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The Planetary Society Blog
By Emily Lakdawalla
A preview of the new IMAX movie, Roving Mars
Jan. 25, 2006 | 11:59 PST | 19:59 UTC
Yesterday I was invited to go see a screening of the new IMAX movie, Roving Mars, about the Mars Exploration Rovers. I gleefully went, and dragged my husband along so he could learn something about these spacecraft that have occupied my attention for so long. I couldn't wait to see those fantastic Pancam panoramas in their full glory on the giant IMAX screen -- and they were fabulous. Anyone who's a fan of the rovers should go see this film; but in the end I was disappointed by how few of those glorious images they used.
Before I go on, let me warn you that I get pretty specific about the movie below; if you are planning to see it and don't want spoilers, stop reading!
IMAX documentaries are short, only around 42 minutes or thereabouts, so if you love the subject you're always left wanting more. The first part of the movie introduced Principal Investigator Steve Squyres as the main narrator, and Entry, Descent and Landing lead Rob Manning as a supporting one, and then focused on the development of the rovers. It built tension by dwelling on the problems they encountered with the testing of the airbags and parachutes.
There were some amazing sequences that were shot inside the clean rooms at JPL and Kennedy Space Center where the rovers were built, tested, and assembled. I had been to JPL in 2003 and got to see rovers under construction through the glass from the observation areas; but the IMAX crew got to bring their cameras much closer. There were many particularly spectacular shots from both above and below the rovers as they were being built, following the tightly-wrapped bundles of cables around their bellies, even watching one engineer carefully tie those cable bundles together. I was surprised by the emotion I felt in my heart, seeing the rovers under construction -- the photos were like baby pictures, I thought, and even felt they were my babies though of course I had nothing to do with their construction. Seconds after I had that thought, Steve, narrating, referred to them as "babies" himself. I had a lump in my throat throughout that segment. Our feelings for these rovers go much beyond pride in their accomplishments -- they are much-loved children.
I really enjoyed that part of the film but throughout it I felt worried that it was taking away from time spent on Mars. They showed the Spirit launch and then shifted into the Dan Maas animation -- updated again -- to show the cruise to Mars (I thought one shot from the new animation, with the spacecraft flying past an obviously airbrushed Moon, was kind of cheesy). They spent several minutes building up the tension that surrounded Spirit's landing, and the horrible 10 minutes of silence that followed it. At that moment I became very aware of Philip Glass's music, which was perfect -- it had my heart pounding as the camera panned to worried faces, one after another -- Steve, and Pete Theisinger, and Richard Cook, and Nagin Cox, and Sean O'Keefe, and Wayne Lee, and all the others, even though I knew that the ending would be a happy one.
After the landing of Spirit the movie shifted entirely to Mars, with not another shot of the humans back on Earth. And at that point, it began to lose its grip on my emotions. It mostly consisted of different views of the Dan Maas animation, intercut with a few rover images and some shots of an engineering model of the rover crawling around some rugged terrain on Earth. Don't get me wrong, the animations are absolutely incredible and have been lovingly updated yet again using actual imagery from the rovers. So when you see the Spirit landing sequence, it bounces and lands there in Gusev Crater within the panoramic view that Spirit returned upon landing, which is pretty neat.
There were moments when actual rover images were flashed on the screen, and they were more spectacular than I had imagined. The brief pan across the Burns Cliff panorama was breathtaking, and seeing the Lion King panorama -- the one that Opportunity took after it had finally crawled out of Eagle crater and looked back at the nest it had occupied since landing on Mars -- made me appreciate that view for the first time. Opportunity's panoramas are particularly difficult to enjoy on a small screen because they don't have the rugged scenery of Spirit's. Seeing it on the IMAX screen, I could feel the overwhelming sense of space surrounding the rover.
But there was just too little of that. Too much animation, not enough real pictures (even though the animations were all spectacular and lovingly built out of the real pictures, you can feel the difference when you watch it). Also I felt there was too little made of the terrific stories of each of Spirit's and Opportunity's long and difficult journeys once they got to Mars. The movie made it seem as though all the challenges of the mission were in getting there in the first place. In the end, I don't think my husband -- who does not pay attention to space exploration at all -- learned anything much about what the rovers have been doing up there for two years. They discovered evidence of water, the movie told him, and that's pretty much it.
As an example, there is one absolutely breathtaking sequence, near the end, where the camera flies across the plains of Terra Meridiani, following Opportunity's tracks, and then diving down into and pulling out of Endurance crater. It was definitely my favorite animation sequence in the whole film; scroll down to see a still from it. You see Opportunity's tracks in the crater but it's only after looking hard that you see Opportunity itself, clinging to the slope of Burns Cliff. That view reminded me of the jaw-clenching, teeth-gritting, wheel-slipping weeks of struggle it took to get Opportunity into that precarious position. But the narration failed to describe any of that, so my husband didn't learn anything about the challenges met and overcome by Opportunity after it landed. We talked after the movie was over and he asked me, confused, how much of it was animation and how much of it was real; he said he had a hard time understanding what was going on because he didn't know the difference and the movie didn't say.
I'd give the movie a three out of five stars and tell anybody who is into space and Mars to go see it, but it makes me want to see a movie that really documents what happened once the rovers got there. Maybe, after our babies have given us everything they have, grown old, and finally succumbed to Mars' frigid temperatures and choking dust, we'll get to see that documentary. In the meantime I'm glad I've been able to follow the drama "live" and I hope they last another two years. Opportunity at Endurance CraterIn this view from the IMAX film Roving Mars, Endurance Crater in Meridiani Planum occupies center stage. The crater is ringed with bedrock and filled with sand dunes. The floor of the crater has been marked by the tracks of the rover Opportunity, barely visible as a tiny speck clinging to the wall of the crater at the left. The scene was carefully built by animator Dan Maas by incorporating imagery from the rover and 3D models of the rover and the terrain. NOTE: ACCORDING TO THE TERMS AND CONDITIONS THIS IMAGE MAY ONLY BE USED FOR DISCUSSING THE MOVIE "ROVING MARS," NOT FOR ANY OTHER PURPOSE. Credit: © Disney Enterprises, Inc. All rights reserved |
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