Stranded: Náufragos
Encyclopedia
Stranded is a 2001 film about the fictional first manned mission to Mars
. The movie starred Vincent Gallo
and Maria de Medeiros
.
It was directed by Spanish filmmaker and actress María Lidón and with a screenplay
by Spanish science fiction
author Juan Miguel Aguilera
. Lidón won the "Grand Prize of European Fantasy Film in Silver" while Gallo and de Medeiros were named best actors at the 2002 Fantafestival in Rome
.
. The Ares Mission is an international space project carried out by the American and European government space organizations NASA
, LMA, JPL and ESA. Andre Vishniac commands the international crew of seven astronauts. A landing attempt is made, but the small Mars landing craft crashes due to a brief software glitch that misleads the radio altimeter. Vishniac is killed immediately by the force of the impact and the other five crewmembers are stranded inside the toppled landing craft with no hope of return to the waiting Ares mothercraft (piloted by astronaut Lowell) in Mars orbit.
It will take 26 months to send a rescue ship from Earth. However, the stranded landing crew have supplies for less than one year. "We're 191 million kilometers from Earth, and we're alone.", as flight doctor Jenny Johnson puts it. Nonetheless, the crew tries to find ways to extend the life support system. The main limitation is the thermoelectric power generator, since the water recycling and oxygen require electrical power. However, Sagan (the mission geologist) proposes to use the remaining cryogenic rocket propellant
from the landing engines to power an improvised silicate reactor to produce methane and water vapor from the martian soil.
Since the lander is damaged beyond repair, the propellant is not needed anymore. Sanchez, who now commands the mission, orders Sagan and Baglioni to try to build the reactor while Johnson buries Vishniac's body, despite concerns his bacteria might do harm to the pristine biological environment on Mars. To everybody's surprise, Sagan discovers that water ice is accumulating in the shade of the lander (Rodrigo also detects thick water vapor clouds on images transmitted by the orbiting mothership). But this is scant consolation as the landing engines and propellant
tanks turn out to be too damaged to salvage. The crew will run out of power in less than a year when the lander's power generator is depleted.
As Lowell returns to Earth with the orbiting Ares mothercraft (there is no spare landing craft so he is unable to help), the landing crew tries to find ways to save electrical power. Unfortunately, even draconian saving measures only will extend the power generator lifetime to fourteen months—far short of the minimum round trip time of 2.5 years. However, if a ship left immediately from earth, they would have only had to wait for 1/2 of that time or 1.25 years not 2.5 years).
The power system can support the recycling systems for that long only if the crew size is reduced to two astronauts. Sanchez immediately decides that she, Sagan and Rodrigo should abandon the craft since their specialist skills are less important for the survival of the mission. They don their spacesuits and set out for a five hour walk to the edge of the Valles Marineris
valley not far from the lander's crash site. Recent synthetic aperture radar
scans from the orbiter reveals a maze like structure hidden below a thick water vapor cloud in the Valles Marineris. The structure is possibly artificial and virtually identical to another "maze" located near the martian south pole. The three doomed astronauts quickly decide to try to descend to the bottom of the valley before they run out of oxygen.
Sagan soon gives up and dies from asphyxiation. Meanwhile, back in the lander, Baglioni notices that there must be an air leak somewhere and that they are slowly losing pressure. As they too are doomed, he unsuccessfully tries to persuade Jenny Johnson to have sex with him before they die. She rejects his advances and instead leaves the craft to try to pinpoint the exact location of the air leak from the outside.
Meanwhile, Sanchez and Rodrigo stumble upon an artificial tunnel near the bottom of the valley. It contains mummified bodies of humanoid
alien beings. To their amazement, the air pressure and oxygen content inside some of the tunnels is just like on Earth. Rodrigo soon dies when accidentally entering a tunnel that contains no atmosphere, but Sanchez manages to contact the remaining crew inside the landing craft after making it to the bottom of the valley. She urges Baglioni and Johnson to join her, as there is enough oxygen and water in the valley for them to survive until the rescue ship from Earth arrives.
were filmed on the island of Lanzarote
while the interior
scenes were filmed at Panavision Studios in Hollywood (the same Space Shuttle
interior set previously
utilized by the Space Cowboys
filmmaking crew was used as a cost saving measure).
Mars
Mars is the fourth planet from the Sun in the Solar System. The planet is named after the Roman god of war, Mars. It is often described as the "Red Planet", as the iron oxide prevalent on its surface gives it a reddish appearance...
. The movie starred Vincent Gallo
Vincent Gallo
Vincent Gallo is an Italian-American film director and actor. Though he has had minor roles in mainstream films such as Goodfellas, he is most associated with independent movies, including Buffalo '66, which he wrote, directed, did the music for and starred in; The Brown Bunny, which he also...
and Maria de Medeiros
Maria de Medeiros
Maria de Medeiros Esteves Vitorino de Almeida, DamSE , better known as Maria de Medeiros , is a Portuguese actress, director, and singer who has been involved in both European and American film productions.-Personal life:...
