[movie] The Martian

It is getting great reviews.


The Martian Is Hands Down The Best Thriller Of The Year
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I am planning on seeing it Tuesday when our theater has $5 night. I am quite excited. I think it will be the first sci-fi movie my kids (9 and 7) besides Star Wars.

We went last night. It stays pretty true to the book except for the very end (they basically add an epilogue). Enjoyed it a lot.

Last night, I could have biked to see this in my local cinema pub (yes, I have a local cinema pub, it is paradise), or walked to see Sicario, and I chose the latter. But the former is slated for the first opportunity I get this week.

I don't regret choosing Sicario bee tee dubs.

Drew Goddard is the man.

Saw it last night - fantastic, and very true to the book, except for one thing that bugged me:

Spoiler:

Why not have Beck be the hero at the end like the book? The commander had already done her part of the heroism, and they even could have had the conversation between Lewis and Watney after he entered the airlock. The movie basically has everyone do something important to the story except Beck, which is not cool.

I saw it last night as well, and thought it was great. And as a big fan of the book, I thought they did a really smart job in choosing what to cut, such as:

Spoiler:

losing communications with NASA, or encountering the sand storm and the rover flipping on the final journey. Not that those were bad sections of the book, but losing communications with NASA would've made the movie more difficult to tell, and making his drive relatively simple made the implausibility of his final rescue less straining on my suspension of disbelief.

Aetius wrote:

Saw it last night - fantastic, and very true to the book, except for one thing that bugged me:

Spoiler:

Why not have Beck be the hero at the end like the book? The commander had already done her part of the heroism, and they even could have had the conversation between Lewis and Watney after he entered the airlock. The movie basically has everyone do something important to the story except Beck, which is not cool.

My thoughts -

Spoiler:

I assume it was some combination of a)demonstrating some gender balance in the heroism and b)Jessica Chastain is the second biggest star in the movie and thus also gets to do some cool space action. I agree with you it wasn't necessary and makes Beck kind of useless, but it didn't bother me much.

mrlogical wrote:

I saw it last night as well, and thought it was great. And as a big fan of the book, I thought they did a really smart job in choosing what to cut, such as:

Spoiler:

losing communications with NASA, or encountering the sand storm and the rover flipping on the final journey. Not that those were bad sections of the book, but losing communications with NASA would've made the movie more difficult to tell, and making his drive relatively simple made the implausibility of his final rescue less straining on my suspension of disbelief.

Aetius wrote:

Saw it last night - fantastic, and very true to the book, except for one thing that bugged me:

Spoiler:

Why not have Beck be the hero at the end like the book? The commander had already done her part of the heroism, and they even could have had the conversation between Lewis and Watney after he entered the airlock. The movie basically has everyone do something important to the story except Beck, which is not cool.

My thoughts -

Spoiler:

I assume it was some combination of a)demonstrating some gender balance in the heroism and b)Jessica Chastain is the second biggest star in the movie and thus also gets to do some cool space action. I agree with you it wasn't necessary and makes Beck kind of useless, but it didn't bother me much.

Totally agree, mrlogical. That was a superb change to the book.

Spoiler:

The more great, smart, strong female role-models in movies the better. I really liked how her character was handled in the movie.

At any rate, Beck gets a cute, happy ending which is enough for that character.

So, it was great! Totally happy with everything and will go watch it one more time with friends.

Can't wait to see this. Loved the book. Definitely going to check it out next weekend. I'm hoping to get to Sicario too but we'll see.

tuffalobuffalo wrote:
Spoiler:

The more great, smart, strong female role-models in movies the better. I really liked how her character was handled in the movie.

At any rate, Beck gets a cute, happy ending which is enough for that character.

Here's the problem I have with that:

Spoiler:

What she did was stupid. It wasn't the act of a smart, strong leader, it was glory-seeking at the worst possible moment. Beck was the EVA primary, and Vogel was his backup. They were the ones best trained to handle the MMU and do recovery. A smart leader would have let her people do the jobs they were trained for, like she did in the book.

