Mars and Beyond

Release Date: December 4, 1957

Watch Date: June 15 – June 16, 2023

“From the TV series Disneyland, the Tomorrowland special Mars and Beyond uses animation to explore humankind’s early views on the universe and life on Mars. The show then focuses on each of the planets and what it would take for humans to survive.”

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    I have no idea how to feel about this film. “Man in Space” was an interesting look at the science that would go on to define humanity’s space exploration, and this is a lot of fun theories about what aliens might be like.

    And it’s fun to imagine. Don’t get me wrong. Disney is all about imagination. But when half of the film is spent going “Mars probably isn’t at all like Earth, but what if it was, how would life had evolved?” well that’s a little bit too hypothetical, even for me.

    I will say that I did like the history lesson, of what different philosophers and great writers thought of how our universe worked, and later, what different types of life might exist on other planets. There was literally no basis in fact in any of it, but it’s fun to hear what people hundreds of years ago though about people living on Mercury or Venus.

    The animation isn’t Disney’s best work, but it’s still pretty classic Disney, and I’m never going to be mad about a television special that is ultimately designed to talk up one of my favorite places on Earth, Disneyland. It’s been almost seven years since I last went, and shows like this that are so clearly an advertisement for it make me miss it even that much more.

    Probably the highlight of the piece was, for me, the advertisement for ‘next week’s episode’ which I’m pretty sure isn’t on Disney+ but I don’t care – I like old timey commercials. I don’t know why. It just strikes a chord with me.

    You could skip this, really easily, and if it hadn’t been for Bob’s insistence that we go back and watch the old films that I had missed in my first pass of creating our gigantic list of movies to watch, I very happily would have. You won’t be missing anything by skipping this, but if you long for yesteryear and enjoy seeing what science fiction writers were imagining in the olden days then you’ll find something to love about this.