.
It was directed by Spanish filmmaker and actress María Lidón and with a screenplay
Screenplay
A screenplay or script is a written work that is made especially for a film or television program. Screenplays can be original works or adaptations from existing pieces of writing. In them, the movement, actions, expression, and dialogues of the characters are also narrated...
by Spanish science fiction
Science fiction
Science fiction is a genre of fiction dealing with imaginary but more or less plausible content such as future settings, futuristic science and technology, space travel, aliens, and paranormal abilities...
author Juan Miguel Aguilera
Juan Miguel Aguilera
Juan Miguel Aguilera is a Spanish science fiction author.He was first trained as an industrial designer. As an author, he has received the Ignotus prize, the Alberto Magno prize, and the Juli Verne prize....
. Lidón won the "Grand Prize of European Fantasy Film in Silver" while Gallo and de Medeiros were named best actors at the 2002 Fantafestival in Rome
Rome
Rome is the capital of Italy and the country's largest and most populated city and comune, with over 2.7 million residents in . The city is located in the central-western portion of the Italian Peninsula, on the Tiber River within the Lazio region of Italy.Rome's history spans two and a half...
.
Plot
Set in the 2020s, some fifty years after the first manned moon landing, the movie begins as the Ares spacecraft enters Mars orbit 298 days after leaving the Alpha Space StationInternational Space Station
The International Space Station is a habitable, artificial satellite in low Earth orbit. The ISS follows the Salyut, Almaz, Cosmos, Skylab, and Mir space stations, as the 11th space station launched, not including the Genesis I and II prototypes...
. The Ares Mission is an international space project carried out by the American and European government space organizations NASA
NASA
The National Aeronautics and Space Administration is the agency of the United States government that is responsible for the nation's civilian space program and for aeronautics and aerospace research...
, LMA, JPL and ESA. Andre Vishniac commands the international crew of seven astronauts. A landing attempt is made, but the small Mars landing craft crashes due to a brief software glitch that misleads the radio altimeter. Vishniac is killed immediately by the force of the impact and the other five crewmembers are stranded inside the toppled landing craft with no hope of return to the waiting Ares mothercraft (piloted by astronaut Lowell) in Mars orbit.
It will take 26 months to send a rescue ship from Earth. However, the stranded landing crew have supplies for less than one year. "We're 191 million kilometers from Earth, and we're alone.", as flight doctor Jenny Johnson puts it. Nonetheless, the crew tries to find ways to extend the life support system. The main limitation is the thermoelectric power generator, since the water recycling and oxygen require electrical power. However, Sagan (the mission geologist) proposes to use the remaining cryogenic rocket propellant
Rocket propellant
Rocket propellant is mass that is stored in some form of propellant tank, prior to being used as the propulsive mass that is ejected from a rocket engine in the form of a fluid jet to produce thrust. A fuel propellant is often burned with an oxidizer propellant to produce large volumes of very hot...
from the landing engines to power an improvised silicate reactor to produce methane and water vapor from the martian soil.
Since the lander is damaged beyond repair, the propellant is not needed anymore. Sanchez, who now commands the mission, orders Sagan and Baglioni to try to build the reactor while Johnson buries Vishniac's body, despite concerns his bacteria might do harm to the pristine biological environment on Mars. To everybody's surprise, Sagan discovers that water ice is accumulating in the shade of the lander (Rodrigo also detects thick water vapor clouds on images transmitted by the orbiting mothership). But this is scant consolation as the landing engines and propellant
tanks turn out to be too damaged to salvage. The crew will run out of power in less than a year when the lander's power generator is depleted.
As Lowell returns to Earth with the orbiting Ares mothercraft (there is no spare landing craft so he is unable to help), the landing crew tries to find ways to save electrical power. Unfortunately, even draconian saving measures only will extend the power generator lifetime to fourteen months—far short of the minimum round trip time of 2.5 years. However, if a ship left immediately from earth, they would have only had to wait for 1/2 of that time or 1.25 years not 2.5 years).
The power system can support the recycling systems for that long only if the crew size is reduced to two astronauts. Sanchez immediately decides that she, Sagan and Rodrigo should abandon the craft since their specialist skills are less important for the survival of the mission. They don their spacesuits and set out for a five hour walk to the edge of the Valles Marineris
Valles Marineris
Valles Marineris is a system of canyons that runs along the Martian surface east of the Tharsis region...
valley not far from the lander's crash site. Recent synthetic aperture radar
Synthetic aperture radar
Synthetic-aperture radar is a form of radar whose defining characteristic is its use of relative motion between an antenna and its target region to provide distinctive long-term coherent-signal variations that are exploited to obtain finer spatial resolution than is possible with conventional...
scans from the orbiter reveals a maze like structure hidden below a thick water vapor cloud in the Valles Marineris. The structure is possibly artificial and virtually identical to another "maze" located near the martian south pole. The three doomed astronauts quickly decide to try to descend to the bottom of the valley before they run out of oxygen.
