Review of The Martian (2015) by Nathanallen — 11 Oct 2015

Honestly this wasn't terrible it just fell flat. The acting was pretty flat, the soundtrack was very flat.

I feel like someone told the actors that all scientists and engineers are typically emotionless human beings. All of the NASA interactions in the first half of the moving are just not engaging. It does pick up in second half and overall I would have been happier with the movie except for the nonsensical end.

The Good: Overall the movie was smartly adapted from the book. I think all of the sections removed were smart decisions that would have taken forever to narrate and been really hard to depict. Matt Damon did well. Kristen Wiig did a good job with her character, wish she could have had a little more time.

The Bad: The acting and actors. I don't think Chastain was a great pick for Commander Lewis. I would have liked to see someone a bit more hard edged. It seems like Vogel is only German so that he can say Mein Gott instead of My God at one point. I'm not sure if Jeff Daniels was actually awake.

The Ugly: The point where Hermes crew finds out Watney's still alive is a huge up of celebration and then a huge down of Lewis admitting she left him behind, and I didn't get any of that at all from the scene. It just went straight to Lewis being down. That was a failure of acting and directing.

Vincent Kapoor instead of Venkat: The long winded explanation of father religion and mother religion then the punchline, which seemed almost whispered, was far less effective than just having the character being Hindu.

Donald Glover as Danny Pudi's Abed as Rich Purnell.

The final scene. Wow was that dumb. Matt Damon leaps from a spinning capsule after cutting a hole in his suit he can't control. You can see the thrust going all over the place (like Lewis said it would) and yet he surprisingly stays right on course. And then of course the hole seals up when it's no longer important and no one seems worried that all of his air is venting to space. It just flies in the face of a novel that was compelling because it was accurate. And they didn't have any dumb departures from reality like this the whole movie, then to do it at the end, when it wasn't even necessary or that engaging?

Overall it was entertaining. I wouldn't watch it again.