What's the Story, Mornin' Glory?

Stupid movie suuuuuuuucks!

Ghosts of Mars
(2001)

     In the year 2176, five people go to Shinning Canyon, Mars to pick up James “Desolation” Williams (Ice Cube), a prisoner who has been arrested for gruesome murders. The leader of the group, Melanie Ballard (Natasha Henstridge) is somewhat of a drug addict and pops hallucinogenic pills to get through the day (I guess they don’t drug test in the future). Her superior, Commander Helena Braddock (Pam Grier) knows about her drug addiction, but doesn’t seem to care about it too much, as long as she gets the job done. Jericho Butler (Jason Statham) has a thing for Melanie and if he’s not lewdly undressing her with his eyes, he’s making her offers she shouldn’t refuse. Also, he’s the best lock cracker ever. Bashira Kincaid (Clea DuVall) and Michael Descanso (Liam Waite) are the rookies. When the five land on Mars, they take a train into the town where Williams is. It takes them a little bit, but they come to the conclusion that the town is deserted. Melanie makes the comment that at that time of day, the town should be full of people with money to burn, whores to fuck and drugs to take (personal experience perhaps?). They split up in groups and Jericho and Melanie go to the prison to get Williams. There are no guards around, but they decide to retrieve Williams anyway. Instead of Williams they find rooms splattered with blood and a severed arm. Weirded out, they meet back up with the others. Helena has discovered a massacre in one of the buildings, everyone is dead, hung upside down and decapitated. Helena suspects that Williams has escaped because this is how he killed the people that he was arrested for.

     Jerico breaks open the jail and removes all the people in the holding tank. They have no idea what’s going on, but they haven’t been fed for a few weeks. When Jericho finds Williams in his cell, he asks him if he knows anything. When he doesn’t answer Melanie flies off the handle and insults him. Helena breaks people up in groups to go on patrol. She disappears and Jericho goes to look for her. While out to help look for Helena, Melanie sees a man locked in a van kill himself. She returns to the rookies at the jail to find William holding one of the rookies hostage. Melanie offers herself in the place of the rookie and Williams knocks her out. She wakes up and goes after him into a nearby building where possessed people attack them. They save each other’s lives and Williams tells her what actually happened. He wasn’t the one who killed those people, he was just caught robbing their bodies.

     Jericho discovers that Helena has been killed and everyone in the mine is insane. They kill people ritualistically and possess others through their ear. After being possessed, the people file their teeth to points and cut themselves for decoration. One of the people inside of the holding cell went to the cell willingly because she’s the one who released the spirits of Mars. Will they escape with their lives or with the Ghosts of Mars take back what’s rightfully theirs?


You Learn Something New Everyday...

Grenades don't hurt you, they just send you sailing, unhurt.
Barbwire won't cut rope and is easy to climb over unscathed.

Zing!

"Who you calling scumbag...mother fucker?!" -Uno

Simon Says...

     Alright, this has to be one of the WORST movie I’ve ever seen and that’s saying a lot. First, I hated how the story progressed. It’s Melanie retelling her story to a council, so it’s a flashback. Inside the flashback they have repeating scenes. Like, when the group splits up, the story follows one group and then they go back in time to the scene where they split up and then follow the other group. I suppose that’s supposed to be clever, but made it more annoying. Every minute of this movie sucked, why would I want to see the same scene again? All the characters were highly un-likeable. The movie starts with the aftermath of the whole battle, so you know everyone dies but Melanie…so much for getting attached to characters. What’s the point when you already know they are going to die? Not that they tried to make you get attached to anyone. This movie contained the most annoying, stupid, abrasive characters in the world. Melanie gets the most outstanding retard award for all the stupid decisions she makes and all the stupid things she says. Ugh, everyone was so incredibly pointless and they grated on my nerves like no other. I wanted so much for the “ghosts” to come and kill them all instantly. Yes, even Jason Statham, he may be my hero in real life, but his character SUCKED! If he wasn’t talking about porking Melanie, he looked like he was thinking about porking her. Buh. He is easy on the eyes though. So my wish for death upon his character wasn’t as great as it was for the others.

     Does my plot summary seem kind of disjointed? That’s how the movie was. The plot was completely disjointed. There was also no back-story whatsoever. Why does Melanie pop pills? Why is that particular group of people chosen to escort the “most dangerous criminal in the solar system”? Why did Jericho come from paradise to do work for this organization that all the veterans obviously hate? Why hasn’t Pam Grier’s acting skills improved from 1978? Did they really think that loud heavy metal guitar riffs and pyrotechnics would make up for a lack of story and action?

     This movie was bad, but there was a point when it hit utterly ridiculous. When Dos (one of the guys who tries to rescue Williams) gets high on nitrous and accidentally cuts off his own thumb when chopping open the top of a tin can to impress a girl and then giggles about it. The people of Mars are semi-intelligent human beings right? Do they not have a can opener in the future? The ridiculous factor rises even further when Ice Cube starts popping caps in people’s asses to heavy metal music. At one point Melanie says “This isn’t their land anymore” referring to the ghosts. Um? What are they, Indians? Taking their land because they haven’t got a fence around it? Friggin’ morons. They never really even state why they need Mars. The ghosts make it pretty clear that they just want people off their land and that they won’t follow them off the planet, but once they escape Melanie demands they go back and kill them before it’s “too late”, resulting in everyone but her own and Ice Cube’s death. Why don’t they just leave well enough alone? Melanie didn’t strike me as particularly brave at any other time. Grah! The idiocy is so frustrating! Stupid, stupid movie. I hate you! If you have no taste in movies, this is the flick for you. As for us...we give Ghost of Mars

1 Burt Reynolds!

That Wasn't so Bad Was It?



Death
I was left Feeling: Like DEATH!