This time, Scott is directing The Martian – an adaptation based on Andy Weir’s novel about an astronaut named Mark Watney (Matt Damon), who’s accidentally left on Mars (oops!), his battle for survival, and the efforts to bring him back home. It doesn’t show Mann’s Lazarus Mission up until Cooper finds him covered in plastic like a microwave burrito.
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The water on the Martian surface remains in liquid state because of its saltier nature, without which it will freeze in Mars’ bone-chilling temperatures. Bright, thematically can-do, fast-paced nearly to a fault, and fundamentally optimistic, The Martian is science fiction of the infinitely more comforting Star Trek strain.
The director who gave us Blade Runner, Alien and Thelma and Louise has also recently given us Prometheus, The Counsellor and Exodus: Gods and Kings.
But Watney wakes up, alone, many millions of miles from home, with a limited supply of food, water and resources. More a visual stylist than an exponent of any particular worldview, Scott made the feminist road movie Thelma and Louise, the Best Picture-winning swords-and-sandals epic Gladiator, and about 20 other features. No matter how unbelievable or how much “McGuyvering” Watney uses to save his life time-and-time again, there’s a scientific reason why and it’s explained. 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. One of the best scenes involves a Lord of the Rings joke with Sean Bean in the room. Mission commander Melissa Lewis (Jessica Chastain) is forced to take off, without even recovering his body, or risk losing the whole crew. That has to be worth at least 100 Nerd Points. With NASA exploring new galaxies and Space X making space travel available to everyday billionaires, curiosity about the cosmos is surging and, as a result, space films are becoming more grounded. The next mission to Mars is scheduled to arrive in four years – and no one knows he’s alive.
That’s not to say the film isn’t intense or without its dark moments, but it’s tone is closer to Ron Howard’s similarly themed Apollo 13.
And if I’m honest the use of a few of the music was overdone or ridiculously obvious (Bowie’s Starman, really?). “I was watching the movie, watching away, and suddenly it hits you about a little bit into the movie and you’re like, ‘This is a great movie!'” he laughingly shared, “and I was just taken with it”. The Martian is the kind of the movie you never want to end.
True, the plot has elements of Interstellar and Gravity, but certainly has enough of its own identity to make it able to stand apart.
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The Martian resoundingly rejects all that.
