THE RED PLANET
Difference between The Martian and other Mars movies is astronomical.
Kids, don’t try this at home. Well, you could, but growing potatoes in Earth’s gravity and a nitrogen/ oxygen atmosphere with 100 kPa of pressure is ridiculously easy. For astronaut Mark Watney, stranded on Mars without even a volleyball to talk to, farming is not rocket science. It’s much more difficult. It’s also the only thing that will keep him alive.
The Martian is based on Andy Weir’s 2011 novel, a page-turner with a linear narrative and great entertainment value. Left for dead by the other five members of the third crewed mission to Mars, Mark has to figure out how to regain contact with Earth, drive cross-planet to the landing site of the next mission, and keep himself from starving, dehydrating, asphyxiating, freezing or otherwise dying.
Hence the potatoes, which he coaxes into growth with the only source of fertilizer on the globe. (Yes, that.) He is also forced to survive on a diet of Happy Days reruns and ’70s pop music, thanks to the peculiar tastes of the mission commander, played by Jessica Chastain. And while David Bowie’s Starman is a natural for the soundtrack, you’d be surprised how well Waterloo by ABBA serves as a triumphant anthem.
Adapted by Drew Goddard (writer/ director of The Cabin in the Woods and one of the scribes of World War Z), The Martian stars Matt Damon, ably holding the screen as Tom Hanks did in Cast Away, and Robert Redford in All Is Lost. Like Redford in that film, he remains wordless for a long stretch at the beginning, finally giving in to a syllable of Germanic origin that’s hard to criticize, given his condition.
He uses it a few more times, although topping the list is when you only see him mouthing the word through the windshield of a Mars rover. In space, no one can hear you swear. This is just one of The Martian’s moments of levity, carefully doled out to pump up the entertainment value. Another has Mark, after a mishap involving rocket fuel, emitting smoke like a chastised Wile E. Coyote.
For those who get woozy at the sight of blood, the worst is over pretty quickly as Mark de-harpoons himself; it was a windblown piece of metal that pierced his suit and caused his crewmates to assume the worst. For the existentially squeamish, however, there is much more to come.
Mark does the math and realizes he has more than enough oxygen, water and power to sustain him until he can be rescued, as long as nothing breaks. But he lacks food, which leads to the film’s signature line: “I’m going to have to science the s--t out of this.” Anyone who has a problem with that should visit www.scienceisaverb.com. Or Mars.
The visuals are stunning, and it’s hard to begrudge shots that merely drink in the scenery. One, of the rover trundling through a rust-red landscape, recalls a covered wagon in Monument Valley, home to many a John Ford western. It might be one of the best tourism/exploration ads yet for our nearest planetary neighbour.
As fascinating as it is (and it is!) to watch Mark’s video log entries as he putters his way around botany, power consumption, water production, rover repair, etc., there’s a whole subplot and a lot of fine actors back on Earth, not to mention a quintet halfway through a Hohmann transfer window; i.e., on their way home.
Running the show at NASA is Teddy Sanders, played by Jeff Daniels as a scientist-politician who takes the second part of his job much more seriously. It’s his decision not to inform the crew of the spaceship Hermes that their supposedly dead colleague is in fact alive; though when they do find out it changes the dynamics of the rescue considerably. Also at mission control: Sean Bean as the flight director; Chiwetel Ejiofor as the Mars mission chief; and Kristen Wiig as the agency’s public-relations face.
Chastain as Commander Lewis doesn’t have too much to do in interplanetary space, but give director Ridley Scott credit for sciencing the s--t out of the design of the good ship Hermes; it looks like it could actually make the Mars-Earth journey.
In fact, 98 per cent of the science in The Martian is dead on. My two biggest beefs: The filmmakers didn’t try to simulate the 38-per-cent gravity on Mars — although to be fair it’s easier to fake zero G than partial G. (This is why they never even thought of faking the moon landings.) Oh, and the windstorm that kicks everything off? Mars’s thin atmosphere means you’d barely feel even a hurricane-speed gale.
Nitpicking aside, there is much to enjoy in this day-after-tomorrow tale. And it gets the basics right. Space can kill you. Human ingenuity can keep you alive. Four decades ago, lunar explorers proved that an off-world catastrophe was a survivable event, a story captured in Apollo 13 (two Oscars, nine nominations). Two years ago, Gravity (10 noms, seven wins) made a similar point.
Expect The Martian to capture its share of hardware this year. To be fair, it doesn’t quite reach the emotional highs of Apollo 13, or the special-effects wow factor that was Gravity. But it comes very, very close. And more than any other film of the past century, it turns Mars into a place you could imagine living — and, unless you’re careful, dying. ∂∂∂½
The Martian opens across Canada on Oct. 2.