That's a good point!

I was pleasantly surprised by how great they made Mars look - all those vistas of sand and mountains that he travelled through - just lovely.

NASA discovers water on Mars too late to help Matt Damon.

Thanks, Obama.

This seems a bit over the top

The Martian Proves Movies are now Better than Their Books

Ridley Scott’s The Martian is that edit. Freed of Watney’s long monologues and Weir’s deep explanations of botany and chemistry, the movie is far more agile than the book. It’s no less compelling and a whole lot more fun. (At one point, I actually spent an evening doing my taxes just to avoid delving into another chapter of The Martian.) Simply put, the movie is better than the book.
farley3k wrote:

This seems a bit over the top

The Martian Proves Movies are now Better than Their Books

Ridley Scott’s The Martian is that edit. Freed of Watney’s long monologues and Weir’s deep explanations of botany and chemistry, the movie is far more agile than the book. It’s no less compelling and a whole lot more fun. (At one point, I actually spent an evening doing my taxes just to avoid delving into another chapter of The Martian.) Simply put, the movie is better than the book.

Not to mention incredibly cherry picked.

The Martian was a self published e-book that caught the eye of movie producers because of its innovative idea. And as self published e-books go, it was pretty well written, but nowhere near the craft of a professional writer with a professional editor. It was catering to a specific geek audience and was not intended for wide distribution to a mass market audience. The movie, in sharp contrast, was.

I rate this article 85% clickbait.

Yeah, that's a pretty silly headline and argument. I would agree that the movie is more effective at certain things than the book. But a movie and a book have different goals. A movie that addressed all of the issues of botany and chemistry and engineering would be many hours longer and probably would be pretty boring. A book that cut out all the things the movie cut out would probably be 150 pages and wouldn't convey a lot of the tension and drama that play out in images on screen. Books aren't movies and movies aren't books, but they can both be great.

Didn't read the article but that's clearly a click-bait headline if ever I read one. Definitive statement people either agree with (and want to see proven) or disagree with (and want to read to disprove it themselves).

Really enjoyed it. There was one plothole that went unexplained though, not sure if it was covered in the book:

Spoiler:

After the hab depressurized, why didn't he start up his farm again? It's not like he was going to run out of poop. Plenty of dirt, not to mention extra potatoes. The only thing he might not be able to recreate is the water.

Quintin_Stone wrote:

Really enjoyed it. There was one plothole that went unexplained though, not sure if it was covered in the book:

Spoiler:

After the hab depressurized, why didn't he start up his farm again? It's not like he was going to run out of poop. Plenty of dirt, not to mention extra potatoes. The only thing he might not be able to recreate is the water.

That was explained in the book as I recall:

Spoiler:

All the potatoes were dead from being in the freeze-dried by the crazy cold near vacuum of Mars' atmosphere. So he had nothing that would grow. The bacteria in the dirt was also dead; in the book he started it with some earth soil they had packed and fed it his own feces to keep it growing, but he had no more dirt to put in so just re-dumping his feces into it wouldn't create usable bacteria for growing plants even if he did have something to grow.

I saw it last night and really liked it. It was a bit long but no real dull sections.

Things they could have cut to make it under 2 hours:

Spoiler:

1. The picture where he poses like the Fonz. It was a cutish moment but it was never brought up again, never mentioned. Easy to drop.

2. Getting the radioactive fuel to warm himself. This was huge in the book but never really explained or mentioned again in the movie. Just cut it out if you are not going to make it important.

Things that did bug me:

Spoiler:

1. His lack of physical change. I remember seeing Cast Away and being shocked by how much weight loss Tom Hanks went through. That never seemed to happen to Matt Damon. Well there was one scene where he was leaving the shower and his head was covered with a towel and the body looked gaunt (and was very obviously a body double) but the rest of the time he looked great.

