Review of Martian (2015) by Will K — 17 Feb 2016

The Martian is a beautifully constructed sci-fi film. Everything from the directing to the acting to the editing, it all just works. It plays its tone very well, in what could be a depressing film of hopelessness we instead get a story of hope and survival with a surprising sense of fun and humor. There's still some insanely tense moments that'll have you holding your breath, but they aren't the point of the movie. It's a movie about a smart guy stuck in a crappy situation, and to survive he has to science the s*** out of it.

The movie benefits from really smart casting. We are thrown into the story pretty quickly without much chance to learn the background of each character. A brief text blurb will tell us who they are, but that's about all we get. The movie seems to use our familiarity with the cast to it's advantage here. The most obvious being Matt Damon in the lead. We don't know who this guy is, but we need to like him and want him to survive. Matt Damon is an infectiously likable guy, so this works. The rest of the star-studded cast follows a similar form.

The movie also has beautiful direction. Ridley Scott has spent a lot of time making fictional worlds look beautiful, so it stands to reason he could make a real world look gorgeous too, and boy does he ever. I've never wanted to visit Mars before, but now I kind of do. Maybe not the message I'm supposed to get from the movie, but hey, it looks damn pretty.

There's really nothing about The Martian that doesn't work. It's a bit long maybe, but I can't think of anything I'd cut out. It's a damn perfect sci-fi film.