“The Martian” movie is an out-of-this-world success
The most recent craze in cinema blockbusters appears to be outer space movies that make the viewer feel insignificantly small, yet closer to humanity all at the same time. Interstellar, Gravity, and even the classic Apollo 13 all fit into the category of trippy, action-packed, space movie, but one new blockbuster sticks out amongst the rest: The Martian.
The novel the movie is based on, independently published by Andy Weir, became an international bestseller. Not unlike other bestselling books, the story was put to life on the big screen. Astronaut Mark Watney (Matt Damon) is aground on Mars when a massive storm forces his team to evacuate their mission. While trying to get onto the spacecraft, Watney is impaled with an antenna, and his crew presume him dead and are forced to leave him on the barren planet. Little do they know, Watney is alive.
The only known living organism on the planet, Watney must find a way to grow crops and make water in order to sustain himself for the potential years he will be stuck on Mars. By implementing his wits and perseverance, Watney is able to make contact with Earth. Soon NASA is using its brain power to fund and execute a rescue mission for the stranded astronaut.
I would rate The Martian as a solid 8.2 out of 10, and add that it is definitely worth the price of admission.
— Grace Gyolai
Working together the NASA scientists prove that nothing is insurmountable with dedication, brains, and good old human spirit. That’s all very touching, but guess what is impossible? The entire beginning of the movie’s plot. Since the atmosphere on Mars cannot produce the intensity of the storm portrayed in The Martian, Watney and his team would have never had to evacuate their mission in such a hurry, Watney wouldn’t have been stranded, and the rest of the movie wouldn’t exist either.
A few large details in the movie were absurd, but as an individual with a developed sense of humor, The Martian is hilarious even if it’s factually lacking. The idea of being stranded on Mars is not a laughing matter, but the emotions, ideas, and even words that Watney constructs bring life to a situation that typically lacks enjoyment. Humor is a real human emotion, and the tasteful inserts of sarcasm and wit were extremely well done throughout the movie, and made Watney’s intense situation more relatable.
It’s difficult to compare The Martian to deep and intellectual movies such as Interstellar, but the two don’t necessarily belong in the same category. The Martian focuses on human emotion and character development. I felt like I was working at NASA waiting for the long lost astronaut to return home to planet Earth. Yes, the basis of the plot was slightly skewed and there was a predictable cliché ending, but I laughed at a man who was millions of miles away from home, and even almost cried with him. If a movie can create such a wide variety of emotion in a matter of minutes, it deserves a round of applause. I would rate The Martian as a solid 8.2 out of 10, and add that it is definitely worth the price of admission.
Locke • Oct 26, 2015 at 4:06 pm
As it turns out, you’re wrong. While the Martian ATMOSPHERE may be only 1-2% as dense as Earth’s, it’s still capable of sustaining weather systems, which leads to one especially catastrophic type of weather: dust storms. Mars’s surface is in most places extremely fine-grained. This makes it easy for dust storms to slowly build, gradually getting stronger and stronger as they sweep across the landscape. This allows for hurricane-force winds under special condition, which would be more than enough to knock over our precariously perched MAV. Hollywood’s depiction of said storms, however, was way off the mark. They showed great, red clouds blowing about, with blinding debris near the surface. They even had the cheek to throw in some lightning. In reality, Martian dust storms are more like a slowly thickening fog. They can be thousands of miles across, and last for close to a month. Given a day or two, these storms would a) dirty up your solar panels, b) clog up your horribly-designed airlocks and exhaust systems, and c) blow over your one route off that godforsaken rock. In reality, such problems could be mitigated, but given their design in the movie, everything in the Martian is completely possible. Except the lightning. That’s BS.