I have, a few months back, come across the TVTropes page for “Gainax Ending.” I don’t remember why, exactly, I clicked that page, but I do remember one comment that bugs me to no end. And I remembered it just the other day when my father and I were looking for something to watch and found The Red Planet showing on one channel.

The comment in question bugs me because it doesn’t, near as I can tell, say what movie it’s talking about. I see no actual title, none that the commenter identifies as such, only a couple of legitimate phrases that just happen to also be used as titles.

Here’s the comment, copied-and-pasted, just in case it ever disappears from the “film” section:

A Sci Fi Channel movie about a mission to Mars is notable for being shown mostly from camera angles. The crew has to undergo several hardships, including sabotage efforts by a Corrupt Corporate Executive but manage to successfully land on The Red Planet. Since the captain is suffering from a nanite infection (that’s killing his nerve cells), his Number One makes the historic first step on another planet. All the world is watching as the camera she set up is zoomed on her face. She starts giving a speech, only to suddenly look somewhere off to the side and say “oh my God” with an astonished face, before the feed suddenly cuts out. The news anchors reporting on the mission say that a satellite in orbit is being repositioned to take a look at the landing site. The movie ends with a fly-by of the Martian landscape and a Cliff Hanger.

Links to other pages on the site have been retained from the original comment.

Now, then, my problem. “Mission to Mars” and “The Red Planet,” both phrases used within this comment, are names of movies… two movies in the second case. And there are a slew of other movies about Mars.
I have looked for lists of SciFi Channel (or SyFy) movies, lists of movies about Mars, lists of SciFi Channel movies about Mars. I have looked up movies that include nanites, or infections, or nanite infections. I have looked up movies about space explorations that have been sabotaged. I have checked plot descriptions and YouTube videos of any likely movie I found.

And I have not found one movie that ends this way! Not one that sounds anything like this!
What movie was this person talking about?

Anyone?

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