Director Report Card: Ridley Scott (2015)

23. The Martian

Around 2009, former computer programmer and popular web comic writer Andy Weir attempted to secure a book deal. When this failed, he decided to serialize his novel, “The Martian,” through his website. This proved so popular, that fans asked Weir to sell it as an e-book. Self-published through the Kindle marketplace, this is when “The Martian” would become a best-seller. The book was so successful, that Crown would buy the rights and give “The Martian” a traditional commercial release. Having achieved every writer's dream, Weir would then find even greater levels of success. In 2014, Fox optioned the film rights to “The Martian,” with Drew Goddard signing on to write and direct. When Goddard signed up to an ultimately unrealized “Sinister Six” movie, Ridley Scott stepped in to direct “The Martian.” Weir went from being just a regular nerd writing stuff on the internet to having his book made into a movie from the director of “Alien.”  

In the near future, NASA has launched a manned mission to Mars. Among the crew is botanist Mark Watney. The science team is forced to abandon the planet, leaving their equipment behind, when a fierce sand storm rips through their base. Mark is blown away and seemingly killed... Yet he survives. Mark begins a solitary existence on Mars, finding clever ways to survive and attempting to grow his own food. When NASA scientists on Earth notice the remaining vehicles are moving around, they realize Mark is alive. With the news soon leaking out that an astronaut was left behind on Mars, a daring rescue mission is immediately put into action. Now Mark has to survive long enough for the people on Earth to bring him home, which is easier said than done. 

In the popular consciousness, the words “science fiction” invokes images of invading aliens, killer robots, warp-speed space ships, and time travel. Yet there are varying degrees of science fiction “hardness,” with some examples of the genre striving for utmost factual accuracy. This is rarely a very commercial example but “The Martian” disproves that notion. While writing the book, Weir sought to make the story as plausible as possible, doing extensive research. “The Martian” emphasizes the “science” part of science fiction and, experts seem to agree, presents a largely plausible vision of life on Mars. (Martian storms actually being quite weak and Martian soil being toxic to plant life, which was not known when Weir wrote his book, are probably the movie's biggest two faux-pas.)

As a Ridley Scott movie, “The Martian” finds the director in an unusually optimistic mood. Considering his previous sci-fi movies involved advanced robots rebelling against their creators and face-raping space demons, “The Martian” is quite inspiring in comparison. The film is about the human spirit's unbreakable will to survive. Watley is assumed dead, wounded on the surface of Mars with a pierced space suit. He survives through luck and never gives up from there. He suffers frequent set-backs, including having his entire garden destroyed. He gets frustrated, faces serious injuries and great hardship. Yet he continues to move forward, finding increasingly novel solutions to his very difficult situation. “The Martian” is a story of a man who never gives up and finds ways to keep living, no matter how grim things appear.

And how does Watney survive on Mars' frigid, hostile surface? As he puts it, he “sciences the hell out” of things. “The Martian” is an ode to the ingenuity of scientists. The film presents very difficult problems to Watney, each of which he thinks out clever and reasonable solutions to. He mixes his own water out of the base chemical programs. He fertilizes a garden with his own feces. He extends the battery of the land-rover by turning off the heater.. And then keeps himself from freezing to death in Mars' frigid temperatures by putting a secure nuclear isotope in the backseat. He digs up an old research rover – Pathfinder – and figures out a clever way to send messages back to Earth. Watching the characters reason their way around such difficult problems is absolutely involving and rewarding.

Even more surprising than “The Martian's” optimistic opinion of humanity is its sense-of-humor. Considering how stiflingly humorless “Exodus” and “The Councilor” were, and how badly “A Good Year” turned out, it's surprising to see a Ridley Scott movie that's so funny. Yet laughs come out of “The Martian” steadily. This is mostly thanks to one of the ways Watney keeps himself sane: A video diary of his process. We hear his frequently sardonic description of his struggles, delivered directly to the audience. He descries the pain of subsisting largely on potatoes, eventually running out of ketchup. Even reoccurring gags that could've been painfully lame, like a collection of disco music left behind by a co-worker being his primary source of entertainment, become amusing through “The Martian's” light-hearted approach to the material. 

