The Martian (2015)

An assortment of posters.

Prefatory Comments

 

The Martian is the most successful, most honored Mars movie ever made. Mind you, not the most honored science fiction movie; for example, in 2013 Gravity was nominated for ten Academy Awards and won seven, Inception (2010) nominated for 8 and won 4, Avatar (2009) nominated for 9 and won 3, E.T. (1982) nominated for 9 and won 4, and Star Wars (1977) nominated for 10 and won 6. The Martian was released in October 2015, and as of this writing, it has not only made more than $600 million worldwide, it’s received 26 prestigious awards, including two Golden Globe awards and four National Board of Review Awards, and has earned 135 nominations, including seven 2016 Academy Award nominations for Best Motion Picture, Best Performance by an Actor in a Leading Role, Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Achievement in Sound Mixing, Best Achievement in Sound Editing, Best Achievement in Visual Effects, and Best Achievement in Production Design (winning none unfortunately). It’s on the 2015 Top Ten lists for the Los Angeles Times, Rolling Stone magazine, the New York Times, Vanity Fair magazine, Variety magazine, the Washington Post, Vogue magazine, U.S. magazine, People magazine, New York Post, The Atlantic magazine, and The Wall Street Journal.

Thus, it is utterly ironic but, when it comes to evaluating The Martian, I am at a complete disadvantage. The reason is that the film does not follow in the traditions of past Mars movies. It’s almost as though director Ridley Scott had never seen any of the two-dozen-plus previous movies covering the same ground (and covered in this book), or if he had, he went out of his way to ignore every cinematic Mars trope or device that I unconsciously expected and unknowingly anticipated. I am at a disadvantage because I am a fan of Mars movies and have been nearly all of my life, and I’ve come to expect characteristics that transport me away from the here and now and into a world of wonder. But The Martian does none of that.

Nevertheless, the film is a mega success both financially and critically. One would be hard pressed to find any critic in the land or any reviewer who had anything negative to say about this film. Furthermore, all my friends and acquaintances who have seen the film are delighted by it, saying they really felt like they were on Mars. Clearly, Scott and his talented crew made all the right decisions and pushed all the right buttons and honed their picture to appeal to the teens and young adults of today. They succeeded in making a Mars movie to which ordinary people can relate. As a Mars enthusiast who has long hoped for a piloted expedition to the Red Planet, of course I am thrilled this film is helping fuel the “virtuous cycle” that is growing and will certainly take us to Mars sooner than later.

This interesting juxtaposition compares two views of Mars rovers from 2013’s The Last Days on Mars (top two images) with the Mars rover from Ridley Scott’s 2015 The Martian (bottom image). The top two views show Jordan’s Wadi Rum desert successfully transformed into a Mars-scape that feels truly alien. Additionally, the rovers shown are nearly all, remarkably, computer-generated digital creations. Contrastingly, the manner in which The Martian’s settings were photographed, also filmed in the Wadi Rum desert, failed to convince me that I was viewing Mars. Also, the rover from The Martian was a real vehicle built for the movie.

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Comments on 2D Theatrical Viewing.

Still, I needed to discuss the movie from my point of view, as I have done with all the Mars movies in this book. Since this blog is largely about my feelings and thoughts about all these movies, I felt I should record my honest reactions about The Martian. As do many action movies these days, The Martian was released in both ordinary 2D and in 3D. I first saw the movie in a theater in 2D, and this first set of comments is a reflection of my views after that first viewing. Following that are my comments after seeing the film in 3D some months later. Then I conclude with some final thoughts.

When discussing George Stevens 1965 Todd A-O The Greatest Story Ever Told, Gary Allen Smith in his Epic Movies states: “The Arizona, Utah, and Nevada location photography, while beautiful, never conveys an illusion of the Holy Land. George Stevens’ desire to shoot the picture entirely in the United States ... was commendable but why use landscape so patently American? It often looks as if the characters have stumbled into a John Ford Western.”

Smith’s observation and query echoed through my brain for the full two-and-a-half hours of The Martian. Though I know it was filmed in the deserts of Jordon, the topography chosen and any complementing digital matte paintings were sufficiently like Monument Valley in the American Southwest that I was continually distracted. Ever since NASA’s two Viking Landers touched down on Mars in 1976, I’ve taken a keen interest in Martian topography and terrain. I’ve followed the images sent back by Vikings 1 and 2, Mars Pathfinder/Sojourner, Spirit and Opportunity, the Phoenix Mars Lander, and Curiosity, and I have yet to see anything from the real-life images that leads me to believe that The Martian got the surface of Mars right. This is the first thing that troubled me. Rocketship X-M, Robinson Crusoe on Mars, Red Planet, and The Last Days on Mars all present a craggy Martian surface that does not unceremoniously yank me out of my pleasant suspension of disbelief.

