The Martian (2015) | Film Review

After a manned mission on Mars encounters a horrific dust storm and goes significantly haywire, the crew of the Ares 3 are forced into an emergency evacuation. Believing him dead, crew botanist Mark Watney (Matt Damon) is left behind. Forced to find a way to survive, Watney uses science to solve unimaginable problems in order to stave off certain death until a NASA crew, millions of miles away, can return to save him – in four years.

As you would expect from that description, “The Martian” is essentially Castaway in Space. Only instead of volleyball besties and leafy loin clothes, our hero is forced to ‘Science the shit out of this’ for his very survival. Much has been made of the scientific accuracy in “The Martian”, and it sure does seem mighty impressive to this dumdum. From using human feces as fertilizer in order to grow potato crops, to restoring power and oxygen, and even utilizing moisture and recycling for water. The science involved is very extensive and I was completely fascinated with the various applications Watney was able to utilize to stay alive. It also made me realize how much I need to catch up on my Neil deGrasse Tyson articles (be sure to check out our interview with Mr. Tyson from last year).

But it sure does not make for an entertaining movie. These are the hardest reviews to write – and not just due to the hate mail destined to flood my inbox – because this is not a poorly crafted film. Matt Damon, Jeff Daniels, Jessica Chastain, and Chiwetel Ejiofor acted the shit out of this thing. The cinematography by Dariusz Wolski has moments of astonishing beauty (and others where it just looks like Arizona through a red filtered lens). Unfortunately the story is exhaustingly predictable, there are way too many convenient solutions, and ultimately the film is just way…too…long.

No, I don’t mean we need action beats every 15 seconds. This is a survival story and that’s how it should be told. While science buffs the world over are praising the numerous truths at play here, they seem to blatantly ignore how every item Watney needs to use such science is conveniently located on the planet (I won’t spoil them here, but there are several). It’s almost comical how every problem had a solution that required a specific item that just HAPPENED to already be on Mars. Turns out Watney should just calm down, NASA is the flipping Boy Scouts of government organizations and they have everything covered. Don’t even get me started on how eye-rolling it is to have a ‘real-time’ news broadcast of an event millions of miles away. Even a 3^rd grader understands that’s some wonky science right there.

All of that I could overlook as movie magic if “The Martian” didn’t commit the biggest movie crime of all – I just didn’t care. Damon is one of our greatest actors and he does everything in his arsenal to keep us engaged, but after the first 90 minutes, I started hoping his potatoes would spoil. “Castaway” kept us engaged because we felt every inch of how despondent and desperate Tom Hanks was as he sat on the beach yelling at his volleyball. Damon’s Watney spends more time joking and mocking than convincing us he could die at any second. Until the final reel, I had very little attachment to Watney’s plight because he rarely seemed to grasp the absolute severity of the situation. Jovial and charming have their place, but I doubt it’s so prominent when you’re stranded on a barren planet eating veggies grown in your own excrement.

Should we spend billions back on Earth to save one man? Should other astronauts risk their lives in the process? Would this science really work? Could a man actually survive on a distant planet for years with only his wits to save him? These are all of the questions we should be asking, and by the end of “The Martian”, I just didn’t give a damn about any of them. My only answer was – ‘Did the credits roll yet?’ At one point I almost left to buy a watch, just so I could look at it.

“The Martian” is a finely shot, extremely well-acted film that is so by-the-numbers I hope to never see it again. In fact, I think I’d rather be stranded on Mars.

Aaron Peterson
The Hollywood Outsider