The movie is directed by Ridley Scott and stars Matt Damon in the lead, along with Jessica Chastain, Kristen Wiig, Kate Mara, Michael Pena, Jeff Daniels, Chiwetel Ejiofor and Donald Glover. It’s a glass-half-full look at humanity told from three points of view. Weir’s novel is primarily narrated via Mark’s logs with occasional flashes over to the action back on Earth.
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Watney must use his wits and science knowledge to buy time.
But Watney wakes up, alone, many millions of miles from home, with a limited supply of food, water and resources.
Stan, who also recently starred opposite Meryl Streep in the music-themed family drama “Ricki and the Flash”, is now reprising his role as The Winter Soldier in the hotly anticipated Marvel superhero sequel “Captain America: Civil War”.
Stranded on Mars, Damon’s character must survive on the planet until help arrives, which could take years. Believing him to be dead, they leave the planet and continue with their mission.
The Martian releases in cinemas on Friday.
With NASA announcing the presence of water on present-day Mars and Ridley Scott’s The Martian dropping this weekend, to say the Red Planet has been on our mind would be an understatement.
In a device effectively adapted from the book, Mark communicates with the audience, and keeps the first third of “The Martian” from being a silent movie, via video diaries in which he records the ups and downs of his efforts to stay alive. You can easily guess what that end game is; there’s never a doubt, even as NASA scrambles for solutions, what the answer will be, only how it will be executed. Things on the ground are a little more mixed.
“I got to go to the JPL in Pasadena and meet with all the robotics guys and see the Curiosity Rover and do virtual reality to be on Mars and see what that would be like”, said Jessica Chastain, who plays the commander of the Mars mission.
Enter the use of GoPro cameras, which are positioned all over the HAB (habitat) in a way that feels perfectly natural.
Houston has more than one problem. Not for a book or anything; it was just me on my couch…
I’m not the biggest fan of a few of Ridley Scott’s most recent work, but he’s right in his element with this sci-fi gem, creating a truly magical movie experience in the groundbreaking vein of Gravity. And meanwhile, we also visit Watney’s crewmembers aboard their Ares vessel, with its winding corridors and cramped crew quarters.
Complaints of overstuffing aside, The Martian deserves recognition for managing to identify and strike the ideal tone to differentiate itself from other space-based films. When a catastrophic Martian storm hits and they’re making their way back to the MAV (Mars Ascent Vehicle), Watney’s struck by a communications antenna, a blow that both knocks him unconscious and carries him too far from the MAV to be recovered.
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The astronaut is Mark Watney (Matt Damon), a botanist sent along on one of a series of Mars expeditions.
