The Martian Review

While a little late, it's still a good time for the good word of The Martian to be spread far and wide. After what seems to be a resurgence of the space genre, with films like Guardians of the Galaxy, Gravity, and Interstellar, famed director Ridley Scott pairs with the charismatic and charming Matt Damon to take audiences into the not-so-far future for a journey to Earth's red planet counterpart, Mars. While the movie isn't perfect, especially when held in comparison to the narrative of the novel that it's based on, The Martian still delivers a fantastic scientific survival film.

As super-biologist Mark Watney (Matt Damon) gets left behind on Mars after a horrific sandstorm and is unable to make contact with his team or Earth, Watney has to use all of his knowledge to survive on the harsh desert world, including repairing communications and growing food! On Earth, NASA deals with the backlash of leaving a man stranded on Mars and then having to solve the problem of getting him home safely. As far as space stories go, this may sound less enticing, but the film is still a fantastic ride to be apart of.

Now, most of the film's success should be accredited to Matt Damon's humorous and intelligent performance as Mark Watney. As a character in general, it would have been easy for Mark to go into a depressive state and die. However, what Damon does so great with the character is instill a sense of hope that transcends to the audience, and the fact that he's so humorous and willing to crack jokes at his own expense, as his life is in true peril, makes the character all that more enjoyable to watch.

The film also should be credited with it's fantastic cinematography and mix of special effects with the practical: the sequences in space look amazing, the rockets are fantastic, but when you're on Mars with Mark in the space lab, you really feel like you're on Mars. The rovers that Watney manipulates are all real, the tools and equipment seems like they actually borrowed everything from NASA...which, to the film's credit, they had NASA consultants on set, so they probably did borrow things from them. But beyond all that, the wide shots of Mars paints an oddly serene picture of the planet, almost as if the director is writing it a love letter with this film.

Director Ridley Scott should also receive props as well. Lately, with films like Prometheus, Robin Hood and Exodus: Gods and Kings, Scott has had issues really captivating an audience with a narrative for some time. That pattern changes with The Martian: both incredibly intelligent considering the amount of information it needed to tell, along with containing surprisingly strong comedic beats throughout, Scott has delivered one of the most entertaining films in a while, which could quite honestly make it one of his best of all time.

Couple all of this with a solid supporting the cast laced with the likes of Jessica Chastain, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Jeff Daniels, and a few other surprising pop-ups, The Martian  has one of the largest, most solid casts that compare it to the likes of a powerhouse like The Avengers. Make no mistake, though: The Martian's main focus is on Mark Watney and his incredibly intelligent endeavor to stay alive on Mars. That being said, this film is surprisingly light on details compared to the novel. It's just as well; the novel was overflown with scientific facts and jargon that could have been an easy turn-off for many paying customers. With that in mind, someone like myself would have liked to hear more of the science, even if the film stretched past its original 2-hour runtime.

While it may be considerably lighter on the science, The Martian boasts an impressive cast, one of Matt Damon's strongest performances, a welcome return to form for director Ridley Scott, and a story that truly boasts the best reasons why space expansion can be both exciting and terrifying.

Rating: 8.5/10