“The Martian” is definitely funny, though describing it as a comedy – much how the Golden Globes did – also isn't exactly accurate. Because the film is also full of great suspense. We genuinely fear for Watney's life all throughout the film. When his garden is destroyed, and he screams in quiet frustration inside the pod, it's totally believable.  As he cuts his diet to starvation limits, and he withers away to skin and bones, you especially feel his pain. As Watney and NASA coordinate on a desperate attempt to launch him off the Martian surface, the probability of his survival becomes harder to be certain of. In other words, “The Martian” perfectly understands the greatest component of suspense. We care about the main character and worry about whether he'll survive this journey or not.

As I'm knee-deep in my Ridley Scott retrospective by this point, “The Martian” surprises me in other ways as well. The film contains not just humor and hope... But also color! Compared to the overwhelmingly gray drabness of “Exodus,” “The Martian” looks positively garish. The bright reds and earthy oranges of the Martian surface naturally characterize the majority of the movie's color palette. Yet even the interior of Watley's living quarters are bright and white. The scenes aboard the other space station, which will eventually man Watley's rescue mission, have filled out with warm blues and blacks. Despite being about a man alone on a strange world, “The Martian” looks positively inviting, cozy even, for most of its runtime.

Matt Damon would raise to the status of A-lister throughout the nineties and 2000s without ever endearing himself to me especially. I don't dislike him as an actor, even enjoying him in some films, but I never quite grasped what the big deal was. Yet in “The Martian,” I found Damon to be the most charming he's ever been, before or since. As Watley, Damon affects a likably smart-ass approach to most scenarios. His wry narration drives the entire film and, honestly, makes the character seem like someone I'd like to get to know. Watley is funny, charming, and easily frustrated but never hopeless. The film makes me “get” Matt Damon for the first time ever.

If all the scenes on the surface of Mars are absolutely compelling, the sequences devoted to assembling the rescue mission back home are less so. They aren't tedious, by any measure. Watching the creative, scientific minds at NASA try to figure out a way to rescue Watley, while struggling with the bureaucracies of running a publicly-funded program, certainly have a degree of suspense of their own. This is most apparent when the first attempt to send supplies to Mars fails, which is easy to predict. Yet, simply put, it's not as interesting watching the Earth-bound business roll out as it is to see Watney try and survive on Mars. Anytime the movie cuts away from him, it feels a little frustrating.

This is Damon's film, and feels like a one-man show at times, yet “The Martian” has an accomplished supporting cast too. Probably my favorite among the supporting cast is Chiwetel Ejiofor, as the savvy director of NASA's Mars missions. Ejiofor shows a clever drive to do what's right, even when it is challenging. Jeff Daniels is well cast as his primary foil, as the NASA administrator who has to okay some difficult decisions as the team race to rescue Watney. Michael Pena brings a lot of well-placed humor as one of the assisting astronauts, while Donald Glover is amusingly eccentric – if a little overdone – as the genius astrodynamicist who figures out the maneuvering of the mission.

Probably my favorite supporting turn is one of the smaller roles. Benedict Wong is hilariously dead-pan as the leader of the Jet Propulsion Lab, who has to find a way to make some almost impossible seeming request possible. Sean Bean also has his aptitude for dry comedy well utilized, as a flight director. (One assumes the “Lord of the Rings” reference in the script were included before Bean was cast.) Jessica Chastain also gets some funny moments, as the disco-obsessed astronaut partner of Damon's. Yet not every performance in the film is quite so likable. A few are a little stiff. Kate Mara is a performer I'm not really a big fan of, because she always seems slightly bored and resentful of everything she's in. Kristen Wiig and Mackenzie Davis are asked to play similarly bored, one-note roles as people working in the offices as NASA.

“The Martian” would become the biggest hit of Ridley Scott's career, a blockbuster that made over 600 million dollars world-wide. (Which is considerably above “Gladiator's” 400 million dollar gross, Scott's previous financial high-water mark.) You wouldn't expect a guy who specializes in grim and violent epics or darkly-themed sci-fi to deliver such a clear crowd-pleaser but here we are. This earned “The Martian” healthy reviews and the movie picked up seven Oscar nominations, including one for Best Picture. Of course, “The Martian” works precisely because there's nothing cheap or unearned about its crowd-pleasing qualities. You grow attached to its lead character and his journey, from the surface of Mars back to Earth, is entirely compelling to watch unfold. [Grade: B+]