The Martian Movie Review
by Shraddha Gulati
The science is so damn close and real that you might forget that it is indeed a story. This has to be one of the best Sci/fi movies out there! The Martian is one of those movies which always keeps you at the edge of your seat. It is a more realistic take on Sci/fi and shows us what we can achieve if we overcome our differences. The Martian is filled with exceptional cinematography, remarkable sound engineering, and brilliant set designs. It is one of the best performances of Matt Damon ever in a leading role. This was perhaps the second time when he and Jessica Chastain played the role side-by-side together after Christopher Nolan’s Interstellar. The best part was when Mark Whatney (Damon's character) learned about the ways of survival in a hostile environment. He was totally desperate to reach home as soon as possible. This movie also gives an insight into loving Mother Earth and safeguarding its pristine resources.
In 2035, the crew of the Ares III mission to Mars is exploring Acidalia Planitia on Martian solar day (sol) 18 of their 31-sol expedition. A strong dust storm threatens to topple their Mars Ascent Vehicle (MAV), forcing them to abort their mission. During the evacuation, astronaut Mark Watney is struck by debris and lost in the storm; the last telemetry from his suit indicates no signs of life. With Watney presumed dead, and the storm worsening by the second, mission commander Melissa Lewis orders the crew to take off and return to their orbiting vessel, Hermes.
Watney awakens after the storm to a low oxygen warning and makes his way to the Hab (short for “habitat”), the crew’s base of operations. He removes the piece of antenna which destroyed his suit’s bio-monitor and lodged in his torso by performing self-surgery. He begins a video log and realizes that his only chance of rescue is to rendezvous with the Ares IV crew at the Schiaparelli crater, 3,200 kilometers (2,000 mi) away in four years. His immediate concern is there will not be enough food to survive that long. Watney, being a botanist, improvises a farm inside the Hab, utilizing Martian soil fertilized with human waste, water produced by extracting hydrogen from leftover rocket fuel, and potatoes intended for Thanksgiving dinner. He also begins to modify the only functional rover for longer journeys in preparation for long-distance travel.
Watney takes the rover to retrieve the Pathfinder probe, which fell silent in 1997. Using the lander’s camera, he establishes rudimentary communication with Earth. NASA instructs Watney to modify the rover to link with Pathfinder so they can communicate via text. Watney becomes angry when he learns that the crew has not been told of his survival, and Sanders authorizes Henderson to inform them.
The China National Space Administration offers NASA the Taiyang Shen, a classified booster rocket that can carry a payload to Mars. Meanwhile, JPL astrodynamicist Rich Purnell devises a trajectory to divert Hermes back to Mars for a rescue more than two years earlier, using the Chinese booster to resupply Hermes for an additional eighteen months. Sanders rejects the plan, refusing to risk the crew, but Henderson surreptitiously sends the details to Hermes. The crew unanimously vote for the plan, and NASA — powerless to stop them — resupplies Hermes as it uses Earth’s gravity to slingshot back to Mars.
Watney begins the 90-sol journey to Schiaparelli and the prepositioned Ares IV MAV. To rendezvous with Hermes, Watney removes many components from the MAV, including the nose cone, to lighten it. The MAV, however, does not reach the needed speed and altitude, so Lewis is forced to use maneuvering thrusters to change course and explosive decompression of Hermes’s internal atmosphere to reduce speed. When even that is not enough, Commander Lewis uses a Manned Maneuvering Unit, but still cannot reach Watney. Watney pierces the glove of his pressure suit and uses the escaping air to propel himself towards Lewis, effectively rescuing him after being alone for 543 Sols on Mars.
After returning to Earth, Watney becomes a survival instructor for astronaut candidates. Five years later, on the occasion of the Ares V mission launch, those involved in Watney’s rescue have begun new lives.
The Themes of the movie:
Isolation: Isolation is one thing, but interplanetary isolation is a whole different ball game. In The Martian, we watch as this brave botanist is stranded on Mars, separated from everyone and everything he holds dear. It’s a life filled with danger, disaster, and panic, yet the thing that stings the most are his feelings of loneliness. Sometimes they make him feel a little crazy. Sometimes they just make him feel hopeless. At others, they make him wish he had a volleyball for a best friend. As we watch him adapt and fight back against these dark feelings, however, we learn a lot about the powerful effects isolation can have on even the strongest minds.
Fear: While it might not feature any bloodthirsty aliens, Stranded on Mars without any hope of rescue, Mark Watney is stuck in his own personal horror movie, forced to face the constant possibility of a catastrophic equipment failure or sudden disaster. That might not the same thing as trading blows with Freddy Kruger, but it’s pretty frightening.
Perseverance: If at first, you blow yourself up, try and try again — that’s how the phrase goes, right? Well, that’s at least how you’d hear it if you were hanging out with Mark Watney, famed astronaut and star of The Martian. Marky Mark gets caught in a real pickle, left for dead on the unforgiving (and rather drab) Martian wasteland. Mark has every opportunity to give up, but he doesn’t, working harder and harder even as things get worse and worse.