The Martian (5/5 Stars)

Science. It works, bitches.

- XKCD T-shirt

“The Martian,” like this year’s other great blockbuster “Mad Max: Fury Road” is a movie that would not have been possible before the silent revolution in moviemaking that took place early this century. It is a niche blockbuster that combines the sort of expensive spectacle you have seen before with an unapologetic high common denominator focus of a particular audience. With Mad Max it was gearheads and metal freaks, in this case its engineering nerds and space wonks or whatever they call themselves. Gone are all the trappings of a Hollywood movie. There is no love triangle or family drama, no superpowers or aliens, no class warfare or crime, or even sex and violence. There is a Mars mission already underway at the start. There is a sandstorm and the team has to abort. During the abort, astronaut Mark Watney (Matt Damon) is struck by debris and presumed dead. The crew leaves Mars without him. But he is not dead. He is very much alive and now marooned on Mars. It will be another four years before the next mission can get there. How will he stay alive?

No, really, how exactly will he stay alive? Because the math (and there is a lot of scenes of Mark counting things and making calculations) says he will starve in 300 sols (Mars days) if he keeps to the rations he has stored. What follows for the entire length of the movie is a series of engineering problems. Mark has to use his knowledge of botany, chemistry, physics, and several other nerdy things to stay alive on this alien planet for years with nothing but the tools that were brought for a thirty day excusion. In the past studios were very hesistant to give a bunch of money to a movie that would take ten minutes to take the audience through a step-by-step chemical process on how to create water (interesting spoiler: it takes fire to create water) so the main character can grow potatoes. But this movie has taken that chance and given the box office receipts, it will succeed wildly in finding an audience nobody cared to cater to before. 

If you are into this sort of thing. If you are not turned off by people being smart and building cool things, then “The Martian” plays as an almost absurdly easy crowd-pleasing movie. The optimism and can-do attitude and cooperativeness of the best of science is all over the place. Whereas many other mainstream movies are individualistic in that stupid Ayn Randian sort of way (good me against bad world!), Mark Watney’s experience is no Robinson Crusoe type of existence. He is surviving by standing on the shoulders of giants: the knowledge passed down to him from his education, the equipment built for him by the NASA network, and once he achieves communication with NASA, the around the clock expertise, problem solving (math!), and selflessness of everybody on the ground and in space.

For a movie that is ostensibly about one person on one planet, the star power of the cast belies that it is merely that. In the spaceship, the rest of the crew includes Commander Jessica Chastain, Kate Mara, and the underrated Michael Pena. On the ground Jeff Daniels runs the show, Kristin Wiig is his press secretary, Sean Bean is in charge of the astronauts, Benedict Wong and his team builds the rockets over there at the Jet Propulsion Lab, Chiwetel Ejiofor is the satellite expert, and Donald Glover is calculating the fail-safe plan in Astrodynamics. Everybody is working together to save Mark Watney and though there are many arguments about the best way to do it, nobody is working against each other. Thus although there is plenty of suspense, there is pleasantly no drama.

Not that it’s easy. And this is where this kind of movie, even as successful as it will be, will be hard to replicate. It was based on a book written with no time constraints by an engineer in network with a bunch of nerds who were checking his work for scientific errors. The whole point was to be as scientifically accurate as possible not merely do enough to assuage an audience. I do not know how to replicate that on purpose but I sure hope some studio will try.

Ridley Scott directed this movie. He made his name a long time ago with such movies as Alien, Blade Runner, and Thelma and Louise. It has been awhile since he has been culturally relevant but he never stopped being an extremely competent filmmaker. He was the perfect person to be in charge of this movie, which is less about drama and more about technical expertise. Matt Damon stars as Mark Watney. This too is perfect casting as he excels at playing exceptionally smart/charming/handsome people.

One last note: would you be surprised that this movie was almost Rated R? As I said before, no violence and no sex, but there are Fucks abounding. The rule is that you have one Fuck. Two Fucks is an R.There are at least six or seven Fucks in this movie. The astute filmmaker will take notes on how you can have a Fuck in a movie without adding to the Fuck count. And yes take note on when to use that one real Fuck. I think they made the right choice here. After performing self-surgery without anesthesia is fine use of your one Fuck. Having said that, Fucks notwithstanding, all parents who want their kids to go to college and study something other than art history should take them to see this movie, It is a wonderful humorous optimitistic story about determination and teamwork that is appropriate for kids of all ages.