Out of this world

Help is only 140 million miles away. Ridley Scott brings his A game to the sci-fi book adaptation.

The Martian is a sci-fi survival movie based off the book of the same name. It’s directed by Ridley Scott, best known for directing Alien, Blade Runner, and Prometheus. Matt Damon plays astronaut Mark Watney who gets stranded on Mars after he is hit by debris as he and his crew are trying to escape during a major storm. It turns out that he survived due to his blood creating a seal in his suit but he has no way off the planet and must stay alive with no contact with Earth, as well as limited food and water until he can be rescued.

The Martian is tremendous. Matt Damon is fantastic in this movie. He perfectly captures the sarcastic, funny, and ingenuitive character that Mark Watney is while still exhibiting the mental effects of being stranded on a barren planet with no one to talk to. Jessica Chastain as Commander Lewis (the leader of the Mars mission) was one of the best performances in the movie. When she finds he’s out Mark is still alive she looks absolutely devastated and she then has to spends the entire film with the burden that she left one of her crew members alone on Mars. All of the crew and NASA members in The Martian are incredibly likeable and that adds to the pain felt whenever something breaks or goes wrong.

This is one of the most faithful adaptations from book to movie I have ever seen. There are no major changes and if they had left all of the problems Mark encounters on Mars that were in the book, the movie would be 4 hours long. The only thing that changed that was distracting to anyone who has read the book is the ending. It does provide a bit of an epilogue that the book doesn’t have, although I think that I like the ending of the movie a little more than the book.

As far as things I didn’t like it was really hard to find something that wasn’t nitpicking but the only things wrong with the movie are really small. There were some scenes that were not as suspenseful as they could have been. Thats where some of the problems Mark faces on Mars in the book being left out hurt it. An example would be when a minor dust storm drains his solar power and NAASA has no way to tell him which was one of the most interesting parts of the book. Some of those parts were the most suspenseful parts of the book.  I also wasn’t sure how the 3D was going to hold up but I would highly recommend that to anyone going to see this movie. The massive sweeps of the Martian landscape and the intensity of the storms are breathtaking.

The thing I love most about this movie is its positive depiction of the future of the world. It’s great because it seems like every sci-fi movie in the last 10 years has had a dim description of the future where it’s impossible to do anything without it being with the fate of the world on the line. NASA is  going to Mars because they want to, not because they have to. Overall this is perfectly acted, expertly shot and downright astonishing. This is the best movie I’ve seen this year and I recommend it to anyone.