BEFORE: I know my ordering might not make sense, I went from an actor to an actress to a Mars rover? Linking is everything right now, and this order makes sense to me, because I'm on a campaign to have David Letterman come out on top with the most appearances this year. Richard Nixon or Ronald Reagan win sometimes and, come on, they're not even really trying. I know that Letterman got his TV start on a comedy ensemble show that Mary Tyler Moore headlined, and footage of him was used yesterday from times that he interviewed her on his talk show. So that's why the original plan was to follow the MTM doc with this one, but then the plan changed.
And there's not a big cast list for this movie, not linkable people, anyway. But Dave's listed, presumably it's also archive footage from his NBC "Late Night" show talking about the Mars rover. I could have used Stephen Colbert as a link and fit this in later in the chain, but thematically it wouldn't have fit in there either, plus putting it HERE not only gives Letterman an early boost, it also lines up another celeb birthday for tomorrow. So there you go.
Levar Burton carries over from "Butterfly in the Sky". It's funny because this week I'm also focusing on catching up with "Star Trek: Discovery", like I'm deep into season 2 and watching 3 episodes a day if I can. I watched Season 1 when they aired it on CBS for free, but that was maybe a year ago - and they never aired Season 2 on CBS. Since then, Paramount has merged with Showtime or something, and I'm getting Paramount+ for free because I subscribe to Showtime, and I'm also getting those "Discovery" episodes on Demand, but there's a time limit, they may disappear from cable on demand on July 9, so I've got to hustle. Both of today's films apparently use footage from "Star Trek: The Next Generation".
THE PLOT: The film follows Opportunity, the Mars Exploration Rover dubbed "Oppy" by her creators and scientists at NASA. Oppy was originally expected to live for only 90 days but she ultimately explored Mars for nearly 15 years.
AFTER: This is the kind of movie that I would have really been into as a kid, a documentary about how space travel works, the excitement of watching a rocket take off, something to make you think about the future or be hopeful about the future and wonder how far humans will be able to go someday, maybe to other planets or other solar systems or even other galaxies. And that kid is still alive, somewhere inside me, but I don't know, something changed at some point and I realized that we're probably not going to get there within my lifetime, and I wouldn't qualify for space travel anyway, so on some level, like, what's the point? Sorry, I don't mean to bring the room down, but as Stallone pointed out, after age 40 it's all about subtraction, not addition, and that list of things that I'm never going to be able to do grows a little bit bigger every year.
Of course, the Mars Rovers, Spirit and Opportunity were technological marvels. Of course, NASA and JPL are at the cutting edge of tech and together they're pushing the boundaries of what's possible and what's achievable. And of course it's modern miracle that we sent two rovers to Mars and one of them kept broadcasting for 15 years. Of course, of course, and kids have something to dream about again, maybe within their lifetimes humans will walk on Mars or set up a colony there - but as we've seen in certain movies, that story might not end well. Those are fictional, of course, but who's to say that a Mars colony would be successful? And if not, should we even DO that in the first place?
I could get really cynical here and point out that for all the valuable data and photos that NASA got from the rovers, essentially they spent a ton of money to send two robotic devices to Mars, knowing that at some point, maybe within days or weeks or three months if luck was on their side, they would break down and become just a pile of space junk. Then add to that the rocket that brought the rovers to Mars, the heat shield that needed to be jettisoned, the giant air-bags that made landing possible - I'm forced to conclude that NASA is the biggest extraplanetary LITTERER in the solar system. Think about how much space junk is floating around in our Earth's atmosphere, pieces of satellites, booster rockets, and various tools that slipped out of the hands of Shuttle repairmen. It's not safe in our own atmosphere, space junk could whip out of nowhere and smash through a space station's window, and, well, that's that. We've polluted our oceans, our air and now we're leaving decrepid metal robots on other planets? When is it enough, humans aren't going to stop until we've left trash all over the galaxy, when do we start learning from our own mistakes?
Worse, the crew at NASA had this weird tradition of playing a "wake-up" song every morning, to rally their energy and keep their spirits up, it's kind of self-serving, but I get it, they had to synch their schedules with the Mars sunrise, and the Mars day, which is 40 minutes longer than an Earth day, so the song would focus them and get them ready for a 25-hour period of remotely piloting a Rover across another planet's surface, or figuring out how to get a wheel unstuck from rocks and sand from 140 million miles away, with a communications lag time of about 10 minutes. And the song would vary from day to day, depending upon the mood of the crew or the day's tasks, but come on, does it HAVE to be "Walking on Sunshine"? Or "Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go"? Who the hell is playing amateur DJ here? OK, the B-52's "Roam" is an OK song, but still, there are about 10,000 BETTER songs available, why these? It's bad enough that we're leaving space junk on Mars, now we're polluting another planet with our shitty music, too?
