The Martian—Movie Review

by Peter J. O'Connell

The Martian. Released: Oct. 2015. Runtime: 144 mins. Rating: PG-13 for some strong language, injury images, and brief nudity.

Director Ridley Scott has been dubbed a “maker of mainstream movie masterpieces,” referring to such popular and critically well-regarded hits from his long career as the science-fiction classics Alien (1979) and Blade Runner (1982) and the historical spectacle Gladiator (2000). Now The Martian has joined the ranks of these works.

The eponymous hero of the film is American astronaut Mark Watney (Matt Damon), marooned on the red planet after a fierce storm separates him from the rest of his manned mission mates as they blast off for Earth on the spaceship Hermes.

Earth presumes Watney to be dead, but the astronaut, who is also a botanist, determines to survive until the next mission to Mars arrives in four years. After making his way back to the habitat station and treating his injuries from the storm, Watney sets out to turn a year's worth of food into four years' worth by growing potatoes, using his own feces as fertilizer, and burning rocket fuel to make water. Like the hero of the 1985-1992 TV series MacGyver, Watney comes up with one ingenious solution after another so as to try and make it through four long and lonely years.

Watney is a kind of near-future Robinson Crusoe, but on Mars he lacks a Friday to help him. In a sense, however, he has a “Friday” back on Earth. Engineer Vincent Kapoor, a character—apparently American—with a South Asian name, played by Afro-British actor (Chiwetel Ejiofor), attempts to convince NASA's bureaucratic, yet humanistic director, Teddy Sanders (Jeff Daniels), that Watney is alive and should have a probe sent to resupply him after various disasters have reduced his food supply. Eventually, a cheer-inducing international effort and a complex, suspenseful plan involving the Hermes develop to try and save “the Martian.”

The film's settings and effects are both spectacular and convincing. The acting, appropriately enough, is not “spectacular” but is quite convincing. Damon plays Watney as neither a superhero nor a “Clint Eastwood-type” hero but definitely as an American hero of a certain classic type—brave, optimistic, good-natured, resourceful. As the astronaut/botanist says: “You can either accept your fate or work toward fixing it.” Amid the gloom of much contemporary science-fiction, this film's faith that hardy individuals and diverse people working together can “fix things” casts a heartening glow.

“Footnotes” to the film: (1) Andy Weir, the writer of the novel of the same name on which The Martian is based, originally put the book on his own blog for free reading. Then friends urged him to put it on Amazon for reading on Kindle, which he did, making it available for the then minimum price of 99 cents. (2) The 1972 film Silent Running is a post-apocalyptic tale in which a solitary astronaut/botanist in space attempts to save a “pod” of plants from the machinations of an evil corporation and government. The well-regarded film starred Bruce Dern and was directed by Douglas Turnbull, the special effects wizard of Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey.