Rating: A-
Andy Weir’s debut novel “The Martian” has crash-landed onto the big screen and is earning quite a reputation. It is the feel-good space movie that audiences who found “Gravity” too stressful and “Interstellar” too scientific will love.
Yes, it is another space survival story, but this time we get to explore Mars, which, thanks to Dariusz Wolski’s (“Sweeney Todd”, “Prometheus”) cinematography and Arthur Max’s (“Gladiator”, “American Gangster”) production design, is a breathtaking experience.
An American mission to Mars is cut short when a storm hits the planet. The Ares III team makes a close but successful, emergency evacuation with one minor casualty. Astronaut Mark Watney (Matt Damon) was left behind and presumed dead, but, by some miracle, he is very much alive.
Don’t be quick to call Watney “lucky.”
He is wounded and alone. He is also faced with food and oxygen supply that will be long gone before a rescue mission can reach him. Watney weighs his options: give up hope or defy the extremely unlikely survival odds of his situation. Motivated by the daunting challenge of achieving the impossible, Watney chooses the latter, and “The Martian” unfolds into an alluring seduction of suspense driven by wry humor.
This is director Ridley Scott’s (“Alien,” “Prometheus”) third journey to space and is by far the most optimistic and humorous of his galaxy travel stories. Perhaps this was spurred by his collaboration with screenwriter Drew Goddard, (“Cloverfield,” “Cabin in the Woods”) whose adaptation of Weir’s novel is characterized by a fast moving plot with sporadic one-liners.
For all the science and tech enthusiasts out there, be prepared for the excited anticipation that accompanies watching Watney continually solve problems throughout the rest of the movie and boldly go where no inventor has gone before.
Watney may be trapped on Mars, but his mind is freed to explore his full potential, an appealing attribute of the movie. Plausible or not, the science seen on the screen is enthralling. The film is science fiction, after all.
A majority of Matt Damon’s screen time is a one-man show. Pulling off this difficult feat only further proves Damon’s execution as out-of-this-world.
“The Martian” would have been a fairly quiet film if Watney hadn’t kept a video log of each “SOL”, or day on Mars. His logs as “the Martian” provide the perfect excuse to talk out loud, so the audience knows what is happening.
Being the lone person on an entire planet must make Watney desperate to talk to someone because these one-sided conversations he delivers are filled with animation. The depth of Watney’s character is not explored in his dialogue as much as how horrible Captain Lewis’s (Jessica Chastain) disco music is.
Before he can consider contacting NASA, Watney has some more pressing issues. The basic survival necessities we humans require like food, water, oxygen, etc. are readily available here on Earth but unfortunately not so much on Mars.
The Red Planet has yet to be found capable of growing crops, but, thankfully, one of the Ares III team members left behind was a botanist.
Watney’s character is used as the comic relief when the movie takes its serious turns, and he delivers the iconic line that his only option is to “science the sh— out of this.”
After much trial and error, Mark creates a successful potato harvest and becomes the first person to colonize Mars, to which he gives the snarky response, “suck it, Neil Armstrong.”
Meanwhile on Earth, NASA discovers that Watney is alive, and the movie becomes an alternating tale of two planets facing different problems over the same issue: Watney’s survival. Announcing to the public that Watney is actually alive and stranded on Mars puts NASA in a bad position.
Even if they can devise a timely rescue mission, they have no way to contact Watney, and someone has to tell the Ares III team that Watney is alive.
The director of NASA Teddy Sanders (Jeff Daniels) decides to keep them uninformed while they are still in space despite colleagues Vincent Kapoor (Chiwetel Ejiofor) and Mitch Henderson’s (Sean Bean) protests. This acts as a subplot of the film.
Eventually, Mark talks to NASA, NASA talks to the Ares III team, and the entire planet is now collaborating to defy extremely unlikely odds and create a successful rescue mission to bring one of their own back safely to Earth.
The global picture of superpowers joining forces and working peacefully together is neither subtle nor lost in this film.
Though farfetched, they finally devise a rescue mission.
Only perfection in timing, velocity and precision will successfully retrieve Watney after he’s launched into deep space.
This is all assuming he survives the powerful g-force he will experience from his makeshift, topless rocket that is supposed to get him there. The suspense is real for the crowds who gather in city squares across the world and for the moviegoers sitting in the theaters, as they all watch to find out what the fate of Mark Watney will be. Be sure and get to the movie theaters soon to join in this suspense and witness the brilliance and entertainment of this film.
