And he has four years to kill, on his world, before anyone can swing by to pick him up.īut how do you dramatize a waiting game? Given the threat of tedium, and the stony desolation of the backdrop, some viewers will be bracing themselves for Beckett in space, with the added twist that Godot could burn up on reëntry. From here on, we have all the time in the world. We scarcely have a chance to get our bearings before they are thrown out of whack, and we see very little of Watney before he wakes up in the desert, on a nice bright Martian day, with a length of broken radar antenna sticking out of his gut. All this happens fast, at the outset of the movie-so fast, indeed, that it’s the only section that feels rushed. Having landed on the planet, and settled into base camp, they last eighteen days before the storm blows in and forces them to abort, blasting off at a perilous angle. The rest of the crew comprises Martinez (Michael Peña), Johanssen (Kate Mara), Vogel (Aksel Hennie), and Beck (Sebastian Stan). Watney is part of Ares III, a NASA mission to Mars, captained by the phlegmatic Lewis (Jessica Chastain), who floats around her ship like a zero-gravity mermaid. The difference is that Mann was cunning and resentful, prepared to cause havoc in his desperation to escape, whereas Watney is cunning and resourceful-not a blamer, or a soul in meltdown, but a model of cockiness and grit as he sets about the business of survival.
This year, in “The Martian,” he plays an astronaut named Mark Watney, who is marooned in a pelting storm and left behind, alone, on the red planet. Last year, in “Interstellar,” he played an astronaut named Mann, who was sent through a wormhole and ended up alone, on a frozen planet.
And even once he has all those scenarios covered, there’s the probability of some unforeseen catastrophe upending his plans.Poor Matt Damon.
MARTIAN MOVIE LENGTH HOW TO
Then he has to figure out how to keep from dying in three different ways on the off chance that another manned mission can scoop him up in four years. Then he has to figure out how to remove the shrapnel sticking out of his stomach. When a storm that sweeps his fellow astronauts off Mars, leaving him presumably dead from flying debris, Mark Watney (Matt Damon) has to figure out first how to get back to base with dwindling oxygen. The Martian is less a coup de cinema than Gravity, which jettisons through open space with swooping 720-degree camera moves, but it’s a triumph of another kind, an ode to problem-solving and sticktuitiveness. The more obvious point of comparison for The Martian is Gravity, which premiered here in Toronto two years ago to the Oscar contention and nine-figure box-office returns that Scott’s film can surely expect, too. This is about someone trying to stave off imminent death in outer space. Forget the mythology of Prometheus or even the noir abstractions of Blade Runner, to go back to Scott’s vaunted early run, when it seemed like he was the next great master of big-screen science fiction. Though we learn about how this situation affects both a cash-strapped and PR-afflicted NASA and the crew that inadvertently abandons one of its own, Scott again seizes on the simple tale of an astronaut fighting for survival against imposing odds. That’s the movie.īased on Andy Weir’s novel-which has been adapted, with wit and wonder intact, by Joss Whedon acolyte Drew Goddard ( The Cabin in the Woods)- The Martian isn’t quite as basic as Alien, but “man stuck on Mars” is the gist of it. The famous tagline goes “In Space, No One Can Hear You Scream,” and the logline wouldn’t be a hell of a lot longer. The three sequels added mass infestations and Colonial Marines, inmates on a prison planet, and the nefarious breeding of human hosts, but Alien just had a single creature tearing through the crew of a commercial mining vessel and it’s one of the scariest films ever made. What people forget about Ridley Scott’s original 1979 Alien-including Ridley Scott himself, as his convoluted quasi-prequel Prometheus suggests-is that simplicity was its primary virtue.
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