Jeff Peterson wrote an excellent article about how movies portray the mystical Red Planet:

The Red Planet has been in the news a lot recently, with the one-two punch of a groundbreaking scientific discovery of water and a big-budget Hollywood movie starring Matt Damon.

Of course, people’s fascination with Earth’s next-door neighbor dates back millennia, and both the planet and the little men who may or may not inhabit it have been a major part of sci-fi movies in particular from, well, the very beginning of sci-fi movies.

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