THE MARTIAN

(Directed by Ridley Scott)

“I’m going to science the shit out of this.” That’s one of many Family Guy- esque quips uttered by Matt Damon in The Martian. And the Ridley Scott film, adapted by Drew Goddard from a best-selling ebook from Andy Weir, couldn’t be summed up better: there’s a near- constant barrage of one-liners (with varying comedic success), a shit-ton of science and a scientific ton of actual human shit. This is one hell of a weird blockbuster. Damon is Mark Watney, an astronaut who’s stranded on Mars when his fellow crew members mistake him for dead. Myriad crises follow as NASA fends off a PR disaster and attempts to plan a rescue mission while Mark struggles to stay alive on the red planet. While Damon’s affable enough on his own, the film also boasts a bafflingly large cast that includes Jessica Chastain, Kristen Wiig, Jeff Daniels, Michael Peña, Sean Bean, Kate Mara, Sebastian Stan, Aksel Hennie, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Donald Glover, Benedict Wong, Mackenzie Davis and Naomi Scott. That’s a lot of people, and almost all of them talk in a similarly jokey tone. They punctuate scenes with curse words, razz each other for their music taste, trip over things, exchange knowing glances and call each other names. When we’re not alone with Mark, we’re in a world where every human being is in a constant state of flirtatious banter.

The Martian is touted as a love letter to science, and it certainly is science that triumphs throughout. One trick Mark pulls off is growing his own crops on Mars by creating human poo paste as fertilizer. For all of its flaws, however, The Martian succeeds in being another big-budget space disaster movie with a unique approach. At once a political disaster movie, a space