History Film / RedPlanet

** Completely averted with Lucy, the AI interface aboard the ship, who is almost maternally cautious about protecting the crew.

* HopeSpot: Done in RuleOfThree, no less. The first hope spot is them approaching the base, which was supposed to have entire years' worth of supplies in food, shelter/clothing, and technology. [[spoiler: They arrive to find the entire thing has been completely destroyed, but they don't know how; they later find out that Mars has a ''huge'' bug population that ate everything.]] The second is after they realize they may be able to use AMEE to communicate or find a way back up to the other ship, she overhears them saying they have to dismantle her, so [[spoiler: she attacks them and then runs off with the clear mission to return when they least expect and kill them to preserve herself. This is later explained that some of her modes went wonky during their crash landing and caused her to have too much self-preservation.]] The last one is after they find out the old shuttle on the surface can be fixed and send them into orbit...[[spoiler:''it's only big enough to fit two people.'' And it's not like that big door in the Titanic movie; it ''literally'' can only fit two people just barely, and there are ''three'' of them left. Rob makes the decision to stay behind, but Pettengill knows he and Burch are good friends, so he cowardly assumes they won't actually let him go and so he waits for them to go to sleep, steals the map, and runs off to the shuttle instead. And it does NOT go well for him...]]

* FromBadToWorse: Everything after they land on Mars goes ''horribly wrong.'' [[spoiler: Chantilas is mortally wounded in the landing and instructs them to leave him behind to die, which is crushing since he's kind of the TeamMom and heart of the group. They travel to the base only to find it's been completely eaten and there is nothing left for food, shelter, or technology, so now they get to die alone on the planet. Santen and Pettengill get into an argument, then Pettengill shoves him and Santen falls off a cliff to his death, which Pettengill then lies about. Fortunately, Rob discovers there is now air and so they don't all suffocate...and then AMEE overhears them saying they will remove her battery to try and find a way back to orbit, so she goes into her kill mode and runs away with plans to return later and kill them. Oh, and Pettengill is a DirtyCoward who doesn't believe them when they say that Rob will stay behind and die on Mars while Burchenal and Pettengill take the backup shuttle up into orbit for pickup. Got enough problems yet, y'all?]]

* TheReveal: [[spoiler: In a very interesting twist, when their suits run out of air and they begin to suffocate, Rob decides he'd rather just get his death over with and rips off his helmet...''only to find out there is fucking air on Mars!'' He is absolutely ''flabbergasted,'' and so are Pettengill and Burchenal. It's also slightly tragic, too, since at this point Santen and Chantilas have already died and the former may have lived longer had he known about the air. It turns out that the bugs on Mars that ate their entire base excrete oxygen whenever they consume anything, and since there are millions of them, they ate most of the algae and produced enough oxygen to actually make Mars' atmosphere breathable. Now, to be fair, there is still the issue of them getting airborne pathogens into their lungs once they take the helmets off, but the movie doesn't choose to deal with that given its length.]]

* KarmicDeath: Some may see Pentengill's death at the hands of AMEE as this, seeing as he (accidentally) caused Santen's death and then lied about it.

* NiceJobFixingItVillain: [[spoiler: If DirtyCoward Pentengill had simply believed Quinn and Rob--after finding out the shuttle that could get them to the one above can only physically fit two people instead of three and Rob volunteered to stay behind and die on Mars--then he probably would have lived to board the shuttle. Instead, he panics, waits until they fall asleep, steals the directions, and tries to run there first to save himself. This puts him in AMEE's path and she murders him violently as Quinn and Rob watch in horror. But his death now assures there's no longer a conflict about who is going and who is staying behind.]]

* DuctTapeForEverything: [[TruthInTelevision Even stabilizing a cracked rib]].

* CollapsibleHelmet: Suits used by landing crew are equpped with those.

* DuctTapeForEverything: [[TruthInTelevision Even stabilising a cracked rib]].

