'The Martian' Review!

I don't often write book/movie reviews, but I felt like this was needed!

I went to see this movie last weekend (10/4) when it came out, and I couldn't get enough--so I saw it again this past Monday (10/12)! Which coincidentally, was Mark Watney's (21st!!!) birthday. Awesome.

Anyways, spoilers ahoy! Don't read past the jump break if you haven't seen the movie/read the book yet!



Alright, let's start with the book. (Lots of spoilers ahead!)

So, the premise of it all is that in 2035, the Ares 3 crew launches into space, headed for Mars. They're only there for 6 sols (Martian days) before there's a super-storm that requires them to evacuate. Everyone runs to the MAV (Mars Ascent Vehicle), but poor Mark gets struck by an antennae, and the crew loses signal on him. They assume he's dead, and are forced to leave without him.

Surprise! Mark is definitely not dead, and we find him with an antennae through his midsection as he hobbles back to the Hab, their pressurized home on Mars. Mark is realizing that he's completely alone at this point, and has to figure out how he'll survive on a planet that supposedly cannot sustain life. He decides that he's got enough food to last him for at least a year--but, the Ares 4 crew won't be arriving for another four years. Now, he's got to make three years of food.

How, you ask?

He's going to science the shit out of it.

He ends up planting potatoes that NASA sent along for their makeshift Thanksgiving dinner, and brilliantly makes water from what he's got (though, he might have blown himself up). We follow him for a little longer before the perspective changes--now, we're at NASA HQ, as they're finding out Watney's alive. The big problem? There's no way to communicate with him. The antennae that struck him? Yep, that was the com.

The book then switches between NASA and Mark's perspective as he tries to figure out a way to contact them and stay alive, and NASA tries to sort out where to go from there. Mark eventually decides that his only option is going to be finding Pathfinder, a rover sent to Mars in 1997. He lucks out, and is able to communicate with NASA via hexadecimals!

But, it's not over. Far from, actually.

Mark hadn't checked the pressure of the Hab, and without his knowledge, the pressure had been wearing too heavy on the airlock, causing it to explode and all of his potato plants to die. He patches up the Hab and cleans it up, then explains to NASA that he's got enough food to survive until about Sol 500, possibly more if he rations even further.

NASA tries to whip up a probe with food and supplies to keep him alive until Ares 4 gets there, but it fails terribly. They need a second plan, which involves using a Chinese probe, in return for letting one of their astronauts go along on the next Ares mission. Here's the rub: the probe won't make it to Mark fast enough, and even if it did, it might land too far away, or break when it does land.

So, Mark's last hope resides with Rich Purnell, an astrodynamics physicist. He creates a plan that would require for the Ares 3 crew to orbit Earth, catch the Chinese probe, then use the force to get to Mars again, and catch Mark. NASA is wholly against this idea, but the crew wants to go back, so the Rich Purnell maneuver is put into play.

Meanwhile, Mark tries to make renovations to the two rovers he has access to in order to get to the Ares 4 MAV, which is a good 3200 km away in the Schiaperelli Crater. While this happens, he blows the fuse on the Pathfinder, losing all communication with NASA. Crap.

Still, he finishes up with what he could, and he heads out to Schiaperelli. He hits a huge sandstorm without knowing it (no communication with NASA, remember?), and in his descent into the crater, flips the rover. Things aren't looking great, but he's pushing forward.

Finally, he makes it to the MAV! NASA is in contact with him again, and basically tells him to tear the MAV apart. He says something about tearing a $3 billion dollar machine apart and loving it, and I feel like that resonated with me!

Anyways, we cut back to the crew, and they're gearing up to go save their boy. Beck is the EVA specialist, so he's in charge of getting Mark. Vogel is his backup, should anything go wrong.

Aaand, skipping a few days ahead, Mark is finally launched into orbit (mind you: remotely piloted by Martinez in the ship with no backup coms--if anything happened, he'd be screwed). He passes out from the g-force, but wakes up in time for Beck to come get him. They run into a few problems with how fast he's going, but it all works out, and Beck grabs onto him! (I just made that really anti-climatic, sorry.)

Once Beck has him, Vogel pulls them back in, and that's it! That's literally how the story ends, and it's pretty perfect.

-x-x-x-

So now that you've basically read the book (whoops, it got longer than I intended), let's talk about the movie!

I'll start by saying that this movie is ridiculously accurate to the book. It follows the exact timeline with little changes. There are some plot-related changes, but there's nothing too huge. Overall, it was much closer than I was expecting it to be.

The biggest change in my opinion was Commander Lewis going out to get Mark instead of Beck. This doesn't seem like a huge deal, but in the book, that was Beck's kind of... big break. Even in the movie, we don't see/hear much from Beck (played by the gorgeous Sebastian Stan), which is kind of sad. I think taking that part away from him was a little weird, and it felt forced, but it didn't really stop me from liking the movie or the ending in particular.

Another rather large change was the exclusion of Mark's mission to the Ares 4 MAV. It just did one of those cop-out "7 months later" kind of things, which was... alright. It made sense, and the movie was already long as is. I do hope they put some deleted scenes on the DVD, though, because I think we didn't quite see enough of his struggles? I think the sandstorm and his rover flipping were huge obstacles for him, but maybe that's just me.

And, finally, we've got the added ending. It's in the credits, so I'm not sure how much it really counts, but instead of just ending after they rescue him, there's some sort of clear time jump that shows what the crew is doing after they've landed. It doesn't tell us how long it is after they landed, but it's presumably a few years in the future, since the Ares 5 crew was launching. I liked this little epilogue, and I think it tied up the movie really nicely.

So, overall, I loved the movie. It was a great adaption for the amount of things they squeezed into the movie from the book. And, oh my god, all of the direct quotes! It was literally like I was watching the book, which I don't think happens too frequently.

My rating? Ten out of ten, one hundred percent. Even if you haven't read the book, go see it. It'll blow you away.