Cinema
The Martian: Strife on Mars
Ridley Scott (director)
Twentieth Century Fox (studio)
PG-13 (certificate)
TBC (length)
30 September 2015 (released)
29 September 2015
Like cheering on a veteran, knackered midfield general from our favourite football team, we had been willing Ridley Scott’s return to form for some time.
There was a sense that exasperation could set in if we had to sit through another three hours of CGI battles hung together with perfunctory plotting and at times, toe-curling dialogue.
After a mixed reaction to Prometheus, we were hoping South Shield’s finest would remind doubters of his mastery of atmosphere, story, iconic imagery and an uncanny ability to scare the crap out of us with piercing body horror.
With The Martian, he has done it in spades (minus the horror), and the result is a thrilling survival story that’ll stimulate the brain cells while setting the heart pounding.
What’s most refreshing about the screenplay adapted from Andy Weir’s book is the humour laced throughout what could easily have been a po-faced, existential, against-all-odds story. The Martian is one of 2015's funnier films so far - including most comedies - and this will underpin its undoubtedly ensuant box office success.
Matt Damon’s dry delivery as Mark Watney, an astronaut stranded on Mars, punctures any notion that the film has an over inflated sense of itself. He’s left behind when the crew try to flee the planet from a dust storm. While they make their escape, Mark is clattered by equipment and knocked out of sight. Fearing his death and with no time to lose, the crew are forced to head home without their friend.
Mark is then left with a natty assortment of NASA instruments, not-too-shabby sleeping quarters and little else but his own ingenuity. Fortunately, he’s a brainy botanist, and swiftly finds ways to harness whatever resources he can scavenge for a sustainable existence. This neat little plot device ushers in his most entertaining exploits, as he "sciences the shit" out of his circumstances to cultivate crops and the water to keep them growing.
He keeps a video diary of his travails, but it never feels like he’s morphed into Basil Exposition. Following Interstellar, The Martian credits you with enough intelligence to grasp the science speak and through Mark’s trials and life-threatening errors in astro-physics, the film finds a gripping narrative.
While Mark carves out a living more than 140 million miles away, at home NASA anguishes over bringing him back; managing a PR crisis; halting the threat of a government funding cut and how to tell his former crewmates that he survived.
As the space agency’s chief on the ground, Jeff Daniels nicely straddles a line between cynically preserving NASA’s interests and demanding his team rescue Mark at physics-defying speed. Fellow top brass Sean Bean and Kristen Wiig feel somewhat under-used, and it’s a shame that Donald Glover is forced to render tired old tropes as the resident, bright but hapless geek.
Ridley Scott knows better than most the art of ensuring the universe of his films sticks to its own rules, that it retains the cohesive detail in production design and tone. He ramps up the tension by doing that here, but the final 15 minutes will be a stretch too far for some.
Nevertheless his greater achievement is creating a hugely entertaining, propulsive story that could so easily, in the wrong hands, have been a dull, lifeless two hours.
It’s anything but, and we can all breathe a sigh of relief for that.
There was a sense that exasperation could set in if we had to sit through another three hours of CGI battles hung together with perfunctory plotting and at times, toe-curling dialogue.
After a mixed reaction to Prometheus, we were hoping South Shield’s finest would remind doubters of his mastery of atmosphere, story, iconic imagery and an uncanny ability to scare the crap out of us with piercing body horror.
With The Martian, he has done it in spades (minus the horror), and the result is a thrilling survival story that’ll stimulate the brain cells while setting the heart pounding.
What’s most refreshing about the screenplay adapted from Andy Weir’s book is the humour laced throughout what could easily have been a po-faced, existential, against-all-odds story. The Martian is one of 2015's funnier films so far - including most comedies - and this will underpin its undoubtedly ensuant box office success.
Matt Damon’s dry delivery as Mark Watney, an astronaut stranded on Mars, punctures any notion that the film has an over inflated sense of itself. He’s left behind when the crew try to flee the planet from a dust storm. While they make their escape, Mark is clattered by equipment and knocked out of sight. Fearing his death and with no time to lose, the crew are forced to head home without their friend.
Mark is then left with a natty assortment of NASA instruments, not-too-shabby sleeping quarters and little else but his own ingenuity. Fortunately, he’s a brainy botanist, and swiftly finds ways to harness whatever resources he can scavenge for a sustainable existence. This neat little plot device ushers in his most entertaining exploits, as he "sciences the shit" out of his circumstances to cultivate crops and the water to keep them growing.
He keeps a video diary of his travails, but it never feels like he’s morphed into Basil Exposition. Following Interstellar, The Martian credits you with enough intelligence to grasp the science speak and through Mark’s trials and life-threatening errors in astro-physics, the film finds a gripping narrative.
While Mark carves out a living more than 140 million miles away, at home NASA anguishes over bringing him back; managing a PR crisis; halting the threat of a government funding cut and how to tell his former crewmates that he survived.
As the space agency’s chief on the ground, Jeff Daniels nicely straddles a line between cynically preserving NASA’s interests and demanding his team rescue Mark at physics-defying speed. Fellow top brass Sean Bean and Kristen Wiig feel somewhat under-used, and it’s a shame that Donald Glover is forced to render tired old tropes as the resident, bright but hapless geek.
Ridley Scott knows better than most the art of ensuring the universe of his films sticks to its own rules, that it retains the cohesive detail in production design and tone. He ramps up the tension by doing that here, but the final 15 minutes will be a stretch too far for some.
Nevertheless his greater achievement is creating a hugely entertaining, propulsive story that could so easily, in the wrong hands, have been a dull, lifeless two hours.
It’s anything but, and we can all breathe a sigh of relief for that.
