The Martian Review | Science, the Human Spirit and Disco

What did you mean by that? (Daniels is as insufferable here as he was on The Newsroom, so I checked to see if Aaron Sorkin had a hand in the admittedly strong script; it’s actually by longtime Joss Whedon associate Drew Goddard).

“To paraphrase the original Spider from Mars, “…the film is a saddening bore, for you’ve watched it ten times or more…” And I liked that.

And if that doesn’t make you want to go see it, probably nothing will. It can drag at times, but hardly as much as you’d think. It wears the strength and endurance of its investing premise well – continuously coming up with interesting, thoughtful ways to make it all sound as it rises the stakes at an elevated leisure.

IGN: You have a scientific background, so did that help? And it just kind of overwhelmed me in this moment. “You take the best of the best and off they go”.

What makes The Martian work very well is its sense of humour.

IGN: Originally you were slated to write and direct The Martian. Believe me, it’s an exhilarating experience. So we said, let’s try to find a director that we’re all excited about.

The actor says the role presented him with a new sort of challenge.

IGN: He doesn’t tend to mess around, does he?

I was also happy to see that the characters’ overly frequent use of obscenities-the one annoying flaw of the novel-has been mercifully pared down to perhaps a dozen particularly salty words.

Visually, the film looks terrific, and the special effects are marvellous, as one would expect from a Ridley Scott film.

I asked GoPro if this had been product placement, and the company suggested it had been the doing of director Ridley Scott. The screenplay’s faith-affirming overtones also register as all the more pointed given the science-celebrating context which surrounds them – a setting in which such views might mistakenly be thought to be out of place.

In the tradition of such can-do odes to NASA as The Right Stuff and Apollo 13, The Martian is a story of classic American pragmatism and problem-solving, of calm under the worst possible circumstances. While Watney’s story is front and center more often than not, The Martian focuses on other people’s perspectives, from the global interest back on Earth, to the bureaucratic warfare waged internally and externally at NASA. In the chaos, his fellow astronauts are forced to leave the planet without him.

“As commercial entertainment, The Martian delivers on expectations of a “smart” blockbuster even as it adheres to the formula of a relatively simple feel-good drama”. Andy’s brain is so massive, and he’s so good with the science, that I trusted him blindly.

In what may be the most astounding piece of viral marketing in history, NASA made a landmark announcement about the presence of liquid water on Mars just four days before the release of the new sci-fi thriller, “The Martian“. It’s got this epic, David Lean quality to it that I know I wouldn’t have captured the way Ridley did.

Does anyone in America have that pioneering spirit any more? “I’ll secure the net.’ After that we caught plenty of hackers and turned them over to the Federal Bureau of Investigation”. But the truth is, we didn’t care. The constant stream of one-liners-none of which really work-from everyone involved constantly suck any and all tension out of the room. I suppose they wanted to keep their PG-13 rating and not do too much to scare families away from a film that has no sex or violence-another Hollywood rarity. The GoPros, which us Earthlings tend to use to record extreme sports, or other exciting life events, become like security cameras-capturing the monotony of Watney’s Martian life from fly-0n-the-wall angles, as well as confidants.