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Ten Good (and Bad) Things About Ghosts of Mars

posted 10 years ago by ExileInParadise
6 replies | jump to latest

Despite the hate for this movie out there, its one of my guilty pleasures.

Watching this again for Halloween fun, and decided to make some notes as I went along.

SPOILERS - if you haven't watched the movie - don't read this.

10 GOOD THINGS
1. Can we really make Mars 84% liveable in 200 years? I'd like to think so. There are many little throw-away lines and hints throughout the movie that give much more depth to the future setting than you realize at first watch. Seems like a setting worth more stories. Two words: Martian. Camo.

2. Matriarchal society - makes a certain sense that a technological frontier/expanding society ends up matriarchal, with women having the ultimate say in reproduction. Not sure it plays out clearly here - why do they still allow so many strong male personalities? Also seems a missed opportunity for a male revolutionary underground. Despite the questions, it's good to be here if just to make you think about it and be more interesting compared to the endless patriarchal-corporate mining Mars settings we've seen so many times before.

3. Shining Canyon was pretty well realized as a crapsack future frontier town. Surprisingly, I don't get "lost" as they move from place to place in the town, out to the mine, to the train, reactor, etc.

4. The possessed give you the appearance and spook factor of a supernatural occurrence, but don't do anything overtly supernatural - is it "ghosts" or just straight up "aliens messing up my mind" takeovers. Ghosts of Mars has been on my Halloween "must watch" list because its spooky, gory, and fun all together and plays perfectly into Martian Invader Day (Oct 30) too.

5. I cannot see why many people think Ice Cube was NOT a good "Desolation" Williams. He always seemed to me to be one of those "regular guys in the wrong place" who end up repping out as a bad guy, but really aren't. This supports several scenes in the movie including the ending. Once he got on the wrong side of "the system" somehow there simply wasn't any way back - so he's a bad guy by circumstance, not nature. Happens all the time in real life now, including to some folks I know. So, maybe that's why he's a more plausible bad guy to me than others expect. In the movie, he starts by wanting to keep running and hiding, and he resorts to hostage taking and stuff in desperation. But, maybe people just like their modern villains more "eviler" than an a regular old outlaw survivor type ;)

6. Reversals like the jail scene where they trap Uno Dos and Tres with Williams or the handcuffing to the train.

7. The main town shoot-out because sometimes you just want to see a lot of extras get wasted.

8. They escape but then, they gotta stop and go back and do the right thing - bringing a final act based on a plausible theme of "dominion" - when up to that point it was all about just escape. Many folks call this a western in disguise (not that there's anything wrong with that, LOTS of sci-fi is basically dressed up westerns) but how many westerns have a "fate of the world" aspect?

9. The soundtrack of course.

10. The commentary - seriously, if you haven't listened to any movie commentaries, any John Carpenter commentary is worth it, but Ghosts of Mars is one of the better ones.

10 BAD THINGS
1. Told in flashback - never a good structure since we know some of who survives - you never worry about her later even when you're supposed to in the moment. And we get flashbacks within flashbacks which always screams "please rewrite" to me.

2. Not all of the architecture (such as the train station in Chryse) reflects a society that's had to live enclosed up to a year or two ago.

3. I love all my cops to be on hallucinogens and for their cop bosses to be okay with it.

4. No real payoff on why the ghosts mutilate those they possess.

5. Cash money on mars 200 years from now? Cash money is being phased out now. Surprisingly, there are lethal bullets too.

6. The character intros for the prisoners in the tank were better than the cops on the train.

7. "Who goes there"? Yeah - not the most natural line in the moment. But maybe it has a place as a callback to THE THING (1982) which based on the short story called Who Goes There? - but maybe that's a stretch too far.

8. We can terraform mars but not make a martian radio that works from one end of town to the other - especially cop radios. Of course, radio would solve too many problems too quickly and get in the way of the fun part of the story.

9. The whole trip to the train station and back, without seeing the train in the first place, was not great tactics or thinking.

10. The martian "death wind" doesn't square with the otherwise hand and thrown weapon loving aliens we see in the martian memories. Is it nanotech or is it really supposed to be "ghosts" that are blocked by airlock doors or whatever?

[–] xxxphilbluntxxx 10 years ago

I actually like the flashback within flashback aspect of the story. It shows what different characters were doing at the same moments. I'll grant u that it does make u not worry abt the main female bc u know she survives,since she's the one telling the story.

[–] enfilmigult 10 years ago

I also liked the flashbacks-within-flashbacks and the dissolve-heavy editing used for them; it gave the movie a weird rhythm/structure that I thought helped it enliven standard material. That said, I forgot how much of it involved going over the same moments with different characters; when I saw it again recently it made me wonder how some of those scenes would have worked as Brian De Palma-type split screen sequence (that would have been pretty fun I think).

You have a point about the "death wind" being either technology that seems way beyond whatever else they're using or ghosts that for some reason can't go through doors. To that I'd just say, whatever, they're aliens. Who are we to presume how their bodies work. Maybe it really is just particulate matter, created with no technology whatsoever, along the lines of a sentient fungus. For all we know, the "real" Martians we see in those flashbacks are just the last species they possessed.

[–] Squeeth2 9 years ago

Good: Pam Grier

Bad: Pam Grier getting squibbed off far too soon.

Marlon, Claudia and Dimby the cats 1989-2005, 2007 and 2010.

[–] mrkovacs1 9 years ago

EXCELLENT POST. You know your film making.

As far as the "Who goes there?" line it's definitely a call back to The Thing/Who Goes There.

[–] ATG6 (3000) 3 years ago

The best thing was Natasha Henstridge.

[–] sONOMArEturns (1339) 3 years ago

The hatred for Ghosts Of Mars has always been really overblown. I saw this movie when it was new and thought it was a stupid but well-made and fun action flick. Alot of your points are accurate, though another plus for me are the fight scenes. I love how alot of the choreography is done in long takes where you see every punch, in comparison to Marvel movies where it's a bajillion shaky-cam quick cuts.