Nellie Shih ’19 and Molly Briggs ‘19, Contributors
“Every human has a basic instinct… to help each other out. If a hiker gets lost in the mountains, people will coordinate a search. If an earthquake levels a city, people all over the world will send emergency supplies. This instinct is found in every culture, without exception.” – The Martian trailer
If an astronaut who is presumed dead is actually not dead, and stranded on Mars, people all over the world will join together to try to bring him home. In the film The Martian, astronaut Mark Watney, played by Matt Damon, was a part of the Ares 6 crew to go to Mars. But when a dust storm hits, the crew is forced to abort the mission. While evacuating, Watney is hit by an antennae and presumed dead, forcing his crew to leave without him. Watney must find a way to survive with little supplies on a planet where nothing grows. But none of this matters if he can’t contact NASA.
Although the movie is two and a half hours, the director, Ridley Scott, does a good job of keeping the movie going. The movie accomplishes this by switching from Watney stranded on Mars, to the NASA team working to bring him back, and to Watney’s crew, who have no idea he’s still alive. Matt Damon was a great choice for the role of Mark Watney and never fails to amuse and entertain the audience. Damon is not the only good actor in this movie. The NASA team features actors like Sean Bean from the Lord of the Rings triology, Jeff Daniels from the Dumb and Dumber movies, Donald Glover from Community, Kristen Wiig from Bridesmaids. The Ares crew features Sebastian Stan from the Captain America movies and Jessica Chastain from the Help.
The movie doesn’t try too hard to be funny, but still succeeds in doing so. Still, the humor isn’t the only good part of the movie. The special effects are out-of-this-world; very few times did we shout, “That’s green screen. That’s obviously green screen, too.” The film begins with a great shot of space and the stars and Mars, and cuts straight to the action rather than trying to set something up.
Another good thing about the Martian is that it stays fairly faithful to the book of the same name by Andy Weir. The book featured Mark Watney running into more problems than he did in the film, but if the film had included all of the problems, it would have been incredibly long. There weren’t huge, significant changes in the movie adaptation, although the movie did add an epilogue to show where the characters are now after the main events of the film. Overall, the Martian is one of the best book to movie adaptations you will ever watch, and we highly recommend it. If you are not interested in space, you may expect the movie to be long, boring, and sad, but it is actually a really good time.
