Brian de Palma´s Mission To Mars gives an Inspiration for Prometheus plot?

Nothing inspirationalin that stupid film!

I Have not seen this film....But like him though, A Heck Of A Lot, I have most of if not all of his films and he has made some kick butt films in his career. One of my all time favorite films as well a sleepy little 70's B-Type Horror movie with Kirk Douglas and John Cassavettes with a really fun ending that had many many elements to it that blew my mind and still do today, 30+ years later called... "The Fury" !!! [img]http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v234/LT.HIGHTIMES/1a1TheFury.jpg[/img] ...and yet another i absolutely loved and starring John Travolta no less called... "Blowout" !!! ...about a sound effects film maker/contributor who accidently records a murder involving a Hooker and the vice president of the United States. [img]http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v234/LT.HIGHTIMES/1a1Blowout.jpg[/img] He also IMO made one of the Single Best Horror films EVER MADE and which is still being copied by many many directors, which he based on his love of and made as a secret tribute to Alfred Hitchcock and which has influenced 3 entire generations of film makers entitled... "Dressed To Kill" [img]http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v234/LT.HIGHTIMES/1a1DressedToKill.jpg[/img] IMO...he's one the best directors of ALL TIME.

I didn't mind mission to Mars. I've watched it on cable a few times, and can definately say that I've seen worse. The idea of humans/life being created and placed on earth is nothing new. Heck if you look at the bible (without getting all metaphysical), it basically states that a being created life and plunked it down on this rock. The idea has been done over and over, so I can't credit Mission to Mars as something unique that Prometheus is going to barrow from. Now a common theme in these types of stories is that "creators" are really awesome beings that are happy to see us and treat us like their children. I'm really hoping Prometheus does a complete 180 on this idea. I really like the idea of beings creating us with ill intentions, and they lose track of us over the Aeons.

Hi Vanilla-H, I can see what you’re talkin’ about…with MISSION TO MARS. There are some similar elements in that film, that stem from the same root concepts as what we’re hearing will be in PROMETHEUS. Now, having said that…personally, I would venture to guess that the PROMETHEUS filmmakers never even considered the de Palma’s picture when hatching its storyline. The concepts are common enough in Science fiction writing…as not to warrant or require further inspirational seeds for ideas…but it is possible. Personally, I thought that M2M was a very weak film. I found myself yawning with apathy while watching it. Being a de Palma flick, I was hoping it would flip, and the extraterrestrials would go all wicked and insidious on us…but alas it went all “Leave it to Beaver” and safe. I ended up enjoying the movie RED PLANET (which was released the same year I think) much more. Peace ~Neurion

De Palma is a very good director but he definitely wears his influences on his sleeves. Dressed to Kill was inspired just as much (if not more) by Italian "Giallo" films as much as it was Hitchcock. In fact it is considered an American "Giallo" down to nearly every detail including plot, set up and reveal (using many of the giallo devices such as the black gloves on the killers hands, the lift scene). Pino Dinaggio also did the score and along with Morricone, Ortolani , Paisano and Frizzi......was well known for his Giallo scores. "Blowout" is a pseudo -remake of Michelangelo Antonioni's "Blow Up". Which starred David Hemmings.....who later starred in what is considered among many, the best Giallo made. Dario Argentos "Deep Red" or "Profondo Rosso"

great info, did not know most of that, thank you.

No problem Spart.....I am a movie nut, just as all of us here are. :-)

I agree with Neurion. IMO, "Red Planet" > "Mission to Mars." M2M was too heavy with melodramatic cheese; especially the alien design. It looked as if they'd lifted it straight out of a Pixar movie...............definitely not among De Palma's best work.

[quote]It must have any sales value to the commercial circles of Weyland (again) to send a crew to discover the origins of humanity... Anyway, don´t wanna be preemptive, feel free to type your id[/quote] I see what you meant now after re-reading this thread through... They'd all be bouncing off of each other to potentially be the person that discovers all the secrets first and screwing each other over for that percentage Frantz mentioned earlier today in his "Ripley says To Burke Quote" From "Aliens". A Lot of people forget this guy Directed "Carrie", "Scarface", "Carlito's Way", "Body Double", "The Untouchables", "The Black Dahlia", "Raising Cain" which was a crazy sick intelligent film as well, and he Filmed "Snake Eyes" all over town here in Montreal, along with the finale of it at the Old Montreal Forum, one of the most famous buildings in all of pro sports! I just love this guy and am going to have to see this film now I guess, right now.

