Roving Mars

Produced for big-screen IMAX theatres, George Butler's Roving Mars is technically a documentary covering an historical event, buttressed with plenty of archival footage and interviews—even if the most intriguing sequences are CGI simulations. Given the focus—a NASA mission that sent two robot rovers nicknamed Spirit and Opportunity to Mars in order to search for evidence indicating whether life might have existed on the Red Planet—neither IMAX cameras nor the human beings required to operate them could have documented the events. Instead, authentic footage of the earthbound elements of the enterprise—the long and grueling years of design and testing, as well as the nerve-wracking moments at mission control as operators waited to learn whether the probes had successfully landed after months of flight—are melded with animated sequences depicting how the rovers reached the Martian landscape and investigated the surface with precision equipment. A well-made, effective celebration of what has to be considered one of the major scientific triumphs of recent years, Roving Mars is recommended. [Note: DVD extras include both widescreen and full screen versions of the film; Walt Disney's 1957 bonus movie “Mars and Beyond” (53 min.); “Mars: Past, Present & Future,” offering personal reflections from the filmmakers, JPL Rover team members, and students from the “Imagine Mars” program (25 min.); and trailers. Bottom line: a fine extras package for a solid doc.] (F. Swietek)