I saw The Martian, which has a 92% on Rotten Tomatoes, opening weekend and I really enjoyed the film. I recently purchased it on Blu-ray as both my wife and daughter wanted to see it, but neither were able to go with me on opening weekend. We sat down and watched it as a family and they both seemed to enjoy it.
The Martian (Golden Globe winner for Best motion picture for musical or comedy) shows a team of US astronauts in the middle of a mission already taking place on Mars when a storm shows up that forces the team to abort. Astronaut Mark Watney (best performance in a comedy Golden Globe winner, Matt Damon) is hit by debris and assumed dead by his crew and NASA. Watney wakes up to find himself injured and stranded on Mars and has to “science the shit” out of everything if he is going to survive long enough for a rescue mission.
THE GOOD
This film features a great cast to accompany the aforementioned Damon…ROLE CALL: Jessica Chastain, Kristen Wiig, Jeff Daniels, Michael Pena, Sean Bean, Kate Mara, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Sebastian Stan, Aksel Hennie, Benedict Wong, Mackenzie Davis, and Donald Glover. All of them play roles very well in this film, but the big two are Matt Damon and Chiwetel Ejiofor in my eyes. Jeff Daniels role is vital, but not as significant as Ejiofor’s performance, which is the earthbound central character of the film trying to navigate a lot of obstacles in order to save Watney.
The story is compelling and does contain humor although I wouldn’t call this a comedy. Rather than a volleyball, Damon talks to a series of Go-Pro cameras that were used to document the experiments on the mission. The framing of this is that if he doesn’t make contact with NASA or get rescued someone will find the footage and his story will be told. It works to give a reason for Damon to speak and tell the audience what’s going on without needing a voice over.
The suspense is strong and even though this is set in a not too distant future, I found myself believing he needed to be rescued in both viewings. Ridley Scott’s directing shines in this film and was refreshing after his last couple of films didn’t live up to expectations.
THE BAD
This may be a bit of a spoiler so feel free to skip to the Verdict. Every time something could go wrong…it does. EVERY. TIME. It got to be so that the characters even decided to let us in on the idea that something could go wrong. It’s a theme, and it doesn’t take away from the tension, but eventually I just felt exhausted by the stress the film puts you in. Not enough to take away the joy I felt for the film overall, but it did feel like one or two of the things going wrong could have just worked as they were supposed to. The film was long enough without each of the wrong things happening.
THE VERDICT
The Martian deserves to be in talks for all the awards, but not the comedic ones. It’s a strong, well-written film that has great performances by a number of actors. It’s not quite as good as Interstellar in my opinion, but is still a great story. I give The Martian a 9 out of 10 potatoes.
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