Slashdot Mirror
What Ridley Scott Has To Say About the Science In "The Martian"
An anonymous reader writes: Sciencemag has an interview with the people behind the movie The Martian. Director Ridley Scott, author Andy Weir, and Jim Green, NASA's director of planetary science and an adviser on the film talk about the technology and the science in the movie. Scott says: "Almost immediately [after] I decided to do it, we started to have conversations with NASA about process, the habitats, the Mars Ascent Vehicle (MAV), the suits and everything. And they sent us pictures, almost like photographs, of what they hoped it would all be. If there had been anything in [the screenplay] that actually was suspect—they are not shy—they would have said so."
Cute: at the start of TFA Ridley Scott provides the quote given above ('... if there had been anything suspect they would've said so'), which is kind of suspect in itself given that we know that 'The Martian' isn't technically flawless. Then later in TFA, NASA's director of planetary science cheerfully and honestly demonstrates exactly this by listing a bunch of things that were understood as being 'close but not exactly correct', including the Martian dust storm which sets up the entire story of the book. At which time Weir states that he 'deliberately sacrificed reality for drama with the dust storm'. At which point Scott pretty much demolishes his own earlier quote by saying, 'there's a bit of cheating here and there. Eventually they all say, well, you're making movies, so we’ll forgive you!'
On the whole the article reads as though Weir and Green are on the same page throughout, including a shared understanding of the inconsistencies that did make it into the story; not so much Scott...
Gravity did that as a marketing angle and it worked, despite Sandra Bullock floating vast distances from one spaceship to another.
Interstellar then ramped it up a notch, even with the ridiculous blight that breaths nitrogen which somehow steals all the oxygen.... and if you can build a spaceship that isn't contaminated with blight ridden air, why do you need to launch it into space at all? And that grunt sound he makes as he goes past the event horizon.... to remind you that gravity is real strong here.... seriously!??
So now all movies have to claim to be scientifically accurate.
BTW, if you ever want to see a scifi movie Sunshine from 2007 is far more scientific than any of these, and get past the 'Golden Girls" style crappy title and its a real gem of a movie.
Gravity introduced the average Joe to the concept and danger of space debris, and reintroduced the fact that there is no sound in space. This along with simple things like how momentum works in space with things as simple as a spinning astronaut, while finding a way to make it entertaining. Interstellar, while having a lot more of the fi part of sci-fi, focused heavily how theory might apply in practice, like on relativity and tesseracts and how other planets might look, while also addressing the thought of some that we need to diversify our species survival by expanding into space.
If you have to do significant research to understand a concept before seeing a movie, the movie failed. If a movie is so dry and dull that it lacks viewership, it fails. These two movies provided clear communication of some science concepts without being a lecture, and are amazing examples of great communication in sci-fi. They are sci-fi with light true science bases that touched a large audience and made them think while entertaining them. I think this is a wonderful thing. It's much better for the minds than sci-fantasy stuff like star wars.