THE MARTIAN (AVERAGE SCORE 9/10) Directed by Ridley Scott; Written by Drew Goddard; Starring Matt Damon, Jessica Chastain, Kate Mara, Jeff Daniels, Gabriel Peña, Sebastian Stan, Sean Bean, Chiwetel Ejiofor and Kristen Wiig; Rated PG-13 for some strong language, injury images, and brief nudity.; Running time 141 minutes; In wide release October 2.
From “Alien” to “Blade Runner”, Ridley Scott has directed some of the most iconic and classic sci-fi movies of the last few decades. While there is a lot of disagreement over his work on “Prometheus”, most everyone was excited to see him bring Andy Weir’s best-selling novel to life on the big screen.
A bunch of us here at BSR were able to see the movie, and we all wanted to chime in and share our thoughts on what worked and what didn’t.
Set in the near future, “The Martian” spends most of its time on the red planet where botanist Mark Watney (Matt Damon) has been abandoned and left for dead. The team of astronauts he was a part of was forced to evacuate due to a ferocious wind storm, and Watney was struck by debris that punctured his suit and knocked his bio monitor offline. Luckily, the blood from his wound sealed his suit shut, and he wakes the next day and stumbles back to the habitat they had set up. Unluckily, he has no way to contact mission control, only a small amount of food and pretty much no chance to survive until the next manned mission reaches Mars four years hence. Putting all of his knowledge to good use, he manages to not only create enough water to survive but also to irrigate and raise potatoes in the dead and unforgiving Mars soil. Eventually, he finds a way to communicate with mission control, who informs the crew that Watney is still alive but forbids them from returning to Mars to rescue him. The crew revolts much to the chagrin of the director of NASA, Teddy Sanders (Jeff Daniels), who must now find a way to resupply the shuttle as it slingshots around earth and back to the red planet to retrieve Watney before he succumbs to starvation or death from a myriad of dangers found on the wasteland of Mars.
Adam – The easiest way to explain this movie is to say that it’s like “Apollo 13” meets “Castaway”, and while that’s pretty accurate, it doesn’t accurately summarize everything that’s going on in this movie. Simply put, it’s absolutely fantastic and easily one of the best of the year. Gorgeously shot and masterfully directed by Scott, “The Martian” rests almost solely on the shoulders of Matt Damon, and he gives one of the best performances of his life. To be able to fully hold the audience in sway when he’s the only one on screen for a majority of the movie takes a level of acting excellence that few are able to achieve let alone master. Drew Goddard is back with another incredible script as the character of Mark Watney is extremely well-written as well. In fact, all the dialogue is snappy, witty and has more than enough charm and laughs to perfectly cut through the suspense and drama and temper it with just enough humor to give the audience a brief reprieve from the tension on screen. Which isn’t to say there aren’t some nail-biting moments; the last twenty minutes or so had me literally on the edge of my seat waiting to see what would happen. What I’m basically trying to get across is that “The Martian” is one of the best films I’ve seen all year, and I’m wrestling with whether or not it can top “Mad Max: Fury Road” which currently sits atop that list. Go see it as soon as you possibly can.
Bryan – For me, the major frustration of this film is that it was directed by Ridley Scott. Remember the feeling you get when you reach the end of “Blade Runner?” Or even “Alien?” There’s this anxious ambiguity and you’re left searching into the text of the film for deepening meaning of what it is you want from it. With “The Martian,” unfortunately, Scott goes full Spielberg. By the time I realized there was nothing at stake and no sacrifices to be made and no hard choices left in the film and that a cheery, “War of the Worlds” style ending was coming my way, I was a little disappointed. By the time Matt Damon’s character, Mark Watney, is verbally wrapping up exactly how I should feel and what the movie was about.
It was a sad move for a Ridley Scott film. Had Ron Howard directed this, I’d’ve hailed it as a masterpiece, but the dizzying heights Ridley Scott is able to reach in his best films makes this film almost a misfire.
Like Adam said, it really is a lazy reskin of “Apollo 13” and “Castaway,” which makes me wonder why Tom Hanks wasn’t in the Jeff Daniels role. Technically, the film was beautifully shot and well acted, the effects were great, and the editing was crisp and kept the pacing tight. I found the music largely forgettable, but really the best thing it did was stay out of the way. The fact that it’s so competently put together is what makes the last act and the ultimate feeling the film derives so unsatisfying. It has all the right ingredients but doesn’t ever manage to pull them together.
And I wonder who the audience is? Inside jokes about science and survival on a foreign planet? The lead character is so brilliant that it’s hard to identify with him. With Alfonso Cuaron’s “Gravity,” we have a character that allows us to imagine ourselves in her position. Watney is almost too hard to immerse yourself in. I have no idea how I’d try to cope with growing food on Mars and it makes that dilemma too far out of my sphere of experience to care completely. And if that were the point of the movie, to make me feel insecure in my ability to survive stranded on Mars, I guess mission accomplished.
This is one of the better films of the year, though. A solid 7/10. Best sci-fi of the year though is still a match between “Ex Machina” and “Mad Max: Fury Road” though.
Adam – But see, that’s actually something I liked about this movie — it was an uplifting sci-fi movie instead of the more dreary and disheartening ones we’ve gotten recently. “Ex Machina” and “Mad Max: Fury Road” are both absolutely brilliant films, but they present such a bleak and terrifying future for humanity. While I have no problem with a dark, dystopian future or a crazy world where Xenomorphs stalk us, it is nice every so often to get the antithesis of that. “The Martian” told a story that celebrated humanity and our ability to struggle with and overcome adversity. It was refreshing. 10/10
Andy – I just thought that this movie exuded fun and good feelings. We don’t get a lot of optimism in most sci-fi these days. And I wouldn’t have expected it from Ridley Scott of all people. But as Matt Damon goes about solving all of his pressing needs to ensure his survival, it never gets maudlin or bleak. It was fun to see Matt Damon “science the shit out of…” various problems. This movie echoes the human spirit to explore and survive in a way I haven’t seen in a sci-fi movie in a long time.
