Hollywood and the Curse of Mars
By Robbie Graham Silver Screen Saucers
At NASA and in Hollywood right now, eyes are trained on Mars. November 26 will see the launch of NASA’s much-hyped, $2.3 billion Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) mission, the purpose of which is to land and operate a rover called Curiosity on the surface of the Red Planet. The rover’s task: to discover whether or not Mars is now, or has ever been, hospitable to life. Meanwhile, over in Tinseltown, Disney is hoping that its own substantial Mars-related investment will pay off: the forthcoming mega-movie, John Carter.
The movie – a lavish, big-screen adaptation of Edgar Rice Burroughs’ Barsoom series of science fiction adventure novels – will chronicle the exploits of John Carter, a 19th Century American Civil War veteran who, upon being mysteriously transported to Mars, discovers it to be a thriving and diverse world populated by 9 ft tall, green, four-armed warriors called Tharks, as well as more human-looking "red" Martians.
Empire magazine has described John Carter as “one of the more complicated productions you’ll ever see," noting that "the film combines location shooting, studio sets, [and] live action and digital creations.” Disney has invested almost $300 million in the movie, placing great faith in its director Andrew Stanton (Finding Nemo, Wall-E), as well as its much-loved source material, and the word “franchise” will no doubt have been used liberally by Disney bigwigs overseeing the project since its inception. In light of its colossal budget, however, the movie will need to do some serious box-office if it is to survive past its first instalment, let alone go on to become Disney’s next Pirates or Narnia.
In addition to the usual hurdles strewn along a movie’s road to success – bad reviews, box-office competition, poor filmmaking (though that’s usually irrelevant), misjudged marketing, classification issues, uncontrollable, politically sensitive national or international events (Hollywood suffered badly in the aftermath of 9/11, for example), John Carter faces another, almost insurmountable, obstacle: the dreaded ‘Martian Curse.’
Lost in Space
The Martian Curse is typically referred to in the context of Earth’s numerous failed Mars missions, the most recent of which is the Phobos-Grunt. The purpose of this Russian-led mission was to land a probe on the mysterious Martian moon Phobos and scoop up rock samples for return to Earth. It was hoped that the samples would yield new insights into the origin of Phobos, which is thought by some to be an extraterrestrial space station. However, for reasons as yet unknown, the spacecraft was unable to fire its engines following its launch on November 9 of this year has been stuck in low Earth orbit ever since. Hope for the mission’s recovery has now been completely extinguished.
The failure of Phobos-Grunt should come as little surprise. Of the 39 international Mars missions to date as listed by NASA on its Mars Exploration Program website (excluding the Phobos-Grunt, which has yet to be officially counted among the ‘dead’) a staggering 22 are declared as outright failures. |
