Perhaps readers of the book could explain this, as it's not explained in the TV mini-series.........
If there was going to be a world-wide nuclear war on Earth, WHY would everyone (almost) leave the safety of Mars (their new home) and return to a doomed Earth??
This seems like a big plot hole to me and kinda ruins the rest of the story.
Thoughts? Theories?
I think most of them left before the war was a certainty to actually happen. Or at least before it went nuclear. They may have thought it would be averted, or at least remain a conventional war. If I recall correctly, they were speaking of war long before it happened. The military people were probably ordered back from Mars, and some civilians went back to try and convince family to go to Mars with them, and didn't get out in time.
shareI don't know that anything is explicitly explained in the book per se on this point, but taken as a whole it makes sense. The humans were invaders and their identity defined by were they came from. When their home is threatened, instead of doing the sensible thing and accepting their new surroundings, they run home. They also don’t seem to understand the hopelessness of the situation on earth either, wanting to go home and help with the fight. As the readers we understand the hopelessness of nuclear war, but the author is certainly questioning whether we all as Earthlings really understand that concept.
The Earthlings bring all the problems of their home with them and the problems in the various stories were always how they tried to change Mars rather than allow Mars to change them. In that regard, they would always be Earthlings on another planet - visitors, invaders, and tourists. They were people who were only ever going to be who they were, not what they could become. Where they came from, not where they were going. IMHO, THAT is the point of book. It doesn’t really have anything to do with Mars. We are supposed to be looking at the Earthlings leaving Mars thinking they are idiots and where in God’s name are they going and what do they really expect to find back on Earth?
Spoilers
In the end, man can only live at peace on Mars when he decides that he is the new Martian. That’s is the ending shot in the movie and in the book. Just about the only thing they get right in this TV movie. I like the movie as an oddity, but the dialogue is criminal. Every action, every nuance, every subtlety is spelled out, nailed on the head with the heaviest hand possible which just sucks all the meaning out of it. The Martian husband in the first landing for example is so over played. The husband never ever says he is jealous of his wife’s visions or that he already knows about the mission from Earth. He doesn’t go out to kill the Earthlings, but rather he goes out hunting. The Spiderman guy, whoever that actor is from the Sound of Music, who is the astronaut on the second mission is really bad. The whole scene where he is in his childhood bedroom with his brother is one scene that sticks out as such badly written dialogue. In the book, the guy wants to go get a drink of water and the brother says “no you don’t, why don’t you just stay here.” In the movie the astronaut speaks out the entire scenario of what is going on. “What if I am really on Mars? What if we really landed on Mars and this is Mars and all these people are really Martians. What if you aren’t really my brother and you are really just a Martian as well …” Right, OK, we get it. It becomes a bad soap opera here in the mini series. The guy who wrote the original novella I am Legend and he is a good writer is credited for the screenplay of this, so I don’t know what happened. The same director took a very well written book called Logan's Run and sucked the living life out of the novel in the strange screen oddity of the same name so I think that must be part of the problem.
I enjoy the mini series as a flawed oddity, plus I really like the special effects. Well, no, not really, but that is a whole other discussion.
In the book at least, people were returning to earth to be with their families to the end. For others is was a sort of Death Urge to die with mother earth. For some I believe it was some urge to be in on the fighting however futile or pointless. Military in particular were recalled.
Been decades since read it.
It is hard for a modern audience to understand, but I promise you it's not a plot hole.
This is a good example of the way social attitudes have changed since the story (or collection of stories) was written in the 1940s. The idea of returning to your home country (which Earth symbolizes) as a matter of duty was very much the thinking among people in those days. Patriotic duty was far stronger back then, especially because most people had no concept of just how devastating a nuclear war might be. It wasn't until Vietnam that war correspondence really started to bring the reality into people's living rooms and newspapers, which all comes long after the book was published. For America, it was the war that changed everyone's attitudes on the subject forever.
Bear in mind also that 'The Martian Chronicles' as a whole is Bradbury's big take on American colonization. We can of course apply his arguments to other entities, like the British Empire, etc, but Bradbury was writing about the America he knew. He argues that there is a right and wrong way to colonize. The right way, as Spender says, is for the pioneer to accept and appreciate what he finds in the new land and work with it. The wrong way, as we see with Parkhill and the other colonists, is to try and recreate your old home and destroy the new.
The colonists don't accept Mars on its own terms. They try to transport their America with them and in so doing, as we hear in the film, bring all their old problems with them. Thus Mars isn't 'real' to them, they're still strongly attached to Earth. So when the balloon goes up, they run back to it. Wilder is seen to survive because he ultimately goes 'native' and he and his family become the new Martians.
Because we are long past the age of colonization in our part of the world, and because we understand war far better today, it's simply very hard to relate to the attitudes of these people. The most we can appreciate is that they are worried for family and friends.
Some people like to dismiss 'The Martian Chronicles' as being unscientific and dated, but it's actually a huge collection of allegories on everything from the treatment of Native Americans to cultural imperialism.
Interesting perspective--this issue bothered me too.
I'm trying to remember in the book (I went through some of the stories after seeing this miniseries as a 12-year-old kid, but a lot of it was above my head then, and I don't remember too many specifics), whether the global war on Earth made the planet totally uninhabitable, as the miniseries made it look. You say that people in the 40s didn't understand the sheer devastation and hopelessness a full nuclear war would entail, so was it depicted as relatively mild in the printed stories, with many survivors and hope for rebuilding?
I revisited the miniseries on Netflix a few years ago (I'm tempted to add it to my collection too--it's an interesting oddity), and did think that with the total destruction shown (it looked like the oceans themselves boiled away--pretty over-the-top bad science there, even for this production), why would anyone in their right mind return? Isn't a big part of the point of space migration to put human "eggs" in more than one basket in case of this very type of extinction event (nuclear war, massive asteroid/comet strike, environmental catastrophe, massive plague, etc.)? That's always given as a big argument for it. But maybe that's not how they did see it in the 40s. Again, interesting perspective.
And you're right that its major value is allegorical. It's also an interesting look at how we thought Mars was (the "canals", etc.) back before the Mariner probes. It's not the hard sci-fi I generally prefer (and even preferred when I was 12). But it is intriguing in its own way, and Bradbury had one hell of an imagination. I think I might want to revisit the collection of short stories again too.
"No more half-measures."
In the book people on Mars get messages from their friends and love ones. "Come Home!" And they do, leaving a skeleton population on Mars to pick up when the Earth becomes uninhabitable. In fact, Spender and his wife, at his hamburger stand, see Earth in the night sky blooming fire.
"The value of an idea has nothing to do with the honesty of the man expressing it."--Oscar Wilde
Agreed. It made no sense and I found my suspension of disbelief compromised considerably.
**SPOILER ALERT**
Mind you, I let slide the breathable atmosphere and plant foliage all over the place. Even the blue sky, but leaving the safety of planet Mars with a thriving human population and enough resources to sustain that population in order go back to a radiation ravaged planet Earth at the orders of a sociopath who couldn't avoid an all out nuclear war was really stretching it.
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