I'm also surprised at the point to which the NASA scientists and researchers anthropomorphized the Rovers, so maybe they thought the robots might be entertained by the music? That's not possible, even if they were alive, which they are NOT. All across this film, people make this grammatical mistake, over and over again. When they first got the test rover to move, the technicians said they were "bringing it to life". Umm, no, it is NOT alive, the term you're looking for is "working" or "functional" or "on", but all that movement is just creating the ILLUSION of life, not life itself. Then they all talk about the rover "surviving" on Mars - in order to survive, it needs to be alive, but it's not, it's still just a machine. We're facing problems now on Earth with just the advent of artificial intelligence, and we need to keep stressing that first word, the machines are artificial, NOT human, and when you call the rovers "she" or you give it a cute name like "Oppy", you are NOT helping. People think their birds can talk, that their cats can understand them, that's not true either, but it's closer to reality than thinking that a collection of circuits and parts on Mars that we're controlling remotely is "alive". You're all scientists, I expect you to realize this distinction, and if you can't, well, then I'm kind of worried about you. There's no crying in baseball, and there's no room for emotional attachment in space exploration. You're going to lose rockets and satellites and rovers and putting a smiley face on them is just going to interfere with that process.
HELP WANTED - Nasa needs technicians and scientists to help explore Mars and other planets. Requirements: MUST NOT get emotionally involved with the equipment. If you can't remain professional, perhaps this career is not for you. Then there are the people who work for NASA that couldn't help notice the "parallels" between their own lives and their work on the rovers. "Hey, I'm a mother and I gave birth to twins, and the rovers are kind of like twins, so I felt that I was personally connected to the work..." NO, there's no connection there, other than the one that you manufactured in your own mind. Nobody else cares about your kids, that's why they're YOUR kids and not ours. "Well, I was born in a third-world country, and I was fascinated by the way a radio works, so it's funny that I'm working on tele-communications with a rover." NO, it's not, that's just your personal back-story and if that gets you through the day, great, but this work isn't about YOU, it's about Mars and getting humanity off of our dying planet someday. Get your head back in the game.
Look, I'm glad we had a working rover on Mars for so long. I'm glad we know more about Mars rocks and the possibility that there was once water there. That's all good scientific knowledge and advancement but all researchers have to remain professional and somewhat detached if we're going to put all this data to good use someday. Having the robot take a "selfie" is good fun and maybe a needed distraction, but let's stay focused, please.
Years later after Opporunity, NASA also had another lander on Mars, named Insight, and this device was programmed (remember that) with a form of AI that allowed it to communicate, it ALMOST seemed like the device was alive, but remember, it was PROGRAMMED that way. In December of 2022 it failed in a similar fashion, and it's final message ALMOST made it seem like it was alive. It said, "My power's really low, so this may be the last image I can send. Don't worry about me, though, my time here as been both productive and serene. If I can keep talking to my mission team, I will - but I'll be signing off here soon. Thanks for staying with me."
Nice one, NASA, you almost got me. I felt sad at first, sure, but then reminded myself that the device does not have rational thought or emotions, somebody programmed it to say exactly that, a human gave it words, a human gave it the illusion of knowledge, but it is still just a working or non-working machine at the end of the Sol. It was built to collect information, but also it was built to fail, I would say it was built to die, but in order to die, it would have to be alive, which it was not. We're only going to get into more and more trouble if we fool ourselves into thinking that the machines are alive. Let's try and keep a little perspective here, OK?
Also I hate to burst anyone's bubble but the vast majority of this film was most likely created in CGI, which is nearly every image of the rover (except the selfie) and probably the majority of the Mars landscape, too. If you think there was another camera about a quarter-mile from the rover that could take those long shots of it crossing the landscape, well you really need to think about how this movie was made. You're not looking at real images here, those grainy black-and-white still shots of craters and boulders, that's all that the rovers were capable of giving us. So, essentialy they faked the Mars landing here, which might be the digital equivalent of faking the moon landing, only now more things are technically possible and it looks great, don't get me wrong. But it's just not real.
Also starring Mark Adler, Kobie Boykins, Moogega Cooper, Doug Ellison, Abigail Fraeman, Rob Manning, Bekah Sosland Siegfriedt, Steve Squyres, Ashley Stroupe, Ashitey Trebi-Ollennu, Jennifer Trosper, Vandi Verma
plus the voice of Angela Bassett (last seen in "Waiting to Exhale") and archive footage of Stephen Colbert (last seen in "Dumb Money"), David Letterman (last seen in "Being Mary Tyler Moore"), Arnold Schwarzenegger (last seen in "Sly"), Jon Stewart (last seen in "Norman Lear: Just Another Version of You"), Patrick Stewart (also carrying over from "Butterfly in the Sky").
RATING: 5 out of 10 "lucky peanuts" (and that's another thing...why do these scientists believe in luck?)
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