'THE MARTIAN' PROVES THAT GENERAL AUDIENCES CAN STILL

LOVE SCIENCE FICTION

The Martian
Trailer
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Institutional detail
2015 cert 12A
Dir Ridley scott

I dropped the ball on this one. I often criticize Hollywood for not being willing to
make genuine, hard science fiction movies anymore, and I begroan the continued
bastardization of my beloved Star Trek and the dumbed down action flicks that
Hollywood dared to put the "Star Trek" title on. The studios say that science fiction
don't make enough money. Apologists say that casual audiences are too dumb and
impatient to sit through any kind of slow-developing, cerebral movie. Ironically
enough (despite my own frequent cynicism) I think both these apologetics are too
cynical and don't give audiences enough credit. I firmly believe that if the studios
make a good movie, the audiences will go see it, especially if it's properly
marketed.So when a thoughtful, science fiction movie like The Martian comes out, I
try to make a point of spending my money to see it in order to show my support for
the continued development of the genre. I made a point of seeing Gravity, despite
that movie appearing to be little more than space destruction porn and iMax eye
candy. I also made sure that I saw last year's Interstellar. And both of the Planet
of the Apes reboots have been surprisingly excellent. Unfortunately, I lost track of
the release date of The Martian and missed seeing it on opening weekend (one of
Hollywood's biggest metrics of a movie's success). I also wasn't able to see it the
week after, or the week after that due to my weekends being consistently busy. It
was over a month before I finally put my foot down and said "I'm seeing this movie
now! No more delay!".
Fortunately, the rest of the country vindicated me by heaping dump trucks full of
praise on the movie and putting their butts in the theatre seats to keep The

Martian at the number 1 spot in the box office for almost the entire month of
October (only briefly falling to number 2 for one week behind Goosebumps really?). It finally took an umpteenth sequel to a beloved franchise to topple The
Martian when Spectre (which I also saw this weekend) held the top spot for two
weeks in a row. The movie itself is earning Oscar buzz, and Matt Damon seems to
be the current favourite for "Best Actor". So there you have it, Hollywood: make a
good sci-fi movie, and they will come, and they will love it.

Matt Damon's character is charming and easily has the audience rooting
for him against all odds.
And the movie is absolutely fantastic! It's ambitions are closer to Apollo 13 than to
2001: A Space Odyssey. It's a very believable, down-to-earth, science fiction film,
the events of which feel like they could happen tomorrow. Matt Damon's
performance is absolutely charming as a NASA astronaut stranded on Mars and
presumed dead when his team is forced to evac due to a violent sandstorm. Damon
grabs the audience's hearts and his struggles to survive keep us captivated and
glued to our seats for the entire length of the movie. We laugh as he "sciences the
shit out of Mars" and one-ups Neil Armstrong by declaring himself humanity's first
"space pirate". We worry for him as his rations dwindle and his body withers away.
And we cry for him when disaster makes his death look like an inevitability. The rest
of the cast is excellent as well, except maybe for Jeff Daniels' overly-stoic, nononsense Director of NASA; and the exaggeratedly-energetic Donald Glover, boygenius astrophysicist.
Visually, the movie is a treat. Ridley Scott has an excellent sense for visual storytelling, and his style is on full display here. The sets are authentic and lived-in, and
the Mars landscapes are breathtakingly beautiful and hauntingly barren. Scott
knows when to show restraint and how to make even simple actions exciting. There
was plenty opportunity to indulge in the disaster-porn of Gravity, but instead, we're
treated to tense space-walks and the surprisingly-exciting activity of growing
potatoes. The technology depicted all seems like things that NASA could stuff into a
rocket tomorrow if we just had the motivation to make such a mission.
Although The Martian presents a very realistic and believable depiction of a manned
mission to Mars, it does falter a bit in its science. Mar's atmosphere is too thin to
allow for the type of devastating dust storms shown in the film. Its gravity is also
much weaker than earth's, so Matt Damon should have probably been skipping
around rather than casually walking. I was also a bit disappointed that the film
didn't at all address the problem of radiation exposure, which is a severe problem
due to Mars' lack of an electromagnetic field. But these sorts of things are to be
expected in science fiction movies. Such movies will never be perfect, and sacrifices

must almost always be made for the sake of narrative and drama. The effort that
was put forward is admirable.

The dust storm that sets up the whole plot is notoriously exaggerated.
The greatest strength of the film is that The Martian is overflowing with optimism.
And not the silly "love transcends time and space" foo-foo nonsense of Interstellar.
The Martian channels the spirit of the Apollo missions, and paints the exploration of
space as an exhilarating challenge for mankind, rather than a last-ditch effort to
save us from ourselves. These astronauts are exploring Mars for the sake of
discovery, and their passion for exploration is infectious. Science and math are the
heroes of the movie, as the movie celebrates the ingenuity that comes from
necessity. It depicts China and the United States putting aside their political
differences in order to cooperate to bring home a single astronaut. It even makes
fun call-backs to real-life Mars missions. And it makes a manned mission to Mars
look both plausible and worthwhile.
The Martian is a fantastic movie, full of life and energy and a passion for exploration
and space travel. It's optimism is a refreshing break from the cynical and pessimistic
nose dive that science fiction has taken in the past couple decades thanks to a
proliferation of "disaster sci-fi" and "science gone amok" movies. The Martian
deserves a place alongside the best science fiction movies of all time.
And with the recent discovery of liquid water possibly flowing on the surface of
Mars (news that Matt Damon's character sadly missed), perhaps a real-life Ares
mission might come sooner rather later.

I hope that a real-life Ares mission happens in my lifetime.