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Former NASA Mission Controller James Oberg Lauds 'The Martian'
At IEEE Spectrum, James Oberg gives high praise to the upcoming film The Martian (release date: October 2).
Oberg doesn't have much to say about the acting; he concentrates on the physics and plausibility of the plot and the technology portrayed, which beat those of most Hollywood space epics, and notes in particular "There’s no cheating on even highly-technical spaceflight topics, as shown in the treatment of the so-called “Rich Purnell maneuver,” wherein the Hermes slingshots past Earth back to Mars for a desperate pickup attempt. ... The basic strategy of the Rich Purnell maneuver is not fictional—a crippled Japanese Mars probe named Nozomi actually used a similar Earth-flyby scheme to set up a second chance for its own faltering unmanned Mars mission a dozen years ago."
Oberg's background gives his appraisal some weight -- he's a former NASA mission controller who specialized in orbital rendezvous maneuvers. He has some quibbles, too, with the way mission personnel are depicted, and notes one excursion into "fantasy mode" near the fim's close, but concludes that it's a fair trade for the overwhelming sense of realism.
It was short but very interesting. I like how he gave a "spoiler alert" without actually revealing much. I haven't seen the film yet, but I'm looking forward to it. His only complaint was that Mission Control personnel jumped up and cheered upon liftoff of the mission, which would never happen in real life. Other than that, he pretty much loved it.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve your problem, you're not using enough of it. --AC
Having read the original book (and would highly recommend it), I still expect to be disappointed by the film adaptation. The science in the film may be solid, and we can indeed be grateful for that, but there are other aspects of adapting a novel where Hollywood can make the result feel compromised. Think of all the tired old tropes they could throw in there, like slow-motion shots of characters at poignant times, an intrusive film score that tries to jerk the audience emotionally in a particular direction, or the acting itself where it's hard to suspend disbelief when it's Matt Damon up there and he's not known for smoothly entering into roles and going unrecognized as Matt Damon.
Yeah, had Ridley hired decent scientific advisers for Prometheus, it could have been a decent film.
Luckily the Martian was written by a person who's got a scientific background and the scriptwriters didn't butcher the book.
You are all interplanetary Cows. Cows say Mooooo. MOOOOOOO! MOOOOOOOOOOOO cows MOOOOOOOOO! Moooooooooo say the cows. YOU COWS!!!
Mars cows say MOOOOO. Space Cowboys say
Come in, come in mission control
Give us guidance for our souls
With eyes that scan the universe
No more talking time to land
You give me hope, you understand
Our future lies beyond this earth
Someday we'll live among the stars
Maybe own a ranch on Mars
A ranch full of Mars cows that say moo.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
It wouldn't be all that hard to impress with the tech if the producer cares. Just get the basics right.
1) Do the thrusters go "chuffff", "chuffff" out in space when they activate?
2) Do you hear the rocket motors out in space?
3) Does it avoid Magic Gravity inside the space ship in space?
4) Are there stupid fins to support fake maneuvering in space?
5) Does the rocket motor thrust all the time, and if it stops, does the space ship act about to crash?
Some; far from all; of the early space opera was surprisingly accurate. Anything Heinlein was involved with tended to be pretty realistic. 2001 A Space Odyssey was the first film to absolutely nail everything. Then it went absolutely to hell, notably with Star Wars and Battlestar Galactica (the REAL 1978 BG, obviously, not the silly 2003 soap opera).
It's entertainment.
"Win treats sysadmins better than users. Mac treats users better than sysadmins. Linux treats everyone like sysadmins."
I'm more than a little put off by the cringe-worthy "science the shit out of this thing" line from one of the trailers. Ugh.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
A little warning would have been nice...
I've only read fragments of the book and seen the trailer.
But the writing... Your 15-year-old boy writer may be having some development issues.
E.g. That bit about "space pirate"... that's just... retarded.
I get the context, really I do. And I'm not even gonna go into the whole "The Egg" thing.
But a grown human acting like that in that situation would NOT be in that situation cause that human would not pass the psych tests.
Besides that... It is twaddle that serves no other purpose but to make the character out as a "funny guy" and as an attempt at fan service.
Except, if he's talking to himself about how either awesome or charming and funny he is, he is NOT a funny guy.
He is either insane, or one of them assholes full of themselves who THINK that they are awesome and funny.
And the whole thing REEKS of MarySueism.
Which carries over to the movie to the point that someone thought how that face shot of Damon looking emotionless or vaguely retarded, with "BRING HIM HOME" printed across his face - someone thought that was a GREAT idea for a movie poster.
