The Martian (2015)

This review includes full spoilers. Proceed accordingly. For other movie reviews from me, click HERE:

Dusty: In the face of overwhelming odds, I’m left with only one option. I’m gonna have to review the **** out of this!

Rating: PG-13
Director: Ridley Scott
Writers: Drew Goddard, Andy Weir
Stars: Matt Damon, Jessica Chastain, Kristen Wiig, Jeff Daniels, Michael Peña, Sean Bean, Sebastian Stan, Donald Glover
Release Date: October 2, 2015 (United States)
Run time: 2 hours, 24 minutes

THE PLOT:

via wiki:

In 2035, the crew of the Ares III mission to Mars is exploring Acidalia Planitia on Martian solar day (sol) 18 of their 31-sol expedition. A severe dust storm threatens to topple their Mars Ascent Vehicle (MAV) and in the ensuing evacuation, astronaut Mark Watney is struck by debris and presumed dead. With the MAV on the verge of toppling, the remaining crew takes off for their orbiting vessel, the Hermes, leaving Watney behind. Watney awakens after the storm, injured and with a low-oxygen warning. He returns to the crew’s surface habitat (“Hab”) and treats his wound. As Watney recovers, he begins a video diary. Unable to communicate with Earth, his only chance of rescue is the next Mars mission in four years, where Ares IV will land 3,200 kilometers (2,000 mi) away at the Schiaparelli crater; the Ares IV MAV has already arrived on the site in preparation for the mission.

Watney’s immediate concern is food; being a botanist, he creates a garden inside the Hab using Martian soil fertilized with the crew’s bio-waste and manufactures water from leftover rocket fuel. He then cultivates potatoes using whole potatoes reserved for a special Thanksgiving meal. He also begins modifying a crewed rover for the journey to the Ares IV MAV. On Earth, NASA satellite planner Mindy Park, reviewing satellite images, notices moved equipment and realizes Watney must be alive. NASA director Teddy Sanders releases the news to the public but decides not to inform the Ares III crew en route to Earth, over flight director Mitch Henderson’s strong objection. Watney takes the rover on a one-month journey to retrieve the Pathfinder probe, which fell silent in 1997. Using Pathfinder‘s camera, he establishes visual contact with NASA. The agency transmits a software patch to link the mission’s rover with Pathfinder, enabling communication by text. Sanders finally allows Henderson to inform Watney’s crewmates.

The Hab’s airlock blows out, injuring Watney and destroying the potato crops; although he repairs the airlock, he is again threatened by starvation. Mars missions director Vincent Kapoor and Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) director Bruce Ng prepare a resupply to deliver enough food for Watney to survive until Ares IV’s arrival. Sanders orders routine safety inspections bypassed to expedite the mission, but an oversight causes catastrophe as the resupply spacecraft disintegrates shortly after launch. The China National Space Administration decides to offer a launch vehicle — originally intended for the Taiyang Shen space probe — to resupply Watney. Astrophysicist Rich Purnell devises an alternative plan: have the Taiyang Shen launcher rendezvous with and resupply the Hermes, which will then use Earth’s gravity to “slingshot” back to Mars two years earlier than Ares IV. Sanders rejects the idea, considering it too risky for the Hermes crew. Henderson surreptitiously sends Purnell’s proposal to the crew; they unanimously vote in favor and divert the Hermes. Sanders is forced to support them publicly, but demands Henderson’s resignation after Watney is rescued.

After 7 months, Watney makes the 90-sol journey to Schiaparelli, where the MAV for Ares IV is pre-positioned. He plans to use it to rendezvous with the Hermes, but needs to lighten it considerably by partially dismantling it. He takes off, but as the MAV runs out of fuel, the Hermes crew find the separation is too great to reach him. Using their altitude adjustment fuel brings them closer, but now Hermes velocity relative to the MAV is too fast for Watney to be picked up. Commander Lewis quickly improvises, using an explosive to breach a forward airlock, resulting in air violently escaping and slowing them down. Lewis uses a tethered Manned Maneuvering Unit to reach Watney, but they are still too far apart. Watney pierces his pressure suit, using the escaping air to propel himself to Lewis, ending his 561 sols alone on Mars.

After returning to Earth, Watney becomes a survival instructor for astronaut candidates. Five years later, as the Ares V is about to launch, those involved in Watney’s rescue are seen in their current lives.