* ExactTimeToFailure: ''Mars-1'' is in a decaying orbit and Kate is using fuel meant for return trip to slow down the decay. It's stated early on that if she won't start journey back to Earth in 36 hours, she simply won't have enough fuel to do so. Then we got the astronauts trapped on Mars with no supplies. Not only they will be abandoned if they won't reach the probe on time, but soon after they will die out of dehydration, thus making the whole plot a RaceAgainstTheClock.

* SafeZoneHopeSpot: After their hard landing, the Mars team spends most of the first act trying to get to the Mars habitat, which has enough supplies to last them for years (enough to wait rescue) as well as being built to withstand Class-5 tornadoes. [[spoiler: The oxygen-producing insects ate it all, leaving behind only some structural supports. They arrive with only half an hour or so left of oxygen left on their suits and spend that time sitting around the wreckage waiting to die -- and nearly suffocate before accidentally finding out that the atmosphere is breathable.]]

* AlmightyJanitor / EverybodyCallsHimBarkeep: While Gallagher is "mechanical systems engineer", everyone calls him janitor. More or less his job in the mission is form of advanced space janitor and he's the one with superb engineering skills in the landing crew.

* ArtificialGravity: [[ShownTheirWork Most of it is really well made and researched.]]

* ArtisticLicenseSpace: ZigZagged. The film shows that [[ShownTheirWork someone clearly put an extra effort]] to get various scientific aspects right. However, there is still a lot of tiny, trivial mistakes, often directly between elements done right. For example, when Bowman restores ArtificialGravity (which itself is done plausibly), it cause all the objects to instantly fall to the ground, rather than slowly drift to the nearest wall and then "stick" to it. For a full and detailed list of what's wrong with this movie, see the [[http://www.badastronomy.com/bad/movies/redplanet2.html Bad Astronomy]] article (warning: spoilers).

* DisneyVillainDeath [=/=] NeverFoundTheBody: [[spoiler: Ted Santen]], for obviously horrific reasons: [[spoiler: thrown off of ''[[NightmareFuel the planet Mars]]'' by Skip Pentengill during a fight.]]

* ExactTimeToFailure: ''Mars-1'' is on decaying orbit and Kate is using fuel meant for return trip to slow down the decay. It's stated early on that if she won't start journey back to Earth in 36 hours, she simply won't have enough fuel to do so. Then we got the astronauts trapped on Mars with no supplies. Not only they will be abandoned if they won't reach the probe on time, but soon after they will die out of dehydration, thus making the whole plot a RaceAgainstTheClock.

* GhostPlanet: Mars obviously.

* InventionalWisdom: [[JustifiedTrope Justified]]. AMEE is a military-grade robot, with full combat programming and an autonomous AI on-board. Unfortunately, her AI is ''very'' autonomous, being designed for battlefields and fast reactions. Thus while her default mode is the civilian assistant one, when put in what "she" perceives as a lethal danger, the AI activates on its own the combat mode. As a result, she spends rest of the film fighting against the astronauts, who were planning to turn her off for good to cannibalise various parts.

* OrificeInvasion / OrificeEvacuation: [[spoiler: One of the dead astronauts gets this treatment with the bugs. The {{Squick}} level is astronomical.]]

* SanitySlippage: The Robot AMEE, kinda. It's more like being knocked back into combat mode and acting upon survival directives.

** On the other side of the equation is the faith-espousing Chantilas, who equally can't offer no coherent support for his stance in the discussion.

** During the scene where AMEE skulks about, looking for the crew, the same music is played as in ''Film/PitchBlack'' when Riddick leads the survivors of a ship crash across a barren planet. The music was done by the same guy - Graeme Revell.

* ArtisticLicenseBiology: The explanation of [[spoiler: the bugs]] and how they function. Also, they're called "nematodes". Nematodes are worms in RealLife.

''Red Planet'' is a 2000 Science Fiction film starring Creator/ValKilmer, Creator/CarrieAnneMoss, Creator/TomSizemore, Creator/BenjaminBratt, Creator/TerenceStamp, and a robot with a bad case of [[AIIsACrapshoot multiple personality disorder]].

