Book vs Movie vs Cartoon: RED PLANET

Would be cool if we just ADAPTED Heinlein, but whatever.

The year 2000 gave us two movies about the fourth planet from the sun. One of them, Mission to Mars, was 80% cool and interesting, and then became weird as hell in the end. The other was Red Planet, starring Val Kilmer and Carrie-Anne Moss. It was also cool and interesting, if a little slow, but better than the rep it got.

I had always been familiar with the title because of an early 90s cartoon on Fox. I assumed the Kilmer flick had nothing to do with it and I was corrected.

By sheer coincidence I ended up reading the book by Heinlein yesterday, and then watched Kilmer’s movie last night with Hot Wife. My suspicions were confirmed: the book and the movie only share the title and the setting in common, and I’m iffy on the setting.

The Book

Heinlein’s “colonial boy on Mars” novel came out in 1949. The main characters are Jim and Frank, two boys in their early teens whose fathers are miners on Mars. Jim and Frank get sent away to boarding school, where they stumble upon a scheme between the school’s headmaster and the colony’s governor that will ultimately screw over the miners.

Determined to escape the school and warn their families, Jim and Frank go on the run, daring to brave the hostile Martian landscape. They survive aliens, plants, dangerous ruins, and more. Once the mining families learn of the plot against them, they form their own government to forcibly demand the terms of their contracts be met, and in reply the governor sends in the military against them.

I won’t spoil the end, but it’s a very cool book and I’m glad I read it. It’s on the best-of-year list. It’s very pro-family, pro-small town, pro-armament, and pro-all the good and cool things. You should read it and share it to with your kids. No content warning, everything’s good. This is uplifting fiction that instructs, entertains, and inspires.

The Movie

NOTHING in common with Heinlein except the title and the planet itself. None of the characters even have the same name. It’s kind of a throwback to pulpy sci-fi though, where there’s a science-y problem and some scientists go to solve it, and they encounter all sorts of action-science-y problems along the way, some of which feel like contrived bullhockey, but are still very entertaining.

The movie starts with Trinity narrating about how we overpopulated and polluted the planet (oh noes) so we tried to terraform Mars using nukes and algae. Boom! It worked, and it has an oxygen-rich atmosphere. Yay! But then the O2 levels plummet and they can’t figure out why. Send in an science expedition! It’ll have six humans and a robot. Out of the six humans, one is a chick, and the five remaining dudes are Old Pious Guy, Humble Mechanic, Chad Second In Command, Mopey Biologist, and Geneticist Dick.

Five Guys and A Robot go down to the surface, and one by one they die. One character is left at the end. He takes a harrowing journey across the surface of the planet to find an old probe that can get him back into space. Also the robot went evil, because they needed a bad guy and there aren’t aliens on Mars…

…or are there…

Take a look at the poster above. It’s a complete fake-out. There IS life on Mars, and it has to do with why the O2 levels went down, but it’s not a big humanoid monster thing that casts a shadow on Iceman. Still, the script is sound, the story does what it needs to, the setting is barren and devastating and hauntingly beautiful, and it’s always had a spot in my catalog of personal favorites. Content warning for some profanity, 1 F-bomb, Trinity side-boob, and a few gruesome scenes.

Also, freaking hilarious that Geneticist Dick incorrectly labels the DNA nucleobases as “A, G, T, P” instead of AGTC. The wife and I were watching it on Prime and one of the trivia bubble thingies popped up about that, noting that it was corrected in the German dubbed version. They’ll be having none of that BS, hahaha.

The Cartoon

This one follows the bare bones of the Heinlein story, with a few notable changes that (IMO) diminish a lot of the true value of it.

First: It’s not on Mars. It’s on “New Aries” which is dumb. Why do this? Dumb.

Second: Jim is our protagonist, but his best friend Frank is erased and replaced with Jim’s little sister PJ. Meh.

Third: The very cool and good character of Doctor MacRae was replaced by Jim’s mom, who became Chief Medical Science Doctor Lady of the colony, and had authority to shut down the mines, because GirlBoss programming. MacRae was a pivotal character in the book and shouldn’t have been altered.

Fourth: A disease was invented for the cartoon that threatened the miners’ health. It didn’t exist in the book. The cure was extracted from Jim’s pet alien Willis, who did exist in the book, but played a different role in the resolution of the conflict.

Fifth: The main conflict between the miners and their employer was due to the employer not knowing the realities of their job, and trying to force them to work through a deadly winter. In the cartoon they’re merely covering up a sickness while they try desperately to find a cure. The studio replaced bastardry with malfeasance, which is a weaker villain.

This is all based on articles I’ve read about the cartoon. I still haven’t watched it and I probably won’t. Just go read the book.

The Takeaway

The point of all this is that you should read Heinlein’s novel because it’s awesome, and if you get a chance, watch the unrelated film of the same title, because it’s held up rather well. It teeters on the 3-star end of a 4-star rating.