REVIEW: The Martian

– Written by Joshua Armstrong

An Astronaut’s Guide To Surviving Alone on Mars

A baron red desert with large rock structures and even larger craters stretches as far as the eye can see. In the distance, we see small shiny specks that make up the Martian Habitat centre (or Hab), the Ares III rocket and satellite technology being built by four astronaut engineers to communicate with NASA back on Earth. This opening shot in The Martian sets a breathtaking and beautiful large backdrop for what is a deadly and lifeless setting.

The NASA crew of Ares III are forced to abandon their mission on Mars when a severe dust storm hits. In a last ditch attempt to salvage the satellite during the dust storm, large debris strikes NASA botanist and mechanical engineer Mark Watney (played by Matt Damon) sending him off into the distance. With no response from Watney and his crew believing him to be dead, they decide to abandon their mission and leave Mars before the dust storm kills them too.

While the dust storm was certainly a tense moment, the real drama begins with Watney waking up in the red dust of Mars. Alone, running low on oxygen and impaled by an antenna, Mark begins his struggle for survival while NASA, the Ares III crew and the world believe Watney was killed.

It is from here that we see Matt Damon at his best, showing us not just an intelligent NASA astronaut using his botany skills to incredible effect, but an average guy attempting to survive and try and stay positive in a situation where all the odds are against him. With the whole film riding on the performance of a single actor, Damon truly delivers a believable and highly entertaining role of a man not only struggling to survive in an unforgiving environment, but also staying sane despite the loneliness. Matt Damon’s believability as Mark Watney, along with the film’s portrayal of all its characters as real people and not just Hollywood stereotypes, truly helped to make the situation Watney was in seem completely real and draws the audience in without letting go.

Ridley Scott’s near-perfect directing and timing achieves the greatest laughs in humorous moments, but also succeeds in achieving maximum tension during action scenes or moments where things go horribly wrong. Through clever use of video logs, we see Watney providing commentary on his progress of trying to build a sustainable environment to survive in for a very long period of time. Most of the film’s humour also comes from Watney’s video logs where he provides sarcastic or light-hearted comments about the other crew’s possessions that were left behind, such as Captain Lewis’ (Jessica Chastain) 70’s disco playlist being the only music on board the Hab.

The 70’s disco music played throughout the more light-hearted moments in the film, along with funny moments such as Watney trying out different poses for the photo for NASA to show he was still alive, make the film a positive and enjoyable experience. With all characters involved turning to humour to get through a truly tough situation, we see the more human side of these characters. This is particularly true for Watney, but the supporting characters such as the Ares III crew and NASA, all provided performances that truly made us root for them and hold our breath as they were preparing to deliver good or bad news.

The second half of the film saw a more prolonged focus on NASA attempting to solve the problem of getting Watney back home, which was far more dialogue heavy and didn’t draw the audience in like Watney’s survival story did. I often found myself wondering what Watney was doing during long periods of NASA’s time on screen, even though the story from NASA’s side was just as vital to know for glimpsing into the possible fate of Mark Watney.

NASA Chief Administrator Teddy Sanders (played by Jeff Daniels) initially comes across as the negative bad guy with the final say on everything, while NASA Director of the Mars Mission Vincent Kapoor (played by Chiwetel Ejiofor) comes across as the sympathising, do-everything-possible personality with the positive attitude. I was worried at first that this was Hollywood’s answer to a good guy/bad guy scenario, but the more the movie explored these two characters’ personalities, the more we learned that this wasn’t the case. Fortunately, Sanders’ interests were more on the bigger picture of keeping NASA running by not wasting resources or taking unnecessary and expensive risks, while Kapoor’s interests were on trying to get Watney home with as few risks as possible. The motives behind these two characters personalities and decisions, along with the motives of other NASA and astronomical engineers played by Kristen Wiig, Sean Bean, Donald Glover and Mackenzie Davis, made the film far more gripping and overall more realistic.

The final action scene, which I will not spoil here, did have a very Hollywood over-the-top vibe to it despite the rest of the film’s highly realistic, personal and most importantly genuine moments. It was still tense and incredibly gripping, but didn’t seem to fit in with the rest of the film’s heavy focus on realistic physics, chemistry and biology.

Overall, The Martian is an incredible survival story that is gripping, tense, genuine, often educational in its use of chemistry, humorous, and most importantly genuine. This is mostly due to Matt Damon’s excellent performance as Mark Watney, the astronaut left behind on Mars, along with an excellent star-studded cast of young and old making up the Ares III Mars Mission and NASA base crew.

Positives:

• Matt Damon is incredible! His reaction to every situation is completely and utterly believable and he delivers both an entertaining and heart-stopping performance.
• All the science Watney uses to survive seems real and believable.
• Excellent directing and timing between shots by director Ridley Scott for the most effective humorous or tense moments.

Negatives:

• Second half focused a little too long on NASA which left me wanting to see more of Watney and his situation on Mars.
• The action scene towards the end was a little over-the-top and felt ‘Hollywood fake’.

Rating: 9 / 10