And while Damon is definitely the star here, the entire supporting cast is absolutely fantastic. It’s filled out by Oscar and Emmy winners and nominees who each can easily carry their own film, and they bring a lot to flesh out these characters who might otherwise be relatively two-dimensional.
The visual filmmaking and attention to detail here is stunning as well. Not only is Mars eerily gorgeous, familiar yet alien, but Damon’s transformation over the course of the movie is amazing. There are several scenes in the opening half hour of the film where we see Matt Damon, peak physical shape, sans shirt. (Yes, everyone, calm down a moment.) By the end of the film because of malnourishment and stretching his food supply as long as possible, they transform his toned body to this gaunt, skeletal frame. It’s like the opposite of the special effects from “Captain America.” While it’s never shown off exactly how much weight Watney is supposed to have lost, you can see it in several quick shots before he dons his space suit. It’s haunting, and a reminder of just how hard he’s had to fight to survive.
The best thing I can say about this is it made me feel good. It was fun. And it makes me want to show it to my kids so they can get excited about space again. It made me wish we funded our military less and our schools and NASA more. It made me hope we can show half of the ingenuity of the fictional Mark Watney and conquer interplanetary travel.
As Bryan said, while it’s still not the experience that “Ex Machina” or “Mad Max: Fury Road” are, it’s still a solid 9/10.
Quinn – This was my favorite book of 2014. Not just my favorite science fiction book, my favorite book period. And I tend to be critical of book adaptations. Some take the text of the book and make a wonderful movie without being slavish to it? Others make sure every word is present in the filmed version. I didn’t need that for “The Martian.” There’s a palpable tension and suspense in the book that’s present, even though you know Watney’s going to find a way to survive. You know the same thing in the film adaptation, so my big question going in was whether or not Ridley Scott would be able to communicate that same suspense. I knew the movie would be pretty, I knew with the cast of actors they’d give me the feels — but would the movie work? Would it give viewers that same feeling I had reading it?
Yeah. It did. I knew every beat of the movie, I guessed which scenes wouldn’t be necessary, and they were left out. The isolation, the dread, the “I’m losing my damn mind” of the book is all there–but so is Watney’s humor. In both the book and the movie, he has an optimism and lightness that sustains him as much as the sciencing-the-shit does. Back on Earth, the multiple possibilities of rescue, each ridiculously implausible, all brought with them that suspense. Could they work? Could they “bring him home?” The suspense was there. It was what I wanted. I think it made for a great movie.
Another thing I loved about the book is that, as sci-fi goes, it seemed like something just out of reach. This isn’t 23rd Century Star Trek technology. It felt like what we could do, with adequate funding for NASA and a government that gave a damn. Seeing that on the big screen was cool. The first time we see the spaceship that carries the astronauts to and from Mars, I loved it. Seeing Watney’s habitat and rover on Mars? Loved it. The details, from their spacesuits to their control panels, all felt real. With a strong sense of design from Ridley Scott and his team, but it all felt right. It didn’t take me out of the moment, it let me focus on the story. And the simple story of “The Martian,” beyond the acting, beyond the music, beyond the shiny sets, is what makes it great. I’d give it 9/10.
Cassidy – I didn’t read the book until earlier this year and it’s neck and neck with “Ready Player One” for the most fun I had reading in the last nine months. What struck me as special about the book and subsequently the movie is something that Quinn touched upon, how reachable it is. I’m as big a fan as anyone of the grand epic space sci-fi with almost magical technology and exotic (yet somehow anthropomorphic) alien life, this had none of that. It feels like something we might experience in the next few decades.
Space travel is inherently risky and “The Martian” did an excellent job of portraying the real dangers present in that type of endeavor while also showcasing the grandeur or as fictional NASA director Teddy Sanders (Jeff Daniels) said “the reason why we fly.” Stories like “Star Trek” always awaken a hunger in me for a grand future that we may someday, several centuries from now, be able to attain. “The Martian” accomplished this tenfold by showing a very real immediate goal.
While the world portrayed on screen is a far cry from the utopia given to us by Roddenberry, it did show us that we are capable of overcoming seemingly insurmountable obstacles when we work together. Stories like this are incredibly important if we want our generation and the one that comes after us to, at risk of using an obvious simile, reach for the stars.
I would be remiss if I didn’t mention the stellar performances by the cast. I originally had my doubts about some of the choices, I wasn’t sure if Matt Damon would be able to carry the balance of tension, unassuming genius, and humor of Mark Watney. I was equally skeptical of Kristen Wiig taking on a somewhat serious role, both of them hit the mark and delivered in a way that I wasn’t expecting. Donald Glover also showed some stretch with his portrayal of Rich Purnell, the low level astrodynamics employee responsible for creating the maneuver that gets Watney home.
While there were some changes to the narrative, some of them minor, some not as much, it maintained the same feel that the novel offered and each alteration from the source material was either null or made sense for the medium. Even the additional scene added after the end of the story as presented in the novel made sense as the original ending would probably have felt abrupt on screen.
I’ve seen some movies that I really loved this year and while I’m sure that a little bit of my current feelings are a result of the honeymoon phase, that I’m still experiencing even days later, I think it’s my favorite movie of the year. It has a perfect balance of drama, humor, and optimism for the future coupled with gorgeous scenery and, to my mind, flawless execution. I’ve been going over it in my mind for days, I can’t think of any part of it that left me wanting, for me it was a solid 10/10.