Tales of the Parodyverse - Rewind Review: The Martian Chronicles

Author

Member Since: Sun Jan 04, 2004
Posts: 1,235

Subject: Rewind Review: The Martian Chronicles
Posted Mon Feb 09, 2009 at 01:48:28 am EST (Viewed 461 times)

Posted with Microsoft Internet Explorer 8 4.0; on Windows Vista

Ray Bradbury has rarely had good luck with TV or movie adaptations of his work, and the 1979-1980 NBC/BBC miniseries version of The Martian Chronicles was no exception, although with the benefit of close to 30 years of hindsight, it's become a fascinating failure in retrospect.

To be fair, even the better adaptations of Bradbury's work, among them the 1969 film version of The Illustrated Man, have tended to alter his material significantly, so while the small-screen adaptation of The Martian Chronicles was nowhere near as faithful (nor, for that matter, was it anywhere near as well-acted or well-produced) as the 1983 Walt Disney Pictures version of Something Wicked This Way Comes, it was still light-years closer to its source material, in terms of both tone and content, than the 1966 big-screen adaptation of Fahrenheit 451.

First off; the flaws. At least from the human side of the story, the special effects on display were dogshit, even by the standards of the era. I've seen Tom Baker serials of Doctor Who with slicker production values than the spaceship scenes showcased in this one. The acting level of the cast was likewise deeply uneven. Both the best and the worst that you could say about the direction was that it allowed solid but habit-prone performers like Rock Hudson, Darren McGavin, Fritz Weaver and Roddy McDowall to remain sort of dependably themselves, while Barry Morse and Bernadette Peters were actually painful to watch together, but still far less cringe-inducingly misogynistic than "The Silent Towns," the short story/chapter that their shared scenes were based on. Bradbury himself reportedly found the miniseries as a whole "just boring," and especially when compared to the work that it was supposedly honoring, the man had a point.

That being said? What was so frustrating about this one was how close it came to something genuinely special sometimes. Pretty much all of the actors who played the Martian characters were appropriately otherworldly and haunting in their roles, never more so than in the miniseries' excellent adaptations of "Ylla" and "The Third Expedition/Mars Is Heaven!", the latter of which arguably managed to do justice to a short story that's already so chillingly Rod Serling-esque that it's been named one of the best in all of science fiction. And holy living God, but Bernie Casey owned the hell out of the role of human-archaeologist-gone-native Jeff Spender; while Hudson and McGavin's respective performances as Wilder and Parkhill were reliably decent, but more than a bit disappointingly safe, Casey was legitimately transcendent, carving an arc from merely sturdy character-actor territory to being Fully In The Zone. Check out his scary blank stare as he coldly informs his former fellow crew-member that he has become "the last Martian" ... that's the eerie, dead-eyed gaze of a True Believer.

But after all these years, even knowing that Bradbury (who has correctly pointed out that he's really a "fantasy" author, rather than a "sci-fi" one) set out to offer an outer-space allegory for the settling of the Western frontier, with the primary focus set squarely on the human side of the story, I can't help it ... I still wish we'd seen more of the Martians themselves. In this area alone, the miniseries' special effects, set design and costumes shine, giving the Martians and their culture a richly realized alien atmosphere all their own, in spite of how small the glimpses are that we're actually afforded into their culture.

I was still in grade school when I first read The Martian Chronicles. "Ylla" is one of the first stories in the book, and it stuck with me throughout the rest of the narrative. Even before I wanted a girlfriend in real life, I guess you could say that I fell in love with Ylla K, the Martian wife who had psychic visions of the Earth astronauts' impending first landing on her planet. I marveled at the casually mentioned wonders of her world, and yet, I also empathized with her yearning for something more. I loved her for being so different from myself, in so many ways that, even as a small child, I knew that I could barely begin to guess at, but I also loved her for reflecting how alien I had always felt among my fellow humans. I wanted to see the sights of a still-living Mars with her, in spite of how mundane she had surely come to consider them, and to show her the novelties of my home-world, which I hoped would seem fascinating to her, in spite of how ordinary they are to us humans. Even as a little boy, I kind of got the joy that can come from seeing your own backyard with fresh eyes, as a result of serving as a tour-guide for a wide-eyed visitor, and I sensed, or maybe just hoped, that Ylla K felt as alienated among her own people as I did among mine, so that we could be aliens together, exploring the uncharted frontiers of each other.

This post contains SPOILERS - Click to read

K-Box in the Box

Nats

Member Since: Thu Jan 01, 2004
Posts: 85

Subject: I had no idea they ever filmed this, but having just read the book for the first time last summer ('twas excellent), I should check it out. [Re: CrazySugarFreakBoy!]
Posted Mon Feb 09, 2009 at 06:58:07 pm EST (Viewed 352 times)

Posted with Mozilla Firefox 3.0.5 on Windows XP