It isn’t often that optimism is used to describe a work of science fiction, the same is doubly true for films in the genre, but that’s exactly how I would describe the Ridley Scott adaptation of Andy Weir’s 2011 novel The Martian.
The story is fairly straight forward – Man goes to Mars. Man gets left on Mars. NASA goes “oops” when they realize it wasn’t a corpse they left. Man “sciences the shit” out of his situation. NASA works to get their boy back. The film follows the novel’s lead in this and manages to carry with it the same levity, sense of humor and actual science that made Weir’s novel so appealing to so many.
Honestly, it’s just a breath of fresh air.
That same optimism I mentioned is tempered by the gravity of the situation and Matt Damon’s ability to walk you through what is happening as well as his motivations through a series of video logs and monologues that never end up feeling as contrived as they usually would in this format. That right there is something I was nervous about going in since the novel’s presentation fit so well in a prose form, but being dictated to in a two hour plus film would wear out its welcome pretty damned quick.
The film also continues Scott’s return to science fiction which began with 2012’s Prometheus and will proceed with a new set of Alien movies. Like all Scott films, The Martian is visually lush and the environment becomes as much a part of the narrative as the characters themselves. Mars is flat gorgeous. It’s both alien and familiar at the same time which has a strange effect of disorienting you and making you want to go there.
Translating the novel’s combination of scientific challenges, coping with isolation and finding a situation compelling enough to unite global governments, it’s so very easy to get swept up in your own desire to see astronaut Mark Watney brought home safely. You’re rooting for him. You want him to succeed. You want the scientists at JPL and NASA to succeed. But here’s the key to the story’s success – you never once feel like you’re being emotionally manipulated into wanting that.
While they did tone back some of the actual technical jargon that made the source novel so compelling to me in the first place, this is wholly forgivable due to the constraints of what a film actually is. The Martian also does a shockingly good job of ‘show me, don’t tell me’, which is so unbelievably rare in all of cinema, let alone sci-fi. And even though films like Primer are so attractive to me due to their unwillingness to dumb down the science behind their narrative, The Martian never feels like it’s softballing anything at you. That’s something I can’t overstress that I appreciate.
It’s a genuinely enjoyable movie to compliment a genuinely enjoyable book. It’s also giving me a lot of hope that Scott is finally back in his true form and we’re about to see some more amazing work out of him.
