Let's start as usual with what I liked in the film, which typically starts with the characters, or in this case, character, Mark Watney. Mark Watney is a very likable character, it would have been very easy to make him and the movie as a whole very depressing, given that it's about a guy who is alone on a dead planet with practically no chance of survival, but Watney stays positive, he keeps up with the belief that he will survive, and his positive attitude really lightens the mood. That's not to say he hasn't got some tough scenes, because he absolutely does, one of the first things he does in the film is perform surgery on himself, that was a tough scene to watch. The rest of the characters on the other hand, none of them were particularly bad, it's just that I didn't care about them anywhere near as much as I cared about Watney, I cared about what they were doing, but they weren't as interesting on their own as Watney, the Ares III crew are more interesting than the Earthlings, but they are still nothing on Watney. This film's plot is fairly straight forward, there's a guy stranded on Mars who has to somehow stay alive while everyone tries to get to get him back to Earth. What really makes this awesome is the science. It's been a while since I've done a sciency post, so for anyone who's new here, I love science, and yeah, this movie is crammed full of crazy awesome science, it's not boring at all, it's just awesome. However, I said previously that by far the most interesting thing in this film is Watney and his science on Mars, there is a sequence near the end when Watney kind of takes a back seat to the Ares III crew, I'd rather the film really spends more time on Mars with Watney than it did, for reasons I've already said. I think it's a lot more minor than every review I've seen so far for this film, but I do at least partially think they're right.
Let's just cut to the chase, this film is fucking gorgeous, the Martian landscape looks amazing, photo realistic most of the time, and Ridley Scott put in quite a few sweeping shots just of the Martian landscape, and they're stunning. There's only so many times space can blow you're mind in movies, so the space sequences near the end I thought were less interesting, but like the supporting characters, there's nothing wrong with them, they're just in the shadow of something far cooler. Not since Mad Max has a wasteland looked so beautiful in a film, Mars really is a character all it's own here, and it's brilliant. The CG wasteland is blended seamlessly, Watney really does look like he's there, on Mars. The props also looks really awesome, or is just that I can't tell when real ends and CG begins, who knows, 90% of this entire film could have been CG and I wouldn't have known or cared, I can't stress enough how beautiful I thought this film was. I mentioned earlier that there's a scene when Watery performs surgery on himself, this film is directed by Ridley Scott, and if that wasn't evident from the trailer, it's evident in the movie, this movie has some very intense scenes, scenes which I won't spoil, it also has a few brilliant moments where something goes wrong, and on the opposite end, when something goes right, and it's just awesome either way, because you can really get behind Watney, you want him to succeed, so it sucks when he fails, but in the best way, and you just want to punch the air when he succeeds. And towards the end it shows a lot more of Earth and how the public is responding to Watney stranded on Mars, call me cheesy, but with how mad the world has become, it's cool to see something unite us all, even if it's just a film.
The Martian is incredible, it's stunning to look at, has some truly awesome moments, an extremely likable main character, a good supporting line up that is just not on the same level, but they're still good, and of course the science, holy shit, the science. This film is just brilliant, and it's absolutely a must watch.
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