First of all, I'm not sure that the latest Mars movies to which you referred recovered their expenses:

Mission to Mars
Cost to produce: around $80 million?
Domestic gross (i.e. in the USA) at the THEATRES: $59 million.

Red Planet
Cost to produce: $85 million?
Domestic gross: $16 million (at the THEATRES)

I'm not going to include John Carpenter's "Ghosts of Mars" or Tim Burton's "Mars Attacks!" in this discussion as neither were for serious spacebuffs.

Anyhow, how's THIS for a plot for a potentially successful Mars movie? Considering how the USA and world are full of a growing quantity of increasingly liberated entrepreneurs, perhaps a critical mass of movie-watchers would enjoy a movie that touches upon humanity's present and future struggle to make Mars colonization a COMMERCIAL success? NASA's failure or unwillingness to make trips and visits to the Moon commercially viable (and therefore enduringly sustainable) leaves us all asking the question: "if we can go to the Moon, then why can't we go to the Moon?" Such a movie could even inspire greater Mars-related investment, at least among the post-Columbia peers of Jeff Bezos, Burt Rutan, Elon Musk & John Carmack (et al). Hopefully it could also encourage more people to demand that NASA finally follow in DARPA's tracks by offering pro-entrepreneurial competitive prizes and embracing other legal reforms like tax incentives for space ventures, and the recognition of private property rights in space.

In the film, non-cliche'd parallels could perhaps be drawn between Mars colonization and the California Gold Rush of the 1840's, during which opportunity-seeker Levi Strauss figured he'd get to be a miner but ultimately decided he'd be more successful if he pragmatically made jeans for OTHER miners. Comparisons could also be drawn with humanity's first sustainable journeys out of Africa, leading to the global brotherhood (and sisterhood) feelings that could appeal to various people. Such comparisons might help folks realize just how hard it was for their ancestors to make it possible for us to be alive today (even if we're dissatisfied with our current plights). Similarities could also be drawn (perhaps through familial or historical anecdotes) with how it took 9 months for the British prisoners to make it to Australia by sea, or comparatively less for settlers to reach the new world (often through indentured servitude that's not altogether unlike some modern day labor contracts). Maybe the movie's title could be something like:

Travel light & live off the land (if you can)

or even:

Monetizing (but not monotonizing) Mars

How's THAT for a post-Mariner Mars movie theme?