GoodReads meta-data is 292 pages, rated 3.7 by a paltry 9 litizens.
Genre: Non-Fiction
Verdict: All hail, Nerdboy!
The title says it all. Thomas Miller has compiled, annotated, watched, summarised, and commented on every movie (in the English-speaking world and more) that features Mars and some that do not and others that should. He includes cartoons, animations, documentaries, shorts, serials, and features. Did I say comprehensive? Comprehensive.
Miller’s telling is personal and there are asides and tangents but they, too, add to the overall impression of our fascination with Mars and the way it is manifested in art and life, including his own life. He climbed trees as a boy, looked at the stars, marvelled at stories of spaceflight, and became determined to work for NASA, and did. However, on with the show….
I was surprised at the long list of movies included. Many of the feature length fictions were familiar, but there were surprises even so. There is a chronological list at the end. The chapters are thematic: voyages to Mars, invasions from Mars, life and living on Mars…… But strangely nothing on Mars Bars.
It was a shock to find out how many versions there have been of H. G. Wells’s ‘War of the Worlds’ after the 1953 inaugural. I have lost count but typing that title in the IMDb will yield quite a harvest of literal remakes, and then there are those with slightly altered titles, and still others with different titles but the same storyline.
Just as B movies used to be turned out in ten days or less to capitalise on the success of A movies, so today made for television, steaming, or DVD movies are produced as clones. And just as some B movies are far better for being simpler and more direct than the bloated A movies they imitate so some of the straight to DVD movies are better than the big ego productions of Hollywood.
Consciously the author’s scope seems mainly the USA. There are few references to England, apart from H. G. Wells as above, and less still to films originating in other parts of the world. There is no mention of the Mars mission portrayed in ‘Murder in Space’ (1985) from Canada. It may be that the paucity represents reality and if so, that itself might have borne comment. Why are Americans more fascinated with Mars than others.
Miller ridicules many critics who pan movies. His suspicion is that many critics have to earn their spurs by being negative, and so will deride a movie on flimsy ground. And once a major critic does this, the herd follows in the tracks of the bigger beast. Really? Would self-respecting professional film critics for such prestigious mastheads as the New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Cleveland Plain Dealer, Colliers, and so on be that lazy, arrogant, and stupid. Really!
Can there be evidence for such cartels? Miller lists in chronological order nearly word-for-word repetitions in reviews from dozens of critics, one repeating the other, it would seem, unless there is a mighty busy god of serendipity. He even shows how mistakes in the first major review, say a typo in a character name, are reiterated in the flock that follows. Amen, Brother Thomas, lay on the wood.
What is surprising are the times – two are documented in these pages – when a producer dams his own film as it goes on release. This damnation may be explicit or implicit, and perhaps represents some corporate pathology being played out in public. Yes, dear viewer, even the snow white Disney Corporation has been known to denigrate its own product.
Less informative is Miller’s fascination with the opening credits of movies. He cannot fathom why critics do not comment on the scene-setting effect of opening credits, citing some examples of very effective opening credits, like those of the 1953 ‘War of the Worlds’ and some very ineffective ones. Point taken. He then repeats the exercise. He then refers to it again, and again. And reverts to it at the end. I believe him when he says he sometimes puts in a DVD and watches only the opening credits before moving on to something else. I also believe him when he says his wife finds that annoying.
Did I say Nerdboy above, or what.
Another of his pet peeves which gets ground into the eyeballs by repetition is the lag in communication back and forth between Mars and Earth. He nails this of course, but then pounds it in and in and in. Yet at the same time he waxes lyrical about a completely inaccurate and anti-scientific account of Mars, including sunbathing, of ‘Robinson Crusoe on Mars’ (1964), discussed elsewhere on this blog. Instantaneous interplanetary communication will condemn a movie to the sin bin in his eyes, but sunbathing on Mars with a monkey will not. Go figure.
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