{"id":19212,"date":"2016-01-27T16:38:29","date_gmt":"2016-01-27T06:38:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/?p=19212"},"modified":"2016-01-27T16:38:39","modified_gmt":"2016-01-27T06:38:39","slug":"the-martian","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/?p=19212","title":{"rendered":"The Martian"},"content":{"rendered":"

 <\/p>\n

\"themartianposter\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Director: \u00a0<\/strong>Ridley Scott
\nWriter: \u00a0<\/strong>Drew Goddard
\nCast: \u00a0<\/strong>Matt Damon, Jessica Chastain, Jeff Daniels, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Kate Mara, Sean Bean, Kristen Wiig<\/p>\nA<\/span>ge hasn’t slowed down Ridley Scott one bit.<\/p>\n

At 79 years young, the evergreen British director has made one of his most entertaining and creative films yet. \u00a0The Martian<\/em>\u00a0(based on a book by Andy Weir and screenplay by Drew Goddard) is a fantastic survival story in the spirit of\u00a0Castaway\u00a0<\/em>or\u00a0Robinson Crusoe<\/em>. \u00a0I was going to say there is nothing quite like it but then the auto-prompt on IMDB reminded me that someone made\u00a0Robinson Crusoe On Mars<\/em>.<\/p>\n

I listened to an interview with author Andy Weir on Neil deGrasse Tyson’s\u00a0Star Talk<\/em> show in which he spoke of how Tyson’s passion and public advocacy of astrophysics inspired him to write the story. \u00a0As a son of a particle physicist and a computer engineer in his own right, Weir penned The Martian<\/em>\u00a0to be as realistic as possible and based on actual technology currently used by NASA. \u00a0Effectively, it is a love letter to astronauts and scientists for the work they do.<\/p>\n

This approach gives the film a unique voice and a significantly different tone to, say,\u00a0Gravity<\/em>, another space survival film that made waves when it released in 2013. \u00a0In Gravity, Ryan Stone\u00a0has the better part of a day to get from Earth’s orbit to a landing zone on the planet’s surface. \u00a0For Mark Watney in\u00a0The Martian<\/em>, he has to get home from Mars and survive for over 400 days while he waits for his ride to arrive. \u00a0Talk about upping the stakes.<\/p>\n

\"weirtyson\"<\/a><\/p>\n

The role of the stranded astronaut and botanist Mark Watney is played by Matt Damon. \u00a0He is the perfect candidate for the part. \u00a0Watney is intelligent, dry witted and self-deprecating. \u00a0This is Matt Damon’s bread and butter. \u00a0He did after all, make his name in\u00a0Good Will Hunting<\/em>.<\/p>\n

The set up for Watney’s predicament is that he is part of a crewed mission to Mars lead by Melissa Lewis (Jessica Chastain) and the\u00a0Ares IV<\/em> team. \u00a0A dust storm hits the team moments before they are due to leave the Red Planet’s surface during which Watney is wiped out by some flying debris and mistakenly presumed to be dead when his vital sign readings stop registering. \u00a0When the storm subsides,\u00a0Ares IV<\/em> is headed back to Earth and Watney awakens on Mars, alone and abandoned.<\/p>\n

Watney has a moment to take in his predicament and then springs into action, determined to survive at all costs. \u00a0It seems like an impossible task. \u00a0He has no way of letting NASA know that he is alive and he is rapidly running out of food and oxygen. \u00a0I like what happens next. \u00a0There isn’t a scene where Watney curses the heavens in or races against time staring at a countdown clock with a digital display. \u00a0Instead, he assesses his situation, hypothesizes a solution and then resolves to ‘science the shit out of this.’<\/p>\n

For food, Watney creates his own farm using a leftover stash of potatoes from a Thanksgiving meal and the toilet waste from the\u00a0Ares IV<\/em> crew. \u00a0He creates a supply of breathable air\u00a0by extracting hydrogen from leftover rocket fuel which is then oxidized by burning.<\/p>\n

Watney’s activities at the base station are noticed by NASA. \u00a0Realizing that he is alive and in need of rescue, NASA director Teddy Sanders (Jeff Daniels) and mission director Vincent Kapoor begin to strategize how to safely bring him home. \u00a0The scenes at NASA are a necessarily part of the story but are the most conventional and weakest part of\u00a0The Martian<\/em>. \u00a0Daniels plays Teddy Sanders like a million other bureaucratic busy-bodies that you’ve seen in every other movie. \u00a0It is thanks to the ingenuity of some unsung heroes at the “JPL” science lab that they are able to devise a plan. \u00a0One of the film’s most gloriously optimistic scenes is a coming together of space agencies in America and China to share resources and manpower to help bring Watney home. \u00a0If the film is going to ‘cheat’ in any way to help the story along, I don’t mind it being the diplomacy of two rival nation states who in real life would never work this way.<\/p>\n

\"themartianscene\"<\/a><\/p>\n

The Martian<\/em> is a film with a relatively straight forward and predictable narrative trajectory but of course it is the cleverness of the details that make it shine. \u00a0It’s interesting to not only see how Watney tackles his mountain of challenges but also seeing it in execution. \u00a0Care and attention is even paid to issues such as how Watney struggles to alleviate his boredom. \u00a0He curses the mission commander for her lousy taste in music which has left Watney with a laptop that only has Seventies disco hits on it for him to listen to.<\/p>\n

The Martian<\/em> is a smartly written, optimistic and funny sci-fi film. \u00a0It is a film that does justice to Andy Weir’s original aspirations when he wrote the book and it has translated superbly well onto the silver screen. \u00a0The secret to the film’s success is that purposefully steers clear of the bombast and spectacle of films such as\u00a0Armageddon<\/em> and\u00a0Gravity<\/em>, choosing instead to emphasize mundane pragmatism. \u00a0By steering clear of tired genre tropes, The Martian<\/em> feel fresh, creative and innovative.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

During a crewed mission to Mars, astronaut Mark Watney accidentally gets left behind.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":19214,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[2419,1767,1281,2421,1888,302,2420,2374],"class_list":["post-19212","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-films","tag-andy-weir","tag-chiwetel-ejiofor","tag-jessica-chastain","tag-kristen-wiig","tag-matt-damon","tag-ridley-scott","tag-sean-bean","tag-the-martian"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19212","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=19212"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19212\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19220,"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19212\/revisions\/19220"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/19214"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=19212"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=19212"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=19212"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}