The Martian

[sjankis630]

I did a search and didn't see this anywhere on the board. It was #1 on its opening weekend I believe.
I will start by saying I had just driven back from a 6 hour trip and the girlfriend suggested that we go see a movie. She wanted the Intern but I suggested The Martian.It is a kind of "Castaway" except on Mars.
Matt Damon was OK and there were some nice set pieces which I felt worked so overall I would give this a B+.
But after the movie i kind of got the impression that this was a science experiment dressed up as a movie.
For example. If I were to write this movie I would work long and hard on the main character's state of mind and how tough it was for him to survive hoping to be rescued.
Then I would weave the rest of the story about how long missions take and how they could communicate with him etc. So basically write about the human aspect of the film and fill the science part that would be necessary to make it so.
After watching this movie it kind of seems like the author was more interested in the science and what that entailed and that was his premise.
So maybe he wrote all of the science parts and then went out and filled in the rest of the "movie" with the story about the lost astronaut.
I know that may sound weird, but that is how I am seeing it two days after my viewing.

[deeconsistent]

I haven't seen this yet, and despite Matt Damon's valiant attempts to make me want to boycott anything he's involved with, I'll probably see it within the next week or two.

Your reflections on the science part of the film are interesting. I read an article awhile ago (which, of course, I can't find) discussing why this movie is doing well. Apparently, there's a Hollywood "curse" associated with movies about Mars and there's never been a real hit. The author of that article made the argument that in this movie and in "Gravity", audiences were responding to the realism and technical details.

[Witchie]

Saw this today. Tedious. I didn't get the heartstring pull with his rescue that I thought I would get. ITA that this was one long science experiment. I didn't connect with any of the characters. The book was much better.

[famvir]

Thanks Witchie, the book it is.

[famvir]

Btw, I am reading Word War Z and it is memorizing! We seem to have a number of movies failing their original books of late.

[Mugsy]

Saw it last night and really enjoyed it. But I love science, so this was up my alley. I'm not big on sappy stuff, so I was glad there were no scenes with his parents being told "he's dead" and then "actually, he isn't". Most movies would have made a big deal of that aspect, but I prefer that they focused on the how and not the who.

I also liked that time moved quickly; they decided to do something and then it was 3 months later or whatever. And no Hollywood-style craziness with clocks ticking down, and wild drives through city streets getting magical object X or plan Y to the right person in the nick of time. Or when random science nerd did the math to figure out the new plan of having the original crew go back, he didn't have the ubiquitous sneak into the NASA chief's office or yelling match with the over protective assistant.

I thought they showed just enough of Watney's personality. As a long haul astronaut, he's used to solitude, so it wouldn't be the same as Tom Hanks in Cast Away. His electronic journal gave the viewer insight into how he felt and he was communicating with Earth after a while anyway.

Overall I thought it was an A movie, and not only do I understand why it did so well at the box office, I'm really glad something so science-y is a hit.

It also reaffirms - not that there's ever a chance, but still - that I would never, ever want to go into space. The claustrophobia of those small craft gives me the shivers.

[Laira]

Not bad, but it felt like a cross between Apollo 13 and Castaway. It was a little hard for me to believe Matt Damon was in serious jeopardy when he's living in his cool house, driving his cool car, and kicking back in his bunk watching Happy Days and listening to disco music.

[Ginger]

Jun 6, 2016 14:47:51 GMT -4 Laira said:

Not bad, but it felt like a cross between Apollo 13 and Castaway. It was a little hard for me to believe Matt Damon was in serious jeopardy when he's living in his cool house, driving his cool car, and kicking back in his bunk watching Happy Days and listening to disco music.

That sums it up for me. There was no suspense because it was obvious that Matt was going to survive and be rescued. The whole script was so formulaic that I found it patronizing - here's a quip every 120 seconds to lighten the mood! And here's a running gag about how cheesy disco music is that allows us to load the soundtrack with a bunch of really catchy disco classics that everybody loves! And here we are filling our woman quota by having Jessica Chastain play a tough female shuttle commander, even though her subplot is completely extraneous!

Even though it's an ok movie, I kind of hate it for those reasons.

[Neurochick]

I saw this movie and I liked it, I liked that the science nerd was a black man, and I liked that there were many POC in this movie; don't see that in enough science type movies.

[kostgard]

Caught this on HBO, and it was alright. I agree that it was nice to see POC and women in key roles. But overall it was pretty predictable and didn't exactly break new ground. Oh, and I was totally distracted by the "weightless" scenes because everyone was bobbing around in a way that looked super-fake. Gravity ruined all the other movies for me on that front - I know Sandra Bullock actually trained for months so she could dangle from wires and move in a realistic way and they can't do that with every actor on every movie, but damn if it didn't look good.