4) Mars Needs Moms
Production Budget: $150 million
Worldwide Box Office Total: $38,992,758
If Hollywood’s recent track record is anything to go by, it seems as though the planet Mars – while symbolising relentless war and chaos in Roman mythology – also signals box office misfortunes in the realm of cinema. Though John Carter fell flat in 2012, Walt Disney also distributed another space-related mishap in Mars Needs Moms a year earlier.
Other than having a ridiculously lazy title, the film was released during a somewhat unfortunate period. Having been filmed and produced in 3D, Mars Needs Moms was a hasty and misplaced jump on a three-dimensional bandwagon that had already grown old and rickety in a post-Clash of The Titans landscape.
Directed by Simon Wells and produced by the team behind The Polar Express, this is an animation film that, quite frankly, isn’t animated very well. The character models resemble dead-eyed mannequins and the narrative through line – of a child who only realises the importance of his mother after she is kidnapped by Martians – is poorly executed. Mars Needs Moms doesn’t hold a candle to movies from the Pixar canon and the impressive use of digital technology isn’t enough to compensate for the film’s lack of heart.
At present, Wells’ movie stands as one of the biggest box office flops in film history – unadjusted for inflation, mind you – and while it doesn’t quite deserve to be lambasted in such a way, Mars Needs Moms is still a prime example where style and technological wizardry was favoured over substance.