The film The Last Days on Mars has been released in the UK and is being released in the US today on Video on Demand and on Dec. 6 to theaters:
- Exclusive look into Last Days of Mars hints at a bloody space battle – io9
- Last Days on Mars trailer spills some blood on the red planet – io9
Yeah, looks like fun and games… But seriously, if you show this shit to any member of congress or their staffers, do you think they’ll fund a NASA Mars mission…
Bleh.
But it looks like a decent movie.
Horror is one of the few high probability ways to make money in the movie business. Just keep the budget low and the blood-pressure high and good money will be had by all.
Not surprising horror is often use for space movies, particularly for near term scenarios. Horror and disasters (e.g. Marooned, Apollo 13, & Gravity) are the easiest ways to overcome the big challenge of coming up with good plots with interesting conflicts when the space ship, space station, and Moon/Mars bases involve only a few people.
Similarly, the few movies about a handful of marine biologists on a ship at sea or about some scientists at an Antarctic base typically also involve horror/disaster. OTOH, Star Trek could come up with a big diversity of plots because there were lots of people and cultures involved and these allow for a myriad of conflict scenarios.
When movie makers get used to the idea of large numbers of people living permanently in space settlements in the solar system, space movies will move beyond the hackneyed monster/crazed astronaut /flesh eating bacteria plots.