A group of human astronauts are trying to get over to Mars and start up a new colony on the planet so that mankind will have a back-up now that Earth is going down the crapper thanks to all the pollution Donald Trump's idiocy has caused. The groundwork for this prospective Mars colony for Earthlings has been laid in the form of algae that's been shot onto the planet by way of satellites that will create an oxygen-rich atmosphere for future human residents to breathe. The various humans that have been sent for this mission are led by Commander Kate Bowman (Carrie-Ann Moss) while the protagonist for the piece is a "space janitor" named Robby Gallagher (Val Kilmer).
When a malfunction on the spaceship everyone's riding on sends things into chaos, Kate Bowman stays behind to fix things up so they can go home and sends the other five astronauts to the surface of Mars, where they've gotta get to the base camp that's been established for them to live in. But once Gallagher and comrades that include comic relief Dr. Quinn Burchenal (Tom Sizemore) and the troubled Chip Pettengill (Simon Baker) discover the base is destroyed and that their only hopes of getting back up to the spaceship are gone. Their troubles are further compounded by a robot they brought along for the mission that's malfunctioned in a dangerous way and has started going all Ultron on everyone.
It might be impressive just how staggeringly tedious Red Planet was if such a quality didn't leave the movie feeling suffocatingly boring. Who knew a movie about a bunch of Earth astronauts trying to survive on Mars could be as boring as watching cement harden? Why have thrilling excitement of any kind when one can watch Val Kilmer deliver a stilted performance Way too much of the screenplay by Chuck Pfarrer and Jonathan Lemkin is spent on tedious dialogue exchanged by the thinly-sketched characters that just feels like it's killing time until we get to the far too predictable climax.
For instance, differing viewpoints on theology are introduced between the characters of Gallagher and Burchenal, with the former fellow being a more overtly spiritual person after his conversations with an even more spiritual elder crew member played by Terrence Stamp and the latter individual being an Atheist. They share one conversation on the topic filled with monotonous dialogue and then it never comes up. Nothing new has been revealed about the characters beyond their surface level theological inclinations and nothing they've talked about factors into the movie. Similarly ham-fisted is a late in the game flashback sequence intended to establish that Kate and Robby have a romance despite there being no indication of that. Maybe that scene where Robby runs into Kate getting out of the shower and then saying she's much sexier than his two sisters was supposed to be romantic?
Occasionally in Red Planet, an evil robot that looks like he wandered away from a Robert Rodriguez Spy Kids movie shows up to do nefarious things. This robot shows up only sporadically and he feels like he wandered in from another movie. Even worse, even a robot bent on killing humans turns out to be dull as dirt in Red Planet since the robot in question fails to kill his victims in a cool way and he vanishes from the feature for elongated periods of time. No matter what Red Planet does, it always feels so lifeless, especially in the flat direction by Antony Hoffman. This one's a total chore of a movie that isn't fit to kiss the toes of something like The Martian.
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