25 years ago, Red Planet and Mission to Mars competed for the title of biggest Mars flop

It is 2025, and we are making the necessary steps to colonize Mars. That is the set-up to Red Planet, a sci-fi movie that is now 25 years old and manages to feel lightly optimistic, despite being premised on Earth becoming uninhabitably polluted. At least in this movie, the colonization of Mars is a feasible project, and not a future trillionaire’s ketamine dream. It was not the only 2000 movie that ventured to Mars, either. Earlier in the year, Brian De Palma made what would become his final big-budget studio production with Mission to Mars, set under what the movie imagines to be the less dire circumstances of 2020. Put together, the two made a little more money worldwide than Space Cowboys — and without Clint Eastwood’s trademark thriftiness. Even in their best moments, these projects explain why Mars became such forbidden territory in movies in the decades that followed.