The surface of Mars in The Martian didn't seem quite right to me (above and below)

That said, veteran film reporter Pamela McClintock wrote in her article “How The Martian’s Ridley Scott Replicated Mars in the Middle East” published in The Hollywood Reporter, “The director used the vast landscape of the Wadi Rum desert in Jordan ... to realistically portray the planet.... [W]ith The Martian, [Scott] set out to create the most scientifically realistic, visually accurate replica of the planet ever put on film. ‘I wanted to get it right,’ he tells THR. “The way Stanley got it right on 2001.” ... [Nearly] the
only CGI in the film ... involved coloring the sky butterscotch and adding mountains and some carbon dioxide clouds.”

In my view, with the available information from the rovers and landers, his addition of these mountains went a bit too far.

Then again, most of the serious “Voyages to Mars” movies discussed in my book provide a sense of wonder—that special something that you can feel tingling in your spine, that breath-taking awareness that you’re actually witnessing something amazing, something impossible. But The Martian has none of that. Two criticisms from noted papers cut to the chase:

“Given the enormousness of its subject, there is a radical lack of awe in this movie.”—The Christian Science Monitor.

“As elaborate and expensive-looking as The Martian is, it’s almost totally lacking in poetry.”—The Village Voice.

In fact, Stephanie Zacharek of the Village Voice makes some further comments that touch exactly on my concerns with the movie. She says, “[Scott is] workmanlike in his approach to science, which always trumps magic in The Martian—that’s the point. But if we can’t feel a sense of wonder at the magnitude and mystery of space, why even bother? ... Even Mars’s craggy landscape is less than vivid. Portions of the film were shot in Wadi Rum, in Jordan, but cinematographer Dariusz Wolski fails to make this desert landscape look otherworldly—the Death Valley of so many B westerns looks more mysterious and threatening.”

Whether Scott consciously avoided “poetry” is to be determined—but there is no doubt that he opted for a hardware-oriented, realistic 21st-century portrayal of Mars and its exploration that intentionally avoided any subtle imaginative touches that could pluck at the strings of our subconscious quest for wonder.

Clearly supporting such a decision was Scott’s choice of a composer. No doubt keeping on track with Scott’s desire to stay focused on the practical and concrete, Harry Gregson-Williams’ film score is rather vanilla. Nowhere can be found the awe-inspiring and breath-taking chords and tones of Leith Stevens, Bernard Hermann, Nathan Van Cleave, and Ferde Grofé, among others. In fact, as I was heading home from the theater, I even wondered if the movie had any score at all. I couldn’t remember one. A quick visit to iTunes settled that problem, but also clarified why I couldn’t remember the score; there wasn’t much to remember. This was keenly ironic, since Scott is the same fellow who approved one of the greatest ethereal scores of all time, Vangelis’ Blade Runner. To give credit where it is due, portions of The Martian soundtrack sound like a light-weight Vangelis wannabe. In addition, the soundtrack is punctuated with hit tunes from the 1970s and 80s. Admittedly, some of these do work well with the scenes they back up, but this is just another way to drive a wedge between my sensibilities and 2015 audiences.

This bit of the score of The Martian demonstrates 

my disappointment with the mainly pedestrian

music that Ridley Scott felt was appropriate.

Comments on 3D Home Viewing. 

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This review is about my first 3D viewing The Martian, nevertheless it’s the second time I watched the movie. On my 70-inch HD 3D TV, The Martian looks wonderful; the depths are multi-layered and fun to view; Ridley Scott shot the film with 3D cameras, which I’m told exhibits better 3D than the films that are shot in 2D and then later digitally converted to 3D. This time, I listened for the score by Harry Gregson-Williams, and again, except for a few highlights, it is largely the score that I can’t hear.

