Alright Party People?

That’s right, as promised, here is the post on The Asylum’s The Martian themed Mockbuster The Martian War. Called ‘Martian Land’ in America -a better title, for reasons I will note in the conclusion- this film farted onto the straight-to-DVD scene in America on October 6th 2020; a mere four days after the release of The Martian. Besides the Orange colouring/ Large fishbowl helmet of the DVD sleeve design, the only real thing the film seems to share with The Martian is a setting on the planet Mars. They might be pushing their luck in other ways, but no-one could accuse The Asylum of ripping off the script of the Matt Damon flick. Which is a shame, because it almost certainly would have been better if they did.

That’s right folks, surprising no-one, TMW is a bad, bad film. Not unwatchable you understand, in fact (ranking spoiler alert), I’d probably watch it before watching previous Pound Shop Flix Dark Crimes or Malice in Wonderland. It has a semblance of a plot and characters who, while not exactly three dimensional, are not completely objectionable. But its pretty bloody boring. I first suspected i was in for a somewhat dull ride when I noticed the disc read ‘PG’- Parental Guidance. In the world of schlocky cinema, most truly crappy flix have the decency to try and hide their essential rubbishness behind a good deal of sex and violence. See for instance, another of The Asylum’s output: The Coed and the Zombie Stoner. Or don’t. Probably don’t. So the fact that this film was supposedly safe for kids, made me think we might be in for a dull and bad, rather than amusingly-bad, time. This was not helped by the opening monologue, which gave an overview of how humans came to Mars; we screwed up Earth so bad with climate change we had to leave and colonise Mars. This kind of opening narration needs a certain gravitas to sell the idea. It lacked it, unfortunately. Between the lack of any interesting music, boring (probably stock) footage of rockets taking off, and neither the writing or its delivery having any feeling of weight, this came across as more ‘Geography Teacher’ than Morgan Freeman.

From there, things don’t ever really improve. I’m not going to go at them too hard for the science because 1) I’m no scientist myself and 2) Obviously accuracy was not the aim here. But safe to say, even a layman such as I can tell that the science does not hold up. What science you ask? Well…
The story revolves around a kind of Mega-storm, kicked off by the eruption of a long dormant Martian Volcano. Humanity has been terraforming Mars to make it more habitable, and in doing so have raised the temperature enough to re-activate this Volcano. The Mega-storm begins, and is large enough to threaten all life on Mars-which, at least in the script, appears to be largely limited to ‘Mars New York’ and ‘Mars Los Angeles’.* You see, storms are normal, and the domes over the major cities normally protect them. But this storm is too big! Why? How? Who fucking cares? Not the script! Anyway, this then leads to a team of an Arrogant Scientist, his Scientist ex-Wife, her capable, manly-yet-tender new lover and their child trying to ‘kill’ the storm using electro-magnetic fields. The storm is dangerous, it disrupts their efforts and a Military Officer -whose rank and jurisdiction are never made clear- keeps trying to stop them. One of them dies. Another ancillary character dies. They win in the end. Despite this storm threatening to kill everyone on Mars (which we are led to believe is large number of people), we don’t often see anyone outside of the small speaking cast.** As such, the family drama elements are far easier to buy into than the scale or stakes of the storm. Shame the characters are too thin for us to really care about!

Speaking of characters, it should be said that the acting in this film is actually…okay. It’s not going to have troubled any award shows, and it does sometimes feel stiff, like people reading lines rather than characters expressing feelings. BUT, none of it is genuinely awful. The actors put more effort into making this nonsense work than they needed to. Indeed, it’s almost disappointing, from the viewers point of view; none of the acting is in so-bad-its-good territory- there are no Troll 2 moments here. It’s just not great. But given the weightless dialogue they’re given, and the fact that they have to do things like LITERALLY PRETEND TO USE A SCREEN THAT’S NOT THERE, they do okay.

So, far, so boring. The film is bad, the actors try their best. The films poor production quality (due to a tiny budget of under one million dollars) is betrayed in almost every aspect. But the true sign of this is in the set design and the CGI. If you were drunk enough, it is probably here you’d find some joy in this film! From the very beginning, the set looks closer to an 80s/ 90s Sci-fi TV show than a film. It’s full of nondescript wires and a few blinking lights, and the actors stand on gantries and in front of crates that are very obviously a set, rather than a believable facility or ship. It actually reminds me of old episodes of BBC comedy Red Dwarf . And while I love Red Dwarf, no-one should be aiming to match 90’s BBC TV production quality in a 2015 feature film.

But perhaps the very worst example of all this is in the scene where a ‘crowd’ ‘runs’ out of a tunnel and away from the storm. I attempted to get a screen grab of it but it doesn’t do justice to how bad it looks in motion. It’s very obviously a group of people running superimposed upon an image. I played games on my Playstation 1 that had more convincing CGI sequences.

Overall then, a bad film. But not in a fun way! The Martian War features cheap set design, no interesting hooks or twists and, interestingly, absolutely no War. The actors and actresses give it a go, but can’t lift a dull, nonsensical script or bring this above the level of the cheap cash grab that it is. Watch The Martian instead, or one of The Asylums’ more overtly schlocky flix. The science in Sharknado probably holds up better. Oh and one last point: two characters (Ellie (Arianna Afsar) and Ida (Chloe Farnworth)) share a lesbian relationship. They are both young and conventionally pretty. I wish it was a sign of progress but honestly, it feels more like a bit of cheap tokenism and/ or baiting straight male viewers. The characters don’t have the depth to make the relationship interesting or feel at all real and the relationship is entirely unexplored. The closest we get is Ida fainting and Ellie exclaiming at her: ‘You beautiful idiot’! My theory is further bolstered by the camerawork in one scene which begins with a lingering shot of one of the Chloe Farnworth’s figure. If you’re not going to be B-Movie outrageous OR flesh out characters, then don’t do this!

Boo, hiss.

Best performance: The Imaginary Ipad

Worst Offence: Tie between the ‘PG’ rating and the ending, where they just stopped filming as they ran out of money.

Elevator Pitch: *Snorts cocaine off of a copy of The Martian*

1 Star!: *

-Tom

*When Futurama came up with ‘New New York’ it was meant to be a joke guys… This is just lazy as hell!

**There are only 13 speaking parts.