Very best movie i ever watch

I don't have all the words right now but this film is a work of art.

disgusting, overrated, pointless

Great movie! If you want to be entertained and have a few good laughs, see this movie. The music is also very good,

I was disappointed. With all the pictures sent back by the rovers even before the movie had to cut and run, the film devotes only a couple of minutes to these. The landing doesn't even occur until the halfway point (20 minutes), and the first pictures from the rovers at 26 minutes. Meanwhile, more of the limited (40 minutes) time is devoted to talking heads than to anything else. There are CGI fly-overs of Mars when there could have been actual photos.The interviews, CGI flyovers, and simulations of the rovers are very good stuff -- accurate and informative -- and would have been excellent in a 2- or 3-hour film. The problem is the emphasis, which needed to be "what we saw on Mars". Forty minutes didn't give time for all the rest. This is the rare documentary which would have been much better expanded. Keep all the good stuff, add even more about the difficulties of getting to Mars (there's brief mentions of past failures, and these are fascinating stories of their own), and add a lot more about the scientific goals and successes, and a great deal more photographs sent back from the rovers, and a lot more explanations of what is seen in these photos. It's as though the makers assumed viewers were only interested in the people behind the mission, and not the mission itself.Then there's the emphasis on water, life, and preparation for manned visits. This does not accurately represent the mission. While water and life detection was part of it, the mission was a lot more. And the idea of manned visits to Mars is a pipe dream, driven by emotions and politics, not science. The film makers would have served us better by emphasizing the excitement in the exploration by proxy, rather than viewing it as merely a preparation for manned flight.The film does prove, once again, that Philip Glass can write astoundingly good film music.There's a huge need to convey the enormous excitement in the actual unmanned missions, to Mars and to the other planets. This documentary chose instead to keep the blinders on, emphasizing what's believed to be already exciting to humans.Note that I only saw this on a home screen, not IMAX. I'm sure some parts would have been much more impressive on IMAX. But that's all the more reason to upend the emphases. Who wants to go into an IMAX theater, for only 40 minutes, and watch talking heads?

On January 4, 2004 Sean O'Keefe, Director of NASA, announced the "Spirit" had landed. Three years earlier the scientists and researchers at NASA Jet Prepulsion were assigned to build two identical robotic rovers to send to Mars and feed data back to Earth. The two rovers were named "Spirit" and "Opportunity", which were successful in presenting a brand new view of what Mars is really like...and actually proving at one time there was water on the mysterious planet. This 40 minute documentary is directed and narrated by George Butler. Shot in IMAX and with life-like animation, ROVING MARS answers decades old curiosity about the soil and terrain of Earth's closest planetary neighbor. You just wish you had a longer glimpse. A wonderful tool for classrooms.

This had the _opportunity_ to be a great documentary. It started with less of the crappy motivational speeches and some bits of actual science. They showed the construction phases of the two rovers that went on Mars and the animations were great.I expected this to turn into a detailed log of the travels of the two rovers and the emotions involved and the science and engineering decisions that were made. But the film ended abruptly, after only 38 minutes. The rovers landed and finished their mission in less than 10 minutes of film time.What was a great concept and a refreshing presentation style ended up in mediocrity. And what was Paul Newman doing narrating the beginning of the film? God, he sounded old.

I saw this at an Imax in LA last week - I'm still in awe. Maybe the previous commenter was a rocket scientist himself, but for me, the hurdles these people had to accomplish in the time they did, and the unbelievable success they had is something that made me proud to be an American when I left the theater. The visual aspects of the film left me holding my breath at times. And the story - it was the same story we've all seen 100 times - a small group of people working together to achieve the impossible. Only this time, the story is true, the people are real and the goal is the advancement of humanity. Something we can all be proud of in a time when there are not that many things that we should be proud of. Take everyone you can drag with you - there isn't anyone who won't be moved by the vistas of a distant planet sent here by a couple tiny robots built by a small group of men and women from the planet Earth who had a dream. Why a 9 instead of a 10? It ended too soon.