a_chinn Review of The Martian Chronicles

The Martian Chronicles (1980)

Watchable, but disjointed and disappointing Ray Bradbury adaptation

[6/10 · 28 October 2018]

Okay, but disappointing adaptation of Ray Bradbury classic tale of humans colonizing mars, form early exploration to settlement to an eventual... well, I won't spoil anything. The disappointment is that this epic length story was weirdly episodic and was essentially several completely disconnected stories that shared the same setting. Sure this was based on a series of short stories, so I suppose it was true to the source material in that sense, but for a mini-series I want a little continuity. With a solid cast that included Rock Hudson, I was hoping "The Martian Chronicles" was going to be "Giant" in space. Behind the camera, the miniseries was directed by Michael Anderson ("Logan's Run," "Millennium," "Operation Crossbow," etc.) and written by Richard Matheson ("I Am Legend," "The Twilight Zone," "Duel," etc.), which added even more to my high hopes that this would be a sci-fi classic. I haven't read Bradbury's original short stories, but this adaptation was too disjointed to be considered a whole story. The episodes should have more neatly connected up or built on one another, but they really didn't and the series suffers for it. However, the film does have a nicely retro 70s sci-fi look to it's production design that I enjoyed and the familiar cast (Hudson, Darren McGavin, Bernadette Peters, Roddy McDowall, Fritz Weaver, Barry Morse, and Maria Schell) carry the mini-series, making it worth watching, even if it should have been better considering the talent involved.