My Review:

The Martian felt familiar. It’s essentially a shipwreck story and we’ve seen those before. It’s also a film wherein Matt Damon plays a genius. We’ve seen those before, too. Despite the familiarity, the movie’s science fiction adaptation to the old maritime story model, and its warmth and humor in the telling, make it exceedingly enjoyable. This was a story that could have felt bleak, or it could have been made with inwardly reflective religious or spiritual tones. Instead, this is a movie that face forward toward a bright future, about hope, optimism, and the human spirit overcoming obstacles. You’ll feel good when you get ot the credits.

The screenplay here was really well done. The two plus hour runtime flew by quickly, with no moments of drag or boredom. The success of the script was in large part due to the slow build out of the cast’s characterizations and the constant injection of gallows humor when things were going wrong. Damon’s Mark Watney was so engaging, and believable, that I was on the edge of my seat even when he was growing potatoes. The movie is, among other things, a parable about not taking anything for granted. Maybe we should always cheer to see sprouts poking out of the soil. I certainly did.

From a cinematography standpoint, The Martian looks fantastic. The exterior scenes, from the surface of Mars, were filmed in Wadi Rum, in Jordan. It looked exactly like the island in Canada where NASA films its Mars Rover footage. (I’m kidding. Maybe.) The rescue scene at the end of the film was particularly beautiful. I’m a sucker for shots from space looking out on a planet.

Speaking of the rescue scene, the action of the film was done really well throughout. The movie looked like it had a big budget – which it did – but its picked it spots well, too. The look of the future technology was never distracting or unrealistic seeming, despite the fact that this is supposed to be happening ten years from now – and twenty years from when the film was made. Honestly, they probably undersold the extent to which Elon Musk was going to try overtly to make everything about space travel look futuristic. Nevertheless it worked.

The acting in the movie was great. The bulk of that was built on Matt Damon just being believably a genius and charismatic while doing it. That’s his bread and butter and I can’t think of a better way to be typecast. He was awesome. I really liked the Jeff Daniels and Sean Bean scenes back on earth. It felt like we got to know both men and though they had different points of view, neither seemed like an overtly bad guy. Sometimes decisions are hard and both sides of a disagreements are valid. I really enjoyed Donald Glover’s relatively brief scenes, too.

If you will permit me a tangent, have one primary gripe with the movie, and it’s unfortunate because this gripe was built into the plot and was a major recurring gag. I did not like most of the musical soundtrack. Watney is stranded on Mars and he has to listen to Captain Lewis’s music playlist to keep himself sane – and we as the audience get to hear what he’s listening to in turn. Apparently Captain Lewis, in the year 2035, listened to a high volume of 1960s and 1970s music. Is that possible? Sure. It is likely? No.

If we assume the crew members on the ship are between 40 to 50 years old, max, that means they were born between 1985 and 1995 within the story. Captain Lewis should realistically have been listening to the music of her teenage and early adult years – Lady Gaga, Katy Perry, Drake, Britney Spears, etc. I get why the movie avoided this. It would have had the main character complaining about music and musicians who were still popular at the time the movie was released. If she was listening to “oldies” then the music should have been from the 80s or 90s, not disco and earlier.

What I’m trying to say is that Captain Lewis would have been listening to MMMBop by Hanson. It’s a small thing, and it didn’t ruin the movie at all, but it was just a little bit annoying. One line of dialogue from Captain Lewis, after the rescue, probably could have made sense of that not being her own taste, either. “Oh, my Mom made this for me.”

I did actually really like the score – the part which was not (outdated) pop music – and especially during the rescue scene at the end. The switch to the classical scoring in that scene gave a lot of weight to the moment and it was really good.

One of my favorite scenes in the movie was the brief scene wherein the NASA guys back on earth and having a secret meeting to plot Watney’s rescue. I’ll link it below. The reason I enjoyed it – with Sean Bean in the scene – should be pretty self-evident to anyone who has seen The Lord of the Rings films.

Overall, this is a really good movie and I highly recommend it. In a world of cynicism and self-reflection, this is a warm, funny shipwreck story that looks forward and is compelling and uplifting. I felt really good about life when I got to the end. And now if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to go stare in wonder at plants growing.

Have you seen The Martian? If so, what did you think?