Yeah [i]Mission to Mars[/i] does make an effort to demonstrate a plausible implementation of artificial gravity, but [i]2001: A Space Odyssey[/i] already did that more than 50 years ago. If [i]Prometheus[/i] involves "faster-than-light" space travel then we can probably also take artificial gravity for granted too. As Neurion has already pointed out, the [i]Mission to Mars[/i] plot is not original and likely was in no way an inspiration for [i]Prometheus[/i]. In fact, [i]Mission to Mars[/i] steals ideas from James Cameron's [i]The Abyss[/i] - but that's another thread. Partial inspiration for [i]Prometheus[/i] was the work of Erich Von Daniken who was a proponent of the "Ancient Astronaut" theory, which basically states that life on Earth was seeded by aliens in Earth's prehistory. In fact, Sir Ridley has already confirmed this in some of his interviews about [i]Prometheus[/i] - I'll update this post if I can find a link.

Man, misdion to mars sucked so bad! I am sorry to say guys but the dialog was just horrible. The concept of the movie was pretty cool but omg that movie was just too painful to sit through Don Cheadle was so funny though when he made hos appearance. I hope that prometheus os not like mission to mars but if so at least we know that ridley scott will make something that is NOT phony like Depalma work. Thatds my humble opinion.

wow, guess it's good thing I still haven't gone online after it. dePalma's entitled he's made so many good ones he can have a stinker...O.K. by me.

Found these on some message board and thought they might be interesting to you people who have seen this film....I still have not.... -------------------------------- So I just watched this movie in its entirety (bits and pieces before), and to me, the movie left way more questions (not the obvious ones) that I would like to see if someone can enlighten me on...for those who have seen it. -when the first crew was on the planet, why did the beings send out that vortex to kill those three crew members? If according to Gary Sinise's character, "they're us. we're them", they wouldn't want to kill their own creations...especially when we weren't trying to kill them. -what were the Aliens doing on Mars when their real home was apparently in the Andromeda galaxy? (every spaceship but one that left Mars post asteriod went back to Andromeda, only one stayed behind and seeded earth) -That said, why did the beings stay on Mars when it was apparent that Earth was more inhabitable? Why didn't they all just up and move over to Earth? -why didn't they live on earth just like they did on Mars when it had water? -why didn't they come to earth instead of making us come to them/why didn't they only invite the astronauts to come with them? -who else here would have accepted their invitation to go with them? I know damn well I would have and then I found some guy answered them But I have no clue if he was right or not, but you people "prolly" do... * they got all killed because they did not provide the correct lock combination of the human dna, the aliens (us in future) were afraid that some other species other than human will use this spaceship for the wrong ways. * their real home was on Mars, they escaped to Andromeda. * Apparently that part I don't know I guess they were happy enough at Mars and Earth was too unstable of a planet for them. But yeah that part gets me too * because they left for Andromeda long time ago, millions of years ago...that was just a hologram. And we dont know what happened to them in Andromeda * I probably would have accepted it, but that depends...if I was married and had kids I would not have accepted the invitation, if I had nothing going for me I would accept the invitation. [img]http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v234/LT.HIGHTIMES/1a1mandm2.jpg[/img] [img]http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v234/LT.HIGHTIMES/1a1mandm.jpg[/img]

lol that alien looks like somthing dysney made up

I think so too, it's "prolly" a really really good thing as Martha would say, and a lot of people right here that I have still NOT seen this film yet.

This movie is nowhere near as bad as people here are making it out to be. It is not a great film but very far away from a bad film. It is a slow moving and somewhat melodramatic film. I do not believe it has any real inspiration on Prometheus but just watch it and make up your own mind about it.

Good. Thanks a lot for your statements so far. I don´t talk of that film as too badly arranged program either, otherwise I wouldn´t have spearheaded- In comparison with other sci-fi movies of the late ninetees and early 2000s (esp. U.S. productions) it was quite novel; It wasn´t a whole new idea of a plot indeed, but especially the involvement the newly emerging compter graphics were surely rubbing off on many others of those days. I hold that it´s not hard to imagine Mission 2 Mars as a 3D movie; today it´d be certainly shot in §D. By your leave, I lead over to the next question which I´ve, ex ante, raised: Mind those (badly drawn) storyboard printouts of a man standing in the middle of a congress hall with thousands of auditors... As for weyland corp. is a multi divisional firm, I deem this concept/idea of a going to public as rather unrealistic one. Even if it was [i]formerly[/i] said that there were some new deals (relating to Weyland Corp.) to bring out within the scope of that enterprise of èxploring the origins of humanity´, it´s probable that they start it as clandestine, without propagating it to public so much. My opinion.

Mission to Mars was kinda-sorta interesting up until they revealed the alien, whose design looked like it was intended - solely - for little kids. If you're going to use gray, I prefer the unnerving, dead-eyed, grey-skinned entity cooked up by popular culture. At any rate, I'm commenting for something more superficial (sorry to be this guy): [quote]Yeah Mission to Mars does make an effort to demonstrate a plausible implementation of artificial gravity, but 2001: A Space Odyssey already did that [b]more than 50 years ago.[/b][/quote] C'mon, man, it's an old movie, but it's not THAT old. Try 44 years. ;)

Lol, thanks Manndroid, I was always crap at maths!