In 2176, a Martian police unit is sent to pick up a highly dangerous criminal at a remote mining post. Upon arrival, the cops find that the post has become a charnel house. Set 200 years in the future, intergalactic cop Melanie Ballard (Natasha Henstridge) and her team have an assignment of transferring a dangerous criminal named Desolation Williams (Ice Cube) to a prison in the outpost city of Chryse on the planet Mars. But in a turn of events, an adjacent mining team on the Red Planet has unearthed an ancient Martian defense device that unleashes warrior ghosts of the planet's original inhabitants who in turn possess most of the workers. Upon arriving at the outpost, Ballard and her team, including Desolation Williams, must band together to survive the vengeful spirits bent on eradicating all human life on their planet. I remember when this movie came out. I had almost seen it in theaters, but the plot seemed so stupid. I mean, alien ghosts? I had also not realized it was directed by horror movie legend John Carpenter. If I had known that, I would have willingfully seen it. But I passed up my chance.<br/><br/>About 2 years ago, I rented it, remembering it had been made by John Carpenter. I wanted to see if it was worth it, because every John Carpeter movie has been worth it, even if it had a 19% on Rotten Tomatoes.com and a 4.3 on IMDb.<br/><br/>But, it was a good, fun movie.<br/><br/>The sets looked awesome and believable. The acting was pretty good, and there were some great, cheesy quotes (Ice Cube: "C'mon you mindless motherf*ckas!") The make-up and costumes are also pretty well done. With an A- cast, huge sets, and well done special effects, you'd think this was a 75 million dollar+ action movie. But it was done for only 25 million dollars. Wow.<br/><br/>Yah yah, the story sucks. So what? Everything else in the movie takes its place! Its not fair this movie bombed at the box office. I mean, only 9 million dollars? This is a fun movie. If your hosting a party, and you want an action film your sure no one has seen, check out this one.<br/><br/>P.S. if you are a fan of Anthrax or Buckethead, check this movie out. They both have a few songs written for the movie that cant be found anywhere else! Lets face it, carpenter lost the touch somewhere along the line. I mean, Im as big a fan of his good work (Prince of Darkness, In the Mouth of Madness, The Thing, Village of the Damned, Big Trouble in Little China, Escape from NY, Vampires) as anyone. All those films got good to great actors, great scripts and are fresh in direction and keeping the suspense. Ghosts of Mars on the other hand cannot be directed by the same guy, its just not possible. The cast is horrendous, I have seen better acting in porn. The direction is slow, inefficient and has dozens of cardinal mistakes and the cutting is equally sad. The actors move like actors and not professional cops, the streewise attitudes are sooo bad and the fighting is worse than my grandmas. Even the makeup sucks, the bodyparts look just like what they are, plastic. Its supposed to be 2179 or something, but they use 70's walkie talkies and "have to go fetch" each other all the time instead of having efficient comms. It just ruins ALL of the movie. Its not even B, its C or even worse.<br/><br/>I was actually squirming while watchin it repeating "no no no"… And finally just had to end its misery after the first hour. I just couldn't stand it. It just couldn't keep my interest up.<br/><br/>Me and my friends would have made a more interesting and compelling movie with a handcam in a week.<br/><br/>Carpenter must have gone senile, because his movies have traditionally been some of the best around. So dont pick this one up, go get one of his good works instead (like one of the above mentioned). And he actually made good movies pretty recent. But Ghosts of Mars only value would be to show to aspiring film makes as an example of all the mistakes you do not want to make in shooting a movie. Carpenter pulls out all the action-adventure stops, but he and coscripter Larry Sulkis forgot to write dialogue the audience could listen to without howling in disbelief.
Gilmevis replied
295 weeks ago