In 2056 AD, Earth is in ecologic crisis as a consequence of pollution; it's an TheEndOfTheWorldAsWeKnowIt story with a twist. Missions have been seeding Mars with atmosphere-producing algae for twenty years as the first stage in terraforming the planet. When the oxygen quantity produced by the algae is inexplicably reduced, the crew investigates, and must continue the mission of terraforming the planet for human colonization.

* MohsScaleOfScienceFictionHardness: Solid 5, bordering 5.5 in many aspects.

* ArtisticLicenseAstronomy: For a full and detailed list of what's wrong with this movie, see the [[http://www.badastronomy.com/bad/movies/redplanet2.html Bad Astronomy]] article (warning: spoilers). Surprisingly, many things were done correctly.

* JustAMachine: Though never directly stated, it's obvious that the human characters regard AMEE as this when the surviving crew members start casually discussing plans to disassemble her and use her parts (effectively killing her) to build the communication device they need to contact their ship in orbit. Unfortunately, AMEE is standing right beside them, with her "military mode" switch broken, and hears the entire conversation, which is what prompts her to [[AIIsACrapshoot go rogue]].

Not to be confused with ''Film/MissionToMars'', a more fancifully-plotted film about a trip to Mars [[DuelingMovies released in the same year]].

* AIIsACrapshoot: AMEE (Autonomous Mapping Exploration and Evasion). It's not really her fault, however--she's a military robot with combat reflexes that the military apparently just put an (easily bypassed) software lockout on when they handed her over for a civilian mission. When she becomes damaged, she reverts to her baseline programming. Completely averted with Lucy, the AI interface aboard the ship, who is almost maternally cautious about protecting the crew.

* AlmostOutOfOxygen: At some points. This is what fuels the RaceAgainstTime drama for the people on Mars' surface in the first act and Gallagher's suit is pretty much on fumes during the whole ride up to orbit (leading to some CPR drama from Bowman when she retrieves him).

* KarmicDeath: Some may see Pentengill's death at the hands of AMEE as this, seeing as he (accidentally)caused Santen's death and then lied about it.

* ArtificialGravity: [[ShowingTheirWork Most of it is really well made and researched.]]

* ShowingTheirWork: While there are quite a few science and physics gaffes, things such as counter-spinning artificial gravity rings for the ship are signs of better-than average technical consulting. There's also the time delay between Earth to Mars communications that's used to dramatic advantage.

''Red Planet'' is a 2000 Science Fiction film starring Creator/ValKilmer, Creator/CarrieAnneMoss, Tom Sizemore, Creator/BenjaminBratt, Creator/TerenceStamp, and a robot with a bad case of [[AIIsACrapshoot multiple personality disorder]].

* StrawCharacter: Burchenal is a strawman atheist geneticist who offers no coherent support for his disbelief when debating with other characters.

* HollywoodAtheist: Burchenal, in ignorant scientist flavor. On the other side of the equation is the faith-espousing Chantilas, with whom we're obviously meant to agree when he says that "science can't answer any of the really interesting questions."

* KarmicDeath: Some may see Pentengill's death at the hands of AMEE as this, seeing as he (accidentaly)caused Santen's death and then lied about it.

* MsFanservice: Kate Bowman is as attractive as she is decisive. She's also shown in a shower.

* PillarOfLight: Each suit got strange, green light on it. It's purpose becames obvious when [[spoiler: Pettengill]] is killed and the only way to find his body (and radio) is finding a light beacon comming from his suit.

''Red Planet'' is a 2000 Science Fiction film starring Creator/ValKilmer, Creator/CarrieAnneMoss, and a robot with a bad case of [[AIIsACrapshoot multiple personality disorder]].

* AIIsACrapshoot: AMEE (Autonomous Mapping Exploration and Evasion). It's not really her fault, however - who leaves military combat software on a robot on a civilian mission? Averted with Lucy, though.

* AlmostOutOfOxygen: At some points.

* AssholeVictim: Santen.

* CentrifugalGravity: The main space ship seems to have this.

* SanitySlippage: The Robot AMEE, kinda.

* StarshipLuxurious