Trivia / Mission to Mars

• Awesome, Dear Boy: Jerry O'Connell took this role because he studied Brian De Palma movies in film school.
• Dueling Movies: Red Planet was released in the same year, with a little better polish in the science of the film, and Ghosts of Mars was released the following year. This film made double the combined box-office that those films did, and was also the best-reviewed, though that really isn't saying a whole lot.
• Fake Russian: Canadian Peter Outerbridge portrays Sergei Kirov.
• Science Marches On: The Face on Mars at Cydonia was shown in later, less blurry, photos to actually have almost no resemblance to a human face whatsoever. This is downplayed because to the movie's credit, the Face is initially presented as being hidden by all the dust and soil that covered it over the eons.
• Troubled Production: Brian De Palma was brought on board after Gore Verbinski walked away due to concerns over the lack of additional money for the budget. De Palma indicated that the film needed additional funds and that much of the budget went into the CGI for the film. When De Palma was hired the script had already been written and the film cast. His lack of familiarity of directing science fiction made him disillusioned with Hollywood that he exiled to France, where he made Femme Fatale.

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