The Martian, directed by Ridley Scott
Unlike
Interstellar, this is a far more straightforward space epic, one which should leave nobody with any questions other than if the science contained within is legitimate. Fortunately, while many major things were not scientifically accurate, I don't give that much of a shit. If you're hoping for scientific accuracy in a movie in order to enjoy it, you'll be waiting for a very long time. I tried not to go through space movies in such quick succession like this, but I felt the need to watch it.
Interstellar was expiring, so when it came to that one I didn't have any choice.
Just like
Gravity, this film cuts straight to the chase and does not bother to bloat the first act with unnecessary exposition. All you need to know is that NASA has sent a crew to Mars and they are halfway through their mission. Commander Lewis (Jessica Chastain), Mark Watney (Matt Damon), Dr. Vogel (Aksel Hennie), Beth Johanssen (Kate Mara), Chris Beck (Sebastian Stan), and Major Martinez (Michael Pena) make up the crew. There is a massive storm coming, one which will knock their ascent vehicle over and leave them stranded on Mars. So, unfortunately, their mission must be aborted. While evacuating, Watney disappears and cannot join them on the vehicle, so they must depart. After the storm is over, we find that Watney is still alive. His personal mission then becomes finding out how to survive for four more years.
The movie is full of good performances although the characters are very thin. For a movie of such length (2:20), that's a bit odd, until you sit down to watch it and realize the movie is packed with things that cannot be removed or expanded on. Watney uses a video log to explain to NASA how he does these things, and presumably the video log will be recovered in four years. So, you get all your exposition there. NASA's frantic attempts to establish communication are interesting, even though this feels like the general outline of a plot I've seen before. I just can't put my finger on it. Jeff Daniels plays the NASA director, Chiwetel Ejiofor plays the director of their Mars missions and general communicator with Watney, Sean Bean plays this specific mission director, and Kristen Wiig is very well cast as the PR director tasked with handling this catastrophe. This is quite the big cast, but I'm not done yet. You also have Benedict Wong as the director of JPL, and Donald Glover as one of his employees.
Now that I'm done with all that, I can talk about the most important thing in the movie. It is by far the cinematography and overall presentation. This movie could have been extremely dull in somebody else's hands. I'm not sure who to credit for all the things here, and perhaps in an HD era this movie would have looked excellent no matter what. I don't know. Choosing Wadi Rum for the location of "Mars" was quite smart. Its been done before, and everyone can see why just by googling it. There's some that haven't used the location as Mars, which I just don't understand at all. The overall look of the film is extremely important, and while this and the story lead me to give this a good rating, I did find quite a bit of flaws with this movie.
Ridiculous enough to mention first off, is the idea that the entire world is consumed with the idea of bringing Watney home from Mars. Maybe this is part of some kind of future where people get along and care about each other like that, but it doesn't resemble any realistic vision of the future I can see, nor is there a reason given for why the future is like this. The ending of the movie made me laugh rather than getting the emotion out of me they were attempting to accomplish. Also, I thought Wiig should have been some kind of bigger part of the movie, because her sporadic lines were quite good. The characters are also quite thin and it's not possible to understand all their motivations, but I did say that the way the film started was good. The film starting that way renders that an inevitability, so I shouldn't complain. Also, as mentioned already, the science is pretty bad. Some things like not accurately portraying the effects of radiation can be forgiven, as otherwise there would be no movie. Same for the big storm. Beck waving the probe in is not so forgivable. It didn't make any sense and I don't like the idea of treating spacecraft like a diesel truck. Repairing the airlock that way is goofy shit too. The other stuff, it's just a movie and a good one.
In closing, I did like seeing a movie where Sean Bean didn't die, and Michael Pena is always a good performer. I know why he doesn't have a bigger place in Hollywood, but that sucks. I also enjoyed that the production was mindful of the lack of skin care someone on a deserted planet would have, as well as their tooth decay. I'm also glad that the space epics of late don't seem to be dealing with unrealistic scenarios where people are shooting each other, or crews that are entirely uncooperative with each other, or have futuristic weaponry they use to do weird shit, as well as numerous other things I could mention. The visual effects were amazing, and specifically I'm thinking of chunks of dirt that were flying up the ascent vehicle during the storm. Also, the set designs were so nice as to be a little offputting in some cases. JPL doesn't waste money like that, their buildings look nowhere near that nice.
Overall, all these things taken in tandem make a good movie. It's not as good as
Gravity or
Interstellar, but I like that Hollywood is doing things with this genre. The first 30 minutes of the movie actually made it difficult for me to understand how anyone would expect to make money off something like this, but I suppose people have changed and are ready for something different. While some of the characters were padding and while the celebrations for his return were overboard, ultimately what's important was that by the end of the movie I cared about what happened to Watney.
7.5/10