The interiors of the film were shot in Hungary, which boasts one the largest sound stages in the world. One scene that I noticed particularly is the main entrance to the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California. Granted the time frame of the story is in the future, but I rather doubt that JPL will ever boast an entrance reminiscent of an airplane terminal. When I knew the lab, JPL was mainly a functional cluster of nondescript office buildings surrounding labs and testing facilities and didn’t have a grand entrance per se. Chalk this up to dramatic license. The exteriors of The Martian were mainly shot in Jordon at Wadi Rum, where three previous Mars movies had done filming, Mission to Mars, Red Planet, and The Last Days on Mars. Of the three, The Last Days on Mars used the location to the best advantage, creating an inspired backdrop that really felt like Mars. Of course, Mars is a whole planet with about the same land area as earth. Across that vast area, views on Mars will inevitably come in a near infinite variety of aspects just like earth’s multitudinous views. Therefore, it’s probably unfair to nitpick this particular Martian surface, yet after a lifetime of watching Mars movies, The Martian doesn’t feel quite right. While the added CGI mountains may be part of the problem, it is more likely this is a result of the uninspired score. My favorite films in this subgenre are Conquest of Space (1955) and then ten years later, Robinson Crusoe on Mars (1964). The scores for both these films were composed by Nathan Van Cleave and both scores complemented their films perfectly, imbuing the Martian landscapes with special significance, with a near tactile sense that the events and places on the screen were not remotely mundane or prosaic, but something truly awe-inspiring. The Martian, regardless of how wonderful it is in so many other ways, simply does not convey to me what I need a Martian film to convey—awe, wonder, mystery. But, as I’ve said, Scott seems to have succeeded in doing just that for millions of other moviegoers. Far be it from me to rain on the parade. I am no doubt mired in images and feelings from the remote past. In excellent 3D, Ridley Scott’s The Martian is fun. I intend to watch it several more times, and I expect that many more of its treasures will come to the fore.

Where it began.

 A Note Upon Further Reflection

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With further thought, I think I understand now probably why Scott chose to use a score that didn’t call attention to itself. This film is about the third visit to Mars. Journeys to Mars are now routine in this film’s timeline, and the planet holds few surprises. The awe and wonder that would by intrinsic to a first voyage to Mars, and which most earlier films tried to convey, would not be so appropriate here. The Martian is all about pragmatism; thus the score was also pragmatic. Also, since the last major voyage-to-Mars movies were released fifteen long years ago, the vast majority of The Martian’s expected audience will never have seen them or any of the earlier Mars movies and, therefore, will have nothing to judge this film against. Scott had a blank slate, and his instincts have proven sound.

In conclusion, I have little doubt that The Martian is in fact an important leap in the headlong momentum (Andy Weir’s “virtuous cycle”) that’s building and that will inevitably result in humans being sent to Mars not too long from now. For that reason, The Martian deserves all the honors that it has received and is an important film. In June 2016, an extended edition of The Martian was released on DVD and Blu-ray.

Summary. Eschewing some details here and there, the story adheres well to Andy Weir’s best selling novel. The third manned mission to Mars has barely begun when a monstrous sandstorm threatens the spacecraft. Commander Lewis makes the decision to immediately abort the entire mission and leave Mars. Even still the storm is upon them and the main communications dish is blown away and strikes biologist Watney. Nobody can see him; all presume he was killed by the flying antenna, and they take off to rendezvous with the main orbiting craft Hermes. It turns out that Watney was only knocked senseless and was pierced by a piece of metal. When he makes it back to the elaborate Hab and realizes his status and that he is all alone on Mars, he develops a plan to survive for four years until the next Mars mission arrives. At this point, the film becomes an updated version of 1964’s Robinson Crusoe on Mars. Watney has all sorts of tricks up his sleeve and does wonders with duct tape and plastic sheeting. He makes excellent use of the functioning Mars rover that was left behind. In the meantime, NASA, which had reported him dead, notices from orbital imagery that a rover is moving and realizes he is alive. Watney has an epiphany and realizes that the Pathfinder Mars mission of 1996 had landed not all that far away, and he feels it’s worth a long expedition to salvage it for its communications equipment. At NASA, it is quickly concluded what he is doing and the earth-bound twin of Pathfinder that had been used for testing is brought out of mothballs, along with its retired controllers. NASA then hatches a plan to communicate with him, which succeeds in making our marooned “Martian” very happy. Following this triumph, plans are formulated to send him supplies, which is easier said than done, and then the Chinese government unexpectedly coming to the rescue. But when all of NASA’s and Watney’s plans go south, and there is no way he can survive alone, the Hermes crew (who had been kept in the dark and only learns after a long delay that Watney is alive) disobeys orders and heads back to pick him up, even though it will add 533 days to the mission. All is well that ends well.

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