Review Detail

I had never bothered with Mission to Mars before JSW made this. After having watched the original I was tempted to skip watching the fanedit because I was quite bored with the original. JSW’s fanedit puts an interesting spin on the movie by removing the overlong Act 1. The movie now doesn’t spend much time getting to the meat of the story. I liked how a new Act 1 was made, but I definitely felt it lacked some critical character development. It’s interesting because it makes the movie seem less, I don’t know, self-important. Instead of being a character drama that just happens to have people go to Mars, it feels more like an outer space story. One that we’d see back in the 50s if they had better budgets. So that was cool.

I listened to your commentary and thought it was quite interesting. I wish you hadn’t cut it so short but I can understand how hard a commentary is to sustain if you’re trying to do it in one take. I highly suggest that in the future (if you do another commentary) if you find yourself quiet for long stretches you stop the recording and come back to it after a little bit.

As far as the tech side goes, the quality seemed a lower than normal but nothing too terrible. I agree with Bob that some of the dramatic hard cuts could have been done better as fades.

Overall, I liked this version better than the theatrical, but probably won’t be revisiting either any time soon.