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 This is a "stunning achievement that will take you from the edge of your seat...to the stars." Man goes to Mars and brings the "old evils of Earth with them!" 1980, 293 minutes DVD
The existence of The Martian Chronicles really illustrates the different television landscape that existed back in the late 1970s. It was a dark time in our nation's history when most of us only got the three broadcast networks and a PBS station (some may have gotten UHF channels or something else, but not I). It was also the era of the miniseries as "event." I'm guessing it had something to do with the success of previous efforts such as Roots and Rich Man, Poor Man, but probably had just as much to do with the fact that there just wasn't all that much competition for our entertainment attention. No cable, no video games, no home video, no Internet. (Really makes you shudder, huh?). With a monopoly on our viewing habits, the networks could afford to take on some projects that didn't sound like sure things right out of the gate. (Don't get me wrong though - I'm not saying they did it very much, but they could have.)
Think about it: a three part science fiction miniseries that didn't feature space battles and evil aliens? That instead focused on Rock Hudson and Bernie Casey debating the philosophical implications of colonizing Mars? And ended up making the case against our exporting our culture everywhere we went? And more shockingly, featured The Night Stalker's Darren McGavin in a cowboy outfit and a silly wavy-haired wig? Nowadays, something like that would be relegated to some place where only loser nerds would see it, like the Sci-Fi Channel and would star someone like David Keith or Brad Johnson, no doubt supported by tons of ugly CGI. But back in 1980, any old lady in Gary, Indiana could have turned on the TV and her their big screen idol Rock asking for advice on how to live his life from a Martian!
The Martian Chronicles is an ambitious effort to adapt Ray Bradbury's loosely related collection of short stories about our efforts to muck around on the red planet. Anyone who's ever read the book (and if you haven't, I don't even want to know you) knows that adapting it for television of the movies is pretty much impossible since stories don't share much of a common narrative. So you've got to cut any version some slack for playing around with the structure of things and screenwriter Richard Matheson does a pretty good job of shuffling events and characters around to give us something resembling a single story. Matheson (no slouch on his own, being the author of The Incredible Shrinking Man and I Am Legend, the novella from which all zombie movies sprang.) ditches some stories, changes characters in others, and edits some here and there to keep some characters like Rock Hudson's Colonel John Wilder featured periodically throughout. I don't see any other way he could have done it, unless you're just going to go the way of an anthology series like The Twilight Zone.
Divided into three parts detailing each phase of man's endeavors on Mars, the movie's almost five hour long running time allows it the ability to tell a variety of stories while keeping the common thread of things from completely disappearing. "The Expeditions" details the first couple of times we send our guys up there and the various problems they run into. An advanced civilization, the Martians are aware of what we're bringing with us and that we'll ruin their planet as we did our own. (Come on guys! We're just bringing some BBQ and brewskies! We can appreciate folks who are different than us, just like we do back home!). Wilder believes that things will be just fine between the two races (if there are even any Martians still left - they've mysteriously died out in large numbers since the first two expeditions), but after a confrontation with one of his own men (Spender) he begins to have his doubts and wonders about the fate of Mars, Man, and the Martians. Heavy stuff, Colonel! Why don't go grab yourself another Old Style!
The second part, "The Settlers" has the first colonists from Earth trying to make a go of it on Mars. They're building roads, towns, and pretty much remaking Mars into the world they left behind. The collision between the two cultures is highlighted in this one on two levels. The immediate when a Martian gets caught up in one of the new towns the men have built and the more esoteric when monks from Earth try to transfer their religious beliefs to the beings that inhabit the vast Martian deserts. It's all tied together nicely in what is probably the only appearance of a Martian Jesus in the history of network TV. What are the chances today of seeing any major TV program showing us that the rejection of our brand of religion by a foreign people is entirely acceptable and that we are somehow less advanced for still believing in it?
The final episode is simply called "The Martians" and features the final stories revolving around man's ultimate fate on Mars following tumultuous events on Earth that leave both the population on Mars and Earth decimated. It's during these twilight years on Mars (the implication of everything that goes on has to be that it won't be long before Mars is inhabited solely by ghosts) that Wilder finally meets with the Martians and completes the conversion he began when Spender's actions made him question everything he once believed. It all concludes with the adaptation of the classic "The Million-Year Picnic" story that brings everything full circle.
You can complain about the brown pantsuits our astronauts wear, about the disco music that sometimes annoyingly blares during shots of bad model spaceships flying through space and the cheap lawn furniture that doubles as futuristic furnishings, but that's all decoration and can't detract from the stories presented here. From the expedition that lands on Mars only to find a perfect replica of an Illinois town inhabited by all the astronauts' loved ones (an idea ripped off by the abysmal Journey To The Seventh Planet) all the way through Wilder taking his children to see "real Martians" at the end, The Martian Chronicles does what all good science fiction does - it makes you think and question. (Who am I? Why am I here? Couldn't Rock have hit the gym a little before filming started?)
Much of Bradbury's fiction seems to be from the "stop and smell the roses" school of thought. His Martians are his mouthpiece here and he uses them to impart their wisdom on Wilder about the meaning of life: "Destroy nothing, humble nothing, look for fault in nothing." Live life for the pure joy of being. The scary thing is that it's literally presented as an alien concept. In spite of its budgetary limitations (but kudos to the guy who designed the Martian cities - those are all appropriately alien) and 1970s casting (I'll always think of Nicholas Hammond as Spider-Man), I've always liked how this one tried to do something different in the genre and while not flawless (some of the segments go on too long), it did a good job of what it set out to do.
Reviews © 2004
MonsterHunter
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