2. Along these lines the fact that he only seemed to grow hair during the ride to the other rocket (and facial hair) I don't know why he would be trimming his hair the many months before that but it made it feel like not much time had passed.

3. As others have said the captain taking over at the end to get Watney. In fact the whole ending really felt way to "Hollywood" - ish. I know it was probably necessary but it felt tacked on.

Even with those niggles though it was a great movie and well worth the time.

IMAGE(https://scontent.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-xpt1/v/t1.0-9/12088358_989115544460214_6394281104771562326_n.png?oh=2bcb1de458c1ccd92930e7469d856386&oe=56852B63)

farley3k wrote:

Things that did bug me:

[spoiler]1. His lack of physical change. I remember seeing Cast Away and being shocked by how much weight loss Tom Hanks went through. That never seemed to happen to Matt Damon. Well there was one scene where he was leaving the shower and his head was covered with a towel and the body looked gaunt (and was very obviously a body double) but the rest of the time he looked great.

2. Along these lines the fact that he only seemed to grow hair during the ride to the other rocket (and facial hair) I don't know why he would be trimming his hair the many months before that but it made it feel like not much time had passed.

Spoiler:

1. There were at least 2 scenes where they showed his emaciated body, covered with rashes and sores. And this was because he was forced to increase rationing at something like half-way through his stay on Mars. Most of the movie took place before his radical rationing.

2. I think he just kind of gave up at some point. His energy levels must have been extremely low on such a low calorie diet.

Oh, also remembered that the movie never explained

why he cut a hole in the roof of the rover and put a balloon there.

Loved it. They did a great job with the adaptation. I agree that the ending wasn't great.

Spoiler:

Both the commander taking over and the Iron Man glove bit.

They also left out my favorite line from the book!!!

Spoiler:

"I experimented with potato skin tea a few weeks ago. The less said about that the better."

farley3k wrote:

Things that did bug me:

Spoiler:

2. Along these lines the fact that he only seemed to grow hair during the ride to the other rocket (and facial hair) I don't know why he would be trimming his hair the many months before that but it made it feel like not much time had passed.

Spoiler:

This is because in the movie there is a big time gap between the explosion aftermath and him starting the road trip - if you miss the little notice that many months have passed, it's a little jarring. Presumably he lost the ability to shave/cut his hair during that time due to running out of supplies or damage from the explosion, and then was able to trim up again when he reached the Ares 4 MAV and got access to some supplies.

I think overall I feel they just kept him too pretty There was a comment when rescued about his smell but generally he stayed quite well groomed throughout the time.

farley3k wrote:

I think overall I feel they just kept him too pretty There was a comment when rescued about his smell but generally he stayed quite well groomed throughout the time.

Astronauts have hygiene drilled into them pretty thoroughly. Confined spaces, close proximity, high stress. You do not want to be the smelly one when it comes time to ration oxygen.

Quintin_Stone wrote:

Oh, also remembered that the movie never explained

why he cut a hole in the roof of the rover and put a balloon there.

That was explained in the book, but I can't recall what the purpose of that was. I think in the book he actually had this sort of expandable tent thing that would blow up out of the rover and give him extra space. I might be remembering that wrong, though.

tuffalobuffalo wrote:
Quintin_Stone wrote:

Oh, also remembered that the movie never explained

why he cut a hole in the roof of the rover and put a balloon there.

That was explained in the book, but I can't recall what the purpose of that was. I think in the book he actually had this sort of expandable tent thing that would blow up out of the rover and give him extra space. I might be remembering that wrong, though.

Spoiler:

He needed the oxygenator and the atmospheric regulator to get him enough air to make the trip, but they were too big to fit in the rovers without the balloon top. The expandable tent was his bedroom because he was going to go crazy not being able to stand up in the rover.

Movie Science: The Martian

The Sean Bean comment was hilarious.

I was all primed to see this last night, only to pull up to the bike rack and realize I'd left my lock at home. That'll learn me for trying to stay healthy and minimizing my carbon footprint all while looking hip.