There’s not a whole lot of real substance in The Martian, and even less surprise. What it does nicely maintain, though, is a frisky well-above-average entertainment level. Director Ridley Scott has been around so long he practically makes cinematic moves in his sleep, and most of them work. While it may all seem a bit too calculated and safe, much of what lies within this movie provides the small-pleasure quotient far too often missing in more cerebral films.
Not that The Martian doesn’t have grand notions of its own intellect. Its overtly wonky stance is luckily offset by the aw-shucks, snarky smartness of is lead character, Mark Watney (Matt Damon). Watney’s tendency to annoy is itself offset by the hard-as-nails director of NASA, Teddy Sanders (a superb Jeff Daniels). Together they’re enough to beckon a partial forgiveness for The Martian’s multiple cornball Scotticisms.
Due to circumstances beyond their control, Watney’s fellow crewmembers
leave him stranded on Mars. He seems about as worried as if he’d missed the final evening train and merely needs to wait a few hours to catch the first one in the morning. Watney happens to be a botanist who will grow his own food and perform all sorts of science projects to stretch his food supply and also to get himself transported across the sizable distance to where he needs to be if he’s ever rescued. Not sure it makes any sense that he can’t just stay put and still get rescued but growing your own potatoes from scratch can only take a film so far.
Watney’s diet eventually becomes more lean than an anorexic’s but back on earth NASA is pulling scientific strings to come get him. Rule-breaking, chicanery, mutiny and ultimately a wacky underling’s left-field hypothesis all contribute to an attempt at rescue but not before a very skinny Watney jettison’s most of his escape rocket–the first “convertible” model to hit the movies. Scott, meanwhile effectively uses David Bowie’s “Starman”in its entirety but decided against the perhaps more appropriate “Is There Ljfe On Mars.”
Jessica Chastain, who seemed to wander into this film following Damon from the set of Interstellar, plays the spaceship crew leader. Michael Pena is around to throw jibes at Watney. Their camaraderie out in space is in stark contrast to Sanders’ amusingly stone-serious gravitas back on earth. Somewhere in that juxtaposition lies a symbol for The Martian itself. Keep it light when you’re practically certain to die alone on a distant planet because once you get home to Earth the fun is over.