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| Home Alone, when "home" is your neighbor's |
This film sees Mark Watney (Matt Damon) stranded on Mars, while the NASA team on Earth comes up with a rescue plan. While the martian aspect of the movie works quite well, the part on the other planet seems to have been grossly neglected and thus fails to deliver. [...]
An adaptation by Drew Goddard of Andy Weir's novel of the same name, The Martian shows Goddard failing in the dialogue department, though curiously constructing quite enjoyable monologue, which is especially nice with Damon's performance.
Furthermore, the imagery we see on the red planet is truly stunning, and very well executed. As is Damon's performance as the witty and humorous Mark Watney. Since "humorous" is not usually what you expect to call a guy who is stranded on his neighboring planet, that makes for a nice change in tone from other such films, and is where the main writing merits are.
In contrast, when we jump back to the blue planet, it is a totally different story. We have pretty much the entirety of time on Earth filled with poor dialogue, and for the most part, equally disappointing acting, while basically the same applies to the scenes in the Ares spacecraft. Moreover, any kind of logical decision making or procedures, such as you would expect from a space agency like NASA, are completely neglected and instead replaced by absurd interpretations of events for the sake of dramatic effect.
Also, for some reason, this film seems to be praised for its scientific accuracy, though its major errors are bound to bother the least space savvy of people. But unfortunately, I can't go into detail about those without spoiling the movie. Two of the most obvious such occurrences are: when an Ares crew member is jumping around the outside of the spacecraft while untethered, which may just be the dumbest thing I have ever seen, and when Watney punctures his glove to propel him towards Ares, something that even if his air supply were able to maintain pressure inside the suit, would render him completely uncontrollable (which to be fair it actually did, but even so, he somehow flops around in the desired direction).
All in all, I would say it is a film that could easily be skipped, but is certainly not utterly regrettable as certain films of the genre, such as Gravity. And in the end, the movie might have been much better if Earth and Ares were to be cut out, and it was called The Chronicles of a Man on Mars (There's an idea for a drastic re-edit! Perhaps a re-release?).
What did you think of The Martian? Share your thoughts in the comments bellow!
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