Total Recall, the best that I can recall - was about the only commercially successful film involving Mars in my lifetime.
But they can only blame themselves for “John Carter” (of Mars). They tried to avoid the Mars movie curse by leaving Mars out of the title - they took the most simple plot ever devised by one of the greatest storytellers of all time (Edgar Rice Burroughs) and made a confusing mess of it.
I hope I live long enough to see someone do the ACTUAL story justice.
As a kid in the 1960’s, one of my favorite Sci-fi movies was “Robinson Caruso on Mars” They even used the leftover martian space ships from War of the Worlds. ;-)
Kids are easy to entertain, though.
Actually, it could be a good movie as a remake with plausible detials, weaving in what we now know about the moon.
I remember one of C. S. Lewis’ Sci Fi novels suggested HUGE trenches on mars that were so deep that there was a breathable atmosphere at the bottom.
The Moon = Mars
Oops.