A brief cinematic history of Mars

By Cory Casciato Fri., Aug. 3 2012 at 10:33 AM

Categories: Film

Total Recall reminds you the air is thin on Mars.

This Sunday, the most ambitious mission to Mars thus far will land on the red planet. The Curiosity Rover is on a two-year mission to look for signs of life, study its climate and geology and collect data that might help future manned missions. The Denver Museum of Nature and Science is hosting a live landing party to observe the final descent to the surface and offer a chance to learn more about it. To get in the spirit for the event, we've combed through the cinematic history of Mars. It might not help you understand Curiosity's mission (try the Mars Science Laboratory for that), but it will sure help you see what the movies thought a trip to the planet might be like. (Spoiler alert: they got it way wrong.)

Flight to Mars 1951
Jump in the wayback machine for the sci-fi clunker Flight to Mars! A mission to Mars crashes but finds an advanced race of aliens, who naturally are bad guys. One of the dashing Earthmen romances a hot alien before punching out some bad guys and returning to Earth. It's all pretty goofy and low rent, but hey, at least it's vintage, right? Just think of it as the kind of thing Don Draper probably saw at afternoon matinee the day before he left for Korea. It will add to the appeal.