You know exactly where this movie is headed from the start but it's an enjoyable ride. Want to have some fun for two hours? Go see The Martian. It's Cast Away meets Apollo 13. And, according to the THC Son (Official Science Advisor To This Blog), the science is sound, though not nearly as mind bending as Interstellar which even had an accompanying explanatory book, The Science of Interstellar. On the other hand, both Matt Damon and Jessica Chastain appear in both movies and neither of them are scientists.
It looked great in 3D and though the dialogue can get a bit hokey at times we recommend it. Matt Damon is, as usual, reliably good. Jeff Daniels plays a Jeff Daniels style NASA Administrator, Kristen Wiig is NASA's communication director who doesn't understand any science so she asks questions which allow the respondents to embark on lengthy spools of exposition so the audience can understand what's going on. And a THC favorite, Sean Bean (who's looking a bit old, but then again aren't we all?), also appears.
The book goes into more of the chemistry than the movie, and follows more closely his calculations of, for example, how many potatoes he needs to grow to last him x number of days, and how much soil over how big an area, requiring how much of his "natural waste" to supply the bio nutrients, etc., to grow them. Managing the ambient humidity, calculating how much energy derived from how many of the solar panels would drive his vehicle for how many hours. Etc., etc., etc.
ReplyDeleteBut the movie worked around all that wonky detail that would bore the audience to death, all the while moving the central plot of the story forward. I wondered how they would convey all the information that he wrote into a diary. I thought the screenwriter(s) did a great job.