Review of Martian (2015) by Zachary C — 09 Apr 2017

The Martian.

Now I've only seen 7 out of 22 of Ridley Scott's movies. And for the most part I've been Indifferent towards Ridley Scott's movies. And sometimes he'll come out with something that I really like, but truth be told I've only liked 2 of his movies and I like I said I haven't seen all his movies. One movie I need to revisit of his would be "Blade Runner" since I saw the Director's Cut of that and "The Martian" may be a movie that I need to see the director's cut of. But if there isn't one then this is one movie that I don't think I need to revisit.

One thing I was thoroughly surprised by was the fact that this movie was written by Drew Goddard the creator and main writer for the new "Daredevil" series on Netflix. And he actually wrote this movie really well even though it was a little contrived. The plot of "The Martian" is one where it's a very intense story of survival. Matt Damon is alone on Mars. He has no friends, very little food and he needs to find a way to stay alive until help arrives to BRING HIM HOME!

"The Martian" is like a combination of the movie "Gravity" and "Cast Away." And while "Cast Away" and "Gravity" were both interesting movies for different reasons I can't really say that a combination of those movies worked for "The Martian." I'd like to talk more about Gravity, but I'd rather save that for another time.

One thing I didn't particularly like about The Martian was that it didn't really have a lot of tension between characters other than when Matt Damon was typing out his crass complaints live to the entire world. I thought the movie would have been more engaging than it could have been with some conflict between the characters. And even though I was engaged the entire time I think that it was mostly due to the fact that the survival elements were enough to keep me on the edge of my seat.

The idea of someone being stranded alone on a planet waiting for help to come is a good idea for a story right? Damn straight it is. But the thing that I thought "The Martian" relied WAY too heavily on was all the stuff that went wrong for Mark Watney and there wasn't enough conflict between the characters. And when there was conflict between the characters it was resolved almost instantly. And as for the things that went wrong for Mark what I mean by that is this: With Mark's garden blowing up and his food running short I noticed that those were the MAIN THINGS that fueled this movie and kept it afloat. And usually those scenes came after scenes where you thought things were going okay and then something bad happened.

Keeping warm for Mark wasn't a big problem because the temperature on Mars is livable and he found his warm Uranium thingy, but for the most part I just felt bad for him since he was going to starve on Mars and they SHOWED IT. They showed that he was starving and that he didn't have a lot to eat. Especially near the end when he was skin and bones. But as soon as the movie was over I was in no rush to see it again. I thought that Matt Damon did a great job as usual. And this redeemed Mr Damon after his shitty role as Dr. Mann in "Interstellar".

"The Martian" had almost no tension between any of the characters. And when it did happen the tension was there for less than a minute and that in and of itself was frustrating because people don't just end arguments so quickly. Not over little things and not even when someone's life is on the line. I'm sure that if something like "The Martian" were happening in real life right in this moment the world would probably be debating whether or not we should save him and whether we should spend millions of dollars in tax-payers money to save one man. And plus the part in this movie where China agrees to help out the United States in bringing him back is quite baffling to me.

I don't think it was entirely a bad thing to have made the story mostly one of survival I also think that if they were going to make it one of survival that it needed to be even more intense than it was. And I'm not talking like gunfire, explosions or monsters or anything like that. But I think that Ridley Scott should have made it even harder on Mark Whatney. I don't know how that could have happened, but that was the screenwriter's job and Drew Goddard didn't do as well as I would have hoped in that sense. But Drew Goddard is a fantastic writer and I'm very much looking forward to whatever he has in the works that's coming out next.

"The Martian" was not bad, but honestly it just wasn't exciting enough and I don't think it was as good as it could have been. I don't want to see "The Martian" again. I have no desire to. If I was invited to some event where "The Martian" was going to be shown and I didn't have to pay then I'd probably go if there was nothing better to do at home.

"The Martian" gets: 3.0 out of 5.0.