Film Review of "The Martian"
Film Review: “The Martian”, Keith Cowing
“The Martian is a really good movie. It would be a good movie even if it was not set in outer space. But it does happen in space and does so in superbly flawless fashion. The movie is fast-paced and really doesn’t miss a beat. Little time is wasted on things that do not support the story. You are on Mars with Mark Watney and you really want to see him get home.”
“You are on Mars with Mark Watney and you really want to see him get home.”
Getting home is one thing. Making a home in a new place is another.
He did both!
I winced big time when the big boom happened. It was frustrating because he really was bringing life to new place – The dream of Zubrin and many other visionaries was coming true! I was loving that!
I saw it a few hours ago, and I agree – it was great. I was a little worried the movie would get too “wonkish” because of how the book was, but they streamlined it almost perfectly. The final sequence was incredibly intense, the visuals amazing, and the acting great as well.
Go to Areslive.com, and listen to mr. Neil deGrasse Tyson say this in the clip “the crew will investigate its biological history and its capability to sustain life”. Also “since blah, we have dreamed of reaching Mars. Back in 2029, that dream became real”
Crap. I mean, I guess if they’ve sent landers and found nothing on the surface indicating life (and thus nothing that could be confused with contamination), it could make sense – but nothing in their camp looked like drilling equipment, and Watney was taking surface samples at the beginning of the movie.
Best sci fi movie since 2001 in my opinion and hands down best Mars movie ever!
Seems we could/ have designed ISS to be the Hermes and do double duty. Instead we have Logston on Cspan, justifying SLS saying well that’s the big rocket we have so……
https://youtu.be/ATFK_ZU4x1g
keep in mind that the ISS is a LEO space station that was designed in the 1990s and the Hermes is a sci-fi spaceship in a novel that was written up in 2011
🙂
https://youtu.be/iyt85n1IIX4
Keith said:
“As for how NASA is depicted – it is realistic. …self-serving management…more than balanced by the sheer ingenuity and creativity of NASA’s rank and file…people in the film who break the rules – for the right reasons – my favorite type of NASA employee…one person at NASA can’t excel at something without having someone down the hall doing something stupid…”
In manned space, a few years ago I would say you were probably right. But now, more and more, I see resignation by the NASA rank and file and in the cases of the older and more experienced workers, literal resignation-they use any opportunity to simply leave-early outs, retirement, resignation…
More and more the attitude of those who stay, that if these incompetent managers want me to do something stupid, I guess I’ll do my best to do stupid things, stupidly.
It doesn’t seem to make much of a difference; we don’t seem to be getting the job done, we don’t seem to be going anywhere.
The Pathfinder storyline made me think of Keith, Dennis, and ISEE-3.
Yowser!
I think they covered the communication gap as having two redundant systems on the MAV, in addition to the primary on the base… since without the MAV there weren’t supposed to be any astronauts. That’s why the Ares-4 mission already had comms, and why he was truly hosed after the main comm dish sideswiped him.
I saw it last week, it is a really good movie with a decent plot, there are some scientific irregularities, if you can forgive those you will enjoy every minute of it.
The movie was great but I had a few gripes. In the book, Mark Watney was more the star, in the movie the star was NASA (evident when in the book Watney lost contact with Earth when he was modifying the rover, and everything after that he had to figure out by himself, not rely on NASA). My second gripe was the location (mountains, background etc) of the Pathfinder mission should have been better matched to the real pictures. And, it is unlikely, by looking at the rocks etc at the real site, that everything would now be covered by sand. But, minor gripes, the picture was truly great!