work like mad to restore full power to the main ship. Down on Mars, an injury in landing reduces the landing party again. They find no trace of the expected masses of algae, and the survival lab they need to survive has been destroyed … not blown up, more like shredded. They don’t have much oxygen in their space suits, and at first have no way to communicate. Bowman has to assume that they’ve died.

The complications that follow are pretty interesting. Another astronaut dies, and the only witness doesn’t tell the truth about what happened. An old Russian probe provides a chance to get them back to orbit, but their long hike to reach it is slowed by an ice storm. In the middle of all this, they find that the Martian air has enough oxygen for them to breathe. Where is it coming from if there is no algae?

One complication is perhaps one too many. A robotic helper on the mission called AMEE is damaged in the crash. It reminds us of today’s robot dogs, with an added ability to reconfigure itself like a Transformer toy. Its programming scrambled, AMEE reverts back to its initial function as an autonomous killing drone for the Marines — and decides that the astronauts are its enemy. Thus we have a survival saga like Apollo 13 or The Martian souped up with a mini-  Terminator that reminds us a bit of  Screamers.

The survival stuff is absorbing, even when scientific realities are stretched. That gamma-ray storm had no effect on the Earth?  The harsh, cold conditions on Mars are not very convincing; neither is the fact that observation from Earth or more probes couldn’t determine how much terraforming had taken place before the costly manned mission. So it all depends on how much fantasy one wants in one’s ‘realistic’ space drama. Why didn’t the ‘gamma radiation storm’ also affect electronics on Earth?  The gamma spike appears to burn out every circuit on board the ship … but pushing some buttons and rerouting power makes all the electronics pop back to life, better than new.

The movie caters to Val Kilmer’s star image, letting us know that Gallagher will prevail and ‘get the girl.’ His laid-back attitude and crude behavior with Bowman are hardly professional, even if she welcomes it. Knowing how Kilmer forced filmmakers to alter movies to favor his star prerogatives, we bristle a bit at his macho grin. Things get better on Mars, when Gallagher (and Burchenal) face no-win, slow-death problems by exhibiting heroic Right Stuff qualities.

With so many Sci-fi films opting for irrational, sentimental finales —  The Abyss,  Contact — we are happy that Red Planet doesn’t go totally soft at the finish. Will Val Kilmer effectively kick his heels and return to Kansas?  Script foreshadowing prepares us to expect that our desperate astronauts will be saved by an ‘act of God.’  This worry arises only because Terence Stamp’s character brings up the subject more than once, which seems to be his only story function. Did Chantilas have a purpose beyond being a nice guy?  He does have one good line, saying that the astronauts must operate on Faith, because they’re entrusting their lives to the hope that all their delicate space technology will bring them back alive.

True, Red Planet is far from a masterpiece, but it is entertaining. It also very attractive. The film was largely shot in the deserts of Australia and Jordan. The dozen digital effects companies named in the credits helped make the locations look very much like authentic photos from the surface of Mars. The huge volume of digitally generated hardware is decently designed, and the action is well staged. The filmmakers do not abuse the script’s multiple countdown-to-disaster deadlines.

Excellent visuals help us stop thinking about the iffy science and accompanying implausibilities. The finale is not too grim, and the possibility of saving the Earth just enough to leave things on a positive note.

True, somewhat unwelcome things like the robot dog are an irritant, even if it is beautifully designed and depicted. That dog really seems chosen by a committee, or a computer making recommendations from ‘what has worked before.’  Do ‘studio memos’ explain the crew’s gym-locker dialogue, or Ms. Moss’s shower scene?  When her Commander Bowman strips to a revealing top to work on the spaceship’s power problem, we’re convinced it’s due to some focus group’s happy memory of Sigourney Weaver on board the Nostromo.

The enhanced format of Arrow Video’s 4K Ultra HD of Red Planet really makes a difference — Peter Suschitsky’s crisp visuals look wonderful, even when the colorists partly mute some colors to an authentic Martian orange-brown. Around 2000 is when digital effects began to succeed without being a distraction in themselves; Red Planet has a million shots but none that scream, ‘give me an Oscar.’

We enjoyed the music score, and only then saw that it was by Graeme Revell of  Until the End of the World. The dynamic mix knows when to be loud and when to settle down. Unlike the unfortunate  Lost in Space, Antony Hoffman’s movie doesn’t push things too hard … it plays like a movie with a story worth following.

Arrow’s extras rely on two new making-of pieces that focus on visual effects and spacesuit designs, and a not bad visual analysis by  Heath Holland.

Mark A. Altman’s brief insert pamphlet essay sets our mind at rest about the film’s genesis. He says that studio politics did indeed mandate the killer robot, the Bowman shower scenes, and violent conflict between the astronauts. Also expected is learning that Val Kilmer made a big deal of not getting along with Tom Sizemore, to the point of not wanting to be in the same frame with him. Director Hoffman should be commended for keeping the filming on track.

Thanks  to Thomas Kent Miller’s book  Mars in the Movies, which gave me a good round-up of similar movies. (Reviewed  May 5 2017)

Reviewed by Glenn Erickson

Red Planet
4K Ultra HD rates:
Movie: Very Good
Video: Excellent
Sound: Excellent
Supplements:
Interview The Martian Chronicles with visual effects supervisor Jeffrey A. Okun
Interview Suit Up with helmet and suits designer Steve Johnson
Visual retrospective Angry Red Planet with Heath Holland
Deleted scenes
Theatrical trailer
Illustrated insert pamphlet with an essay by Mark A. Altman.
Deaf and Hearing-impaired Friendly? YES; Subtitles: English (feature only)
Packaging: One 4K Ultra HD in Keep case
Reviewed: December 14, 2025
(7437plan)

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