Review: The Martian

Matt Damon is astronaut Mark Watney, part of a mission to Mars. Whilst he and the rest of the crew are out exploring the surface, a huge dust storm hits, and Watney looks to have met his demise. The crew (Jessica Chastain, Michael Pena, and Kate Mara among them) need to abort the mission and head back, and assume that Watney is dead. He is still alive, however, and now stranded on the red planet all on his own, with only a minimal amount of oxygen, limited food, and seemingly no way of contacting anyone back on Earth. The rest of the plot, I think is best discovered by yourselves when you watch the film. Chiwetel Ejiofor, Jeff Daniels, Kristen Wiig, and Sean Bean play the various NASA personnel on the ground, whilst Donald Glover plays a young astrophysicist.

 

Bear in mind when I say this that I’m not a fan of the director, but this 2015 space flick might just be the best film in the directorial career of Ridley Scott. His “Alien” and “Blade Runner” are very far from favourites of mine, though I did like “Black Rain”, “Gladiator” and “Prometheus” somewhat. Mix “Gravity”, “Interstellar”, and “Cast Away” and you pretty much have this film. Because it’s a movie about smart people using their brains to solve problems, science-types will probably either love or loathe the film, depending on how the science of the film checks out. Since I’m very far from being a scientist, I don’t need to worry much about that, so long as the movie convinced me of its science. It absolutely did.

 

Based on an Andrew Weir novel, it’s a really interesting film that is particularly interested in problem-solving rather than physical heroics. Whilst Matt Damon can certainly provide the latter, he was also the title maths prodigy in “Good Will Hunting”, so it was a great casting decision to have him play an astronaut, but also an astronaut with a background in botany, which comes in handy during his dire situation. Damon is perfect here, instantly relatable, even if his distaste for the entire disco genre of music annoyed this occasional lover of that particular form of music (I don’t love all disco. I love ABBA, but ‘Waterloo’ was never my jam, for instance). His remarks for Gloria Estefan’s frankly kick-arse ‘Turn the Beat Around’ (much as I loathed “The Specialist”, the film it spawned from) especially perplexed me. If you don’t understand the appeal of that song, it might say more about you than the song (Then again, I’m also a lover of AC/DC, Creedence, Weird Al Yankovic, and Iron Maiden, so my tastes are eclectic and I’m an acquired taste myself). Although the decision to award it the Best Comedy Picture award at the Golden Globes was rightly ridiculed by most (was it because Kristen Wiig’s in it? She’s not even funny in most other films, let alone her straight role in this), it’s certainly a little light-hearted and sarcastic at times. It’s basically “Cast Away” on Mars. I even found myself laughing at the inclusion of ‘Waterloo’ on the soundtrack. Not because it’s a bad song (It’s just one of ABBA’s weaker ‘hits’), just that it’s an absurd film to find it in. By the way, ‘I’m gonna have to science the shit out of this!’ may be my favourite line of 2015. That was hilarious.

 

However, this is indeed a serious and dire situation at the core, I mean it’s not like someone can just come and rescue the guy with a click of the fingers. He’s on Mars, a planet with relatively close approximation to Earth, but still years away from us and space missions themselves take a long time to set up. He’s all alone on another planet, with only a limited amount of resources and it appears he only has about a month’s worth of oxygen left for himself. This is 16 minutes into the movie, I might add. I give full credit to Scott and screenwriter Drew Goddard (the terrible “Cloverfield”, the quite decent “World War Z”) for getting us off and running with a particularly exciting opener. The imagery is also absolutely stunning and completely convincing. I also commend Scott and Goddard for managing to stretch this out to over 2 hours. After 16 minutes the audience wonders just how in the hell this guy is going to make it to the 30 minute mark of the film, let alone how the filmmakers will manage to stretch it out to two hours without stretching itself too thin. The filmmakers nonetheless manage to find new sources of drama that arise for our protagonist, and the film never loses your interest.

 

Although I think Kristen Wiig seems a little out of place here, the supporting cast is pretty solid elsewhere. Jeff Daniels and Chiwetel Ejiofor are particularly reliable, and Michael Pena is always a source of amusement. Meanwhile, Sean Bean fans can probably relax, as he’s Earthbound in this, so the usual Sean Bean rule is unlikely to apply here. It has to be said though, that if I were an astronaut and any of my crew looked like Jessica Chastain or Matt Damon, no way would I be going around the corner to the shops with them, let alone into space. Damon in particular has form needing to be bloody rescued all the time.

 

Although all three films are worthwhile, this film is better than “Interstellar” (with that film’s co-stars Chastain and Damon appearing here to offer slight parallels) but not the amazing “Gravity”. Damon is excellent, the story is interesting problem-solving stuff mixed with human drama and a nice sense of humour. I particularly liked its lack of sentimentality at times.

 

Rating: B