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Review: The Martian
Let's briefly discuss the book, first. If you haven't read it, I recommend doing so. In short: near-future astronaut Mark Watney gets stranded on the surface of Mars, and must figure out how to stay alive using only the limited resources at hand. This is hard science fiction. Weir meticulously researched all the problems facing Watney, without giving him magically advanced technology to defeat them.
The story is largely told through Watney's journal updates, which read remarkably like following a brilliant engineer's blog while he solves fascinating problems. Weir also infuses Watney with dry humor and an unwillingness to be told that the right way is wrong. For being so dense with science and engineering, the book manages to have a rapid pace.
Fortunately, that pace made the transition to film a bit easier, as did the book's narrative form. Watney's thought processes tend to be spoken, rather than a typical internal monologue, and this keeps it more conversational and brief. In the novel, when Watney has to "do the math" — for example to figure out the hydrogen levels in his living space — you follow along as he actually does the math, then as he develops a procedure to safely lower those levels. The movie tackles this complex scene by making him discover the problem right when it begins, with a small amount of hydrogen igniting dramatically. It keeps the science and the problem-solving, but conveys it quickly and moves on.
That's the real triumph of this movie's creators — they accelerate the plot while maintaining the book's love and respect for science and for thoughtful engineering. They embellish for interesting visuals, like the martian wind, and for dramatic license. But they never go over the top. It's... refreshing, to say the least.
One thing the film does even better than the book is bringing intensity to particular scenes. It's one thing to read Watney's account of how he dealt with an emergency in past tense — it's another to see it as it's happening. The first scene of Watney alone on Mars is incredibly tense and visceral.
This is largely due to Matt Damon's performance as Watney (and to Ridley Scott, for enabling that performance). Damon does a great job coming off not as a movie superhero, but as a funny, capable guy you might run into at your local makerspace. The other roles in the film are well cast and performed, too. Jeff Daniels as the director of NASA is the closest the movie gets to having a 'bad guy.'
He's the one who tends to raise the practical and ethical questions surrounding Watney's predicament. How many resources should be allocated to helping a single man? What will be the cost to future missions if they don't? They're impossible questions to answer, but they deserved to be brought up and debated.
One of the big reasons to see this film is for its cinematography. If you're a space buff, you'll really enjoy the long, lingering shots of the Martian surface. The graphic artists really deserve commendation. They make the landscape look both desolate and fascinating. They had lots of source material to work with from all the rovers and orbiters we've sent to Mars, and they used it to fill each scene with incredible detail. Look carefully and you'll see one of Mars's lumpy moons in the background of a shot on the surface, or a dust storm slowly flowing across a vast mesa when looking down from orbit.
The Martian, much like Apollo 13 twenty years ago, inspires us to cheer on our civilization's brightest scientists and engineers to solve hideously complex problems. NASA has been falling all over itself to help promote the film, and for good reason. I think the reception of this film will show support is still there from the general public to go and do really challenging missions. The Martian the best movie I've seen all year, and I highly recommend it.
I liked the movie a lot, and I was surprised about how almost everything in the book made it into the movie. Then I realized it was because the book was short. The Lord of the Rings is great, there is no way to put all of the material into the movie when you have 10 times the words that the script needs.
Of course there were a million nits, technical and otherwise, but they made a good movie from a good story.
"Who are you?" "No one of consequence." "I must know." "Get used to disappointment."
I read the book twice and was kind of apprehensive of how Sir Ridley would take this on. Would he neuter the science to make it more accessible? Introduce stuff that wasn't in the book at all to make it more blockbuster-y? Would there be some love interest stuff that isn't in the book? Would he remove the gory details of the potato farming to not gross out the audience?
Nope, it stayed very very true to the book. And the scenes at NASA were very very good, I did not get impatient and think "come on get back to Mars". They really captured Watney's personality while giving the audience a real appreciation of the situation he was in. I went to see it twice, it was that good.
Matt Damon nails it. I know it's hip to hate on him but he's a damn fine actor and also the Bourne movies were great, he can pull off the action hero very well.
The supporting cast does a great job. Commander Lewis (Jessica Chastain) is true to the character in the book as are all the NASA people. Jeff Daniels is phenomenal. The only tiny teeny complaint I have is they changed the Venkat Kapoor character to be named Vincent Kapoor, but very capably played by academy award winner Chiwetel Ejiofor. They should still have kept his character as Indian but I guess they didn't want to give him an accent, that would have been much worse. Annoying debate has raged on this point on the IMDB boards ever since the casting choice was made but final consensus (by non-SJW reasonable people) is that it was simply a matter of availability of actors who could pull off the role. Chiwetel Ejiofor was a great choice.
I hope this movie gets all the Oscars coming to it. Best picture, best director, best actor. 10/10. Fantastic.
Mars' atmosphere has about 0.6% of the pressure of Earth's atmosphere at STP. So that part works with this part of the movie, but strongly against a Martian windstorm being able to blow over spaceships, etc. It's enough to move dust around, and that's all.
-- Insert witty one-liner here. --
The force, not the movie.
I was hoping this would be the first sci-fi movie to get the gravity right on Mars.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LvnDIDqcfGI
I have no idea how they could have accomplished this from a SFX perspective and maybe it wouldn't have added to the story. I was disappointed with the scene where he was disassembling the MAV and the pieces were falling to the surface at a very Earth-like speed. Seemed like a easy place to add a little SFX magic to mimic Mars gravity.
Great movie overall though!
I read an interview with Weir that says that the Windstorm on Mars is the one thing that couldn't have happened as it did in the book. But it was necessary to strand Watney.
The other thing that is mentioned is the radioactive heater (OK it was a power source, but it is only used for the heat it gives off) that Watney retrieves. At the moment it is possible, just not surviving being close to it, but this could change in the near future. The book is set around 2030, so this one could be possible by then.
Ah, yes. 401(K)s. I sure want to put my retirement in the hands of the same people who created a bubble market in the US and then bet against the value of the dollar in international exchanges right as they popped it. I feel MUCH safer leaving money in the hands of private sector morons who get to drive $1 million cars in NYC,