the martian

Matt Damon gets lost in space for Ridley Scott’s latest sci-fi.

THE MARTIAN Director RIDLEY SCOTT Starring MATT DAMON, JESSICA CHASTAIN, KRISTEN WIIG, SEAN BEAN, KATE MARA 27 NOVEMBER

hen you have to hand over the reins on a high-profile project, it must be hard to begrudge Ridley Scott taking on directorial duties. So it goes for Drew Goddard, who – hired in March 2013 to direct his own adaptation of Andy Weir’s sci-fi novel – had to vacate the director’s chair when duties on Daredevil and The Sinister Six made for an intractable schedule clash. (Goddard has since left both projects for the Sony/Marvel

Spider-Man reboot.) So instead, Scott has been corralling Matt Damon as the stranded astronaut, in locations from Budapest to Jordan’s sandstone valley Wadi Rum, a top spot for filmmakers attempting to evoke desolate spacescapes – parts of Scott’s

Prometheus and Exodus were shot there (“It’s the best view I’ve ever seen of what could be Mars,”) as was Transformers: Revenge Of The Fallen.

Originally pitched by Weir’s agent as “Apollo 13 meets Cast

Away”, The Martian sees Damon’s NASA spaceman, Mark Watney, presumed dead by his mission mates after he’s impaled on an antenna during a dust storm. Very much alive, for now, Watney has to do a MacGyver and bodge his battered equipment as best he can in order to provide sustenance and send an SOS back to Earth – even if there’s no real hope of him ever being rescued from 141 million miles away.

“I’d literally never met Ridley, even in passing, says Damon. “I went in and said, ‘I really love the script but my only hesitation is I’ve just done

Interstellar, and I played a dude who was, like, stranded on a planet – it might be weird…’ He said, ‘The movies are totally fucking different. This is gonna be fun. Let’s do this.’ I couldn’t say no.”

Weir’s book – given away online for free, then self-published on Kindle for 99 cents before being scooped up for print for a six-figure sum – has become a bestseller, while Goddard’s script has made it into space, thanks to the production’s NASA liaison. “NASA has been really involved and incredibly generous in the process of making this movie,” producer Simon Kinberg said at the December launch of the Mars-bound Orion capsule, which took off on a test flight with an illustrated title page of the script on board in addition to some

Star Trek memorabilia. “When Ridley reads his scripts, he sketches on them,” explaines Kinberg, of the director’s doodle of Watney on Mars [ see left].

So far so Gravity, right? Not quite. While Fox’s zeal to get the movie made ASAP is surely due in part to the critical (seven Oscars) and financial ($716m) success of Alfonso Cuarón’s orbital adventure, the beleaguered Watney is not the sole focus of this film. Indeed, much of the action takes place on Earth, when NASA staff realise the Mars mission – led by Jessica Chastain, as no-nonsense captain Melissa Lewis (“I went to Houston and worked with this astronaut named Tracy. [ She said] if you love, say, M&Ms, every once in a while you’ll get your packet and have M&Ms in it! Things to make you feel connected,”) plus Michael Peña, Kate ‘Sue Storm’ Mara, Sebastian Stan and Headhunters’ Aksel Hennie – has left a live man behind. It’s then as much a matter of damage limitation as it is a rescue attempt, with Kristen Wiig’s PR woman, Annie Montrose, trying to put a positive spin on the stories swirling around the mishandled mission. Handling the interstellar logistics are the NASA honchos played by Sean Bean, Jeff Daniels and Chiwetel Ejiofor, while Donald Glover and Mackenzie Davis are more lowly NASA drudges.

The resourceful Watney is sure to appeal to everyone’s inner Bear Grylls, struggling to survive in an inhospitable environment, with Weir – the computer-programmer son of a particle physicist – having done painstaking research to ensure the accuracy of his plight, telling the Wall Street Journal that “If you get down into the deep details, the science tells you the story.” The author learned, for example, how many calories Watney would need to survive and hence how much food he had to be able to grow, plus the science of waterextraction and the elevation of the surface of Mars – info he gleaned via the technicolour Google Mars site. The effort paid off, ensnaring readers, critics

"NASA has been really involved and incredibly generous"

and Hollywood alike, with 35,000 Kindle editions sold in the first three months on sale – more copies than had been downloaded for free – and reviews praising the book as “sharp, funny and thrilling, with just the right amount of geekery” and “the best pure sci-fi novel in years”. Criticisms were few, citing undeveloped supporting characters and Watney’s incessant wise-cracking as weaknesses, both areas ripe for Goddard to amend in the script.

Scott’s enthusiasm for the adap – “He has a passion for science-fiction, there’s lots of humour in this story and it’s a survival story,” says producer Mark Huffam, “with this great ensemble working to get this man back alive” – mean his Prometheus follow-up has been benched until now, while he’s ditched plans to direct Blade Runner 2, switching to producing to let Denis Villeneuve helm the muchanticipated revival. Just as Goddard moved aside for him, he’s moved aside for the Prisoners director. One good turn deserving another – just the kind of good luck Watney’s holding out for during his solo sojourn on an inhospitable planet.