Sagan soon gives up and dies from asphyxiation. Meanwhile, back in the lander, Baglioni notices that there must be an air leak somewhere and that they are slowly losing pressure. As they too are doomed, he unsuccessfully tries to persuade Jenny Johnson to have sex with him before they die. She rejects his advances and instead leaves the craft to try to pinpoint the exact location of the air leak from the outside.
Meanwhile, Sanchez and Rodrigo stumble upon an artificial tunnel near the bottom of the valley. It contains mummified bodies of humanoid
Humanoid
A humanoid is something that has an appearance resembling a human being. The term first appeared in 1912 to refer to fossils which were morphologically similar to, but not identical with, those of the human skeleton. Although this usage was common in the sciences for much of the 20th century, it...
alien beings. To their amazement, the air pressure and oxygen content inside some of the tunnels is just like on Earth. Rodrigo soon dies when accidentally entering a tunnel that contains no atmosphere, but Sanchez manages to contact the remaining crew inside the landing craft after making it to the bottom of the valley. She urges Baglioni and Johnson to join her, as there is enough oxygen and water in the valley for them to survive until the rescue ship from Earth arrives.
Cast
| Actor | Role |
|---|---|
 Vincent GalloVincent Gallo Vincent Gallo is an Italian-American film director and actor. Though he has had minor roles in mainstream films such as Goodfellas, he is most associated with independent movies, including Buffalo '66, which he wrote, directed, did the music for and starred in; The Brown Bunny, which he also... |
Luca Baglioni (Mars lander mission specialist, technical systems engineer) |
 / Maria de MedeirosMaria de Medeiros Maria de Medeiros Esteves Vitorino de Almeida, DamSE , better known as Maria de Medeiros , is a Portuguese actress, director, and singer who has been involved in both European and American film productions.-Personal life:... |
Jenny Johnson (Mars lander mission specialist, doctor) |
| / Joaquim de Almeida Joaquim de Almeida Joaquim António Portugal Baptista de Almeida is a Portuguese-born American actor. He began his acting doing some theater. During the 1980s, he started his film career appearing on the 1982 action film The Soldier, and later achieved recognition for playing Andrea Bonanno in the 1987 Italian film... |
Fidel Rodrigo (Mars lander mission specialist, astrobiologist) |
 Maria Lidón |
Susana Sánchez (Mars lander pilot) |
| José Sancho José Sancho José Asunción Martínez Sancho is a Spanish actor. Over a period of fifty years he has appeared extensively in Spanish television and films. He was born in Manises, Valencia in 1944. He divorced the singer María Jiménez, with whom he has a son named Alejandro... |
Andre Vishniac (Mars lander commander) |
| Danel Aser |
Herbert Sagan (Mars lander mission specialist, geologist) |
| Johnny Ramone |
Lowell (Mars orbiter pilot) |
Filming locations
The scenes set on the surface of MarsMars
Mars is the fourth planet from the Sun in the Solar System. The planet is named after the Roman god of war, Mars. It is often described as the "Red Planet", as the iron oxide prevalent on its surface gives it a reddish appearance...
were filmed on the island of Lanzarote
Lanzarote
Lanzarote , a Spanish island, is the easternmost of the autonomous Canary Islands, in the Atlantic Ocean, approximately 125 km off the coast of Africa and 1,000 km from the Iberian Peninsula. Covering 845.9 km2, it stands as the fourth largest of the islands...
while the interior
scenes were filmed at Panavision Studios in Hollywood (the same Space Shuttle
Space Shuttle
The Space Shuttle was a manned orbital rocket and spacecraft system operated by NASA on 135 missions from 1981 to 2011. The system combined rocket launch, orbital spacecraft, and re-entry spaceplane with modular add-ons...
interior set previously
utilized by the Space Cowboys
Space Cowboys
Space Cowboys is a 2000 science fiction film directed by Clint Eastwood. Eastwood also stars in the film alongside Tommy Lee Jones, Donald Sutherland, and James Garner as four older "ex-test pilots" who are sent into space to repair an old Soviet satellite...
filmmaking crew was used as a cost saving measure).
Science and special effects
- The script derives ideas from the controversial theories of Richard C. HoaglandRichard C. HoaglandRichard Charles Hoagland, is an American author and a proponent of various conspiracy theories about NASA, lost alien civilizations on the Moon and on Mars and other related topics....
, who claims that advanced civilizations may once have existed on Mars. - In the movie, the doomed astronauts stand on the edge of Valles MarinerisValles MarinerisValles Marineris is a system of canyons that runs along the Martian surface east of the Tharsis region...
and look at the other edge of the valley 300 kilometers away. In fact, since the diameter of Mars is only 6700 km the other side would be hidden below the horizon. - In the opening scene, a presumably Earth-based newscaster has a real-time conversation with lander commander Vishniac. However, radio waves take between four and twenty minutes to reach Mars from Earth - depending on the planet's relative positions - and such a conversation would not be possible.