Seriously, WHY? Why "bring him home"? Who gives a fuck about him? Why should anyone care about bringing HIM home at this point?
There's no attachment for the audience to that character. Emotional or otherwise.
Poster tells NOTHING about that character. It goes out of its way to say nothing with that face expression of his, or the lack thereof.
Unless the idea is that we should "bring him home" because "Matt Damon"?
And that's just... stupid. Like cheering when Amon Goeth murders Jews because "OMG! Ralph Fiennes is SO FIIIINEEEES!"
Why should someone who hasn't read a book or seen the movie care about bringing that mongoloid home?
Another thing this reeks of is "Mythbusters on Mars".
"Science the shit out of this" while looking at the audience. Yeah... That.
"Eat my shit Neil Armstrong"... or whatever he actually throws at Neil Fucking Armstrong.
"I'm the bestest plant guy on this planet, getit you idiots, its a funny, ha-ha laugh."
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
Great! I'm about half-way through the audiobook and it keeps cracking me up. The plot is great, but the character in the book "Mark Watney" has such a great sense of humor that he displays during stress (and he pretty much is constantly stressed considering his situation.) that it is a riot to listen to his log narration.
So far, great audiobook. No complaints.
You missed the point completely. Reread what I said.
Poster used to promote movie is without any kind of emotional or factual or logical information.
And what IS there - is contradictory or meaningless.
"Bring him home."
Bring who home? Why? From where? Whose home? What for? Is this a commercial for something? For what?
Who is this emotionless, expressionless guy and why should I care? Is he an actor? A historical figure?
Is he real? A robot? What is he selling? Is he the product? Who? What? How? Where? When? Why? WHY? WHY?
I am not a character in the movie. I'm audience. The guy in the poster is NOT Mark Whatever - it's an actor called Matt Damon.
That poster is supposed to be informing ME about the movie and establishing SOME connection, usually emotional, with me to induce me to pay for the ticket.
Without me knowing jack shit about the story.
And there is NOTHING THERE to do that.
All that's there is an ACTOR looking bored or retarded, with meaningless words across his face.
Damon is capable of expressing emotion. Humans ARE capable of writing better slogans or even sentences.
That thing was intentionally made that way cause it made PERFECT logic to people already engrossed with the production - but with nothing there for people who are supposed to pay for that movie.
That's a symptom of detachment from reality.
They are running the production of the story on their own, internal logic which makes sense only to them because they are engrossed in metadata and metalogic of the project - which they've clearly omitted to relay to the audience.
This is the stuff that creates movies like Prometheus and The Room.
Both those movies made perfect sense to the people who made them and OKayed them.
And seriously, if you answer to "Why?" with "Semper Fi!"... you might need to recheck your bullshit meter.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
SPOILER ALERT: Spoilers about the first chapter of the book follow! (Because someone is likely to complain about that kind of thing.)
Has anyone actually done the math on this? We are not talking about a man being blown around in a windstorm, really. We are talking about equipment that NASA launched to Mars getting blown around in a windstorm. The ascent vehicle getting blown nearly over is a stretch, for sure, but perhaps the injury that befalls the protagonist is not. It was inflicted on him by a piece of metal that was thrown by the windstorm. I am not qualified to do the math, but I hope someone else here is.
While the protagonist and most likely the ascent vehicle are fairly heavy, presumably everything else that NASA spent rocket fuel to put on the surface of Mars is as light as it can possibly be to still do its job. It would not take much air density to pick up a piece of metal that has high surface area and small mass, like a thin piece of aluminum with a bend in it to make it rigid would be. It certainly could be whipped by the 150kph (42m/s) wind. Anything near that speed and it would not have a problem piercing a spacesuit or damaging a circuit board. Maybe it would not likely have enough energy to do both of those things and still seriously injure a human, but it is at least plausible from this high-level perspective.
So, who here has the knowledge and the energy to run the numbers on whether this is more than just plausible and actually possible? I wish I had the former because I certainly have the latter and enjoyed the book--the plot, the technical details, and the writing style--enough to want other people also to enjoy it. Maybe Randall Munroe will give it a shot, although it is a bit non-absurd for his usual taste.
By the way, let's give the author one deus ex machina point for how he solved the final problem that his characters faced. Does he get a negative deus ex machina point for how he created the first problem that they faced and thus balance it out or do both problems and solutions have positive valence when counting the dei ex machinis?