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Watched The Martian
Oct. 23rd, 2015 09:08 amThe Martian is a science-fiction movie about Mark Watney, an astronaut/botanist who winds up stranded on Mars after his crew mates mistakenly believe he died during a deadly sandstorm. The movie centers around Watney's attempts to survive on Mars until he can be rescued, something the people on Earth are desperately trying to coordinate.
The film was intense in places- one of the earliest scenes involves Watney having to do surgery on himself. And frequently, just as Watney and the others are making real strides towards his eventual survival, something disastrous will happen to set them back, usually injuring Watney in the process. My adrenaline was pretty high after I left the theater.
It's also funny, which was something I was not aware of after watching the trailer the first time. (Though did later have some expectation of it, based off of book snippets like this.) Watney is one of those smartass dude characters, but unlike a lot of smartass dude characters he isn't really annoying at all, a fact I chalk up to a mixture of "doesn't use misogynistic humor" and "this man is stranded on a planet that is doing his level best to kill him so he's entitled to some swearing and snark."
Actually re: misogyny stuff. This film is pretty good on that point? There are several named female characters who all work at NASA ( some spoilers clarifying that point ) and they're all competent at their job, and don't exist for sexual gratification and/or damsel-in-distressing. There are also several non-white characters working for NASA ( related to the previous spoiler ) so yeah, bonus points for diversity, guys.
Also, science! I am not very knowledgeable about scientific anything, but I could follow along with what the characters were doing pretty well, and apparently Neil deGrasse Tyson approves of how things were portrayed. It's very much a Man Vs. Nature story, so there's a lot of the characters using their knowledge of physics/chemistry/robotics/etc. in order to figure out How To Make Mark Watney Not Die And Get Off Of Mars.
So yes, it's a pretty enjoyable movie overall and I thought it was well worth the ticket fees. ( More spoilers for a tidbit at the end. )
The film was intense in places- one of the earliest scenes involves Watney having to do surgery on himself. And frequently, just as Watney and the others are making real strides towards his eventual survival, something disastrous will happen to set them back, usually injuring Watney in the process. My adrenaline was pretty high after I left the theater.
It's also funny, which was something I was not aware of after watching the trailer the first time. (Though did later have some expectation of it, based off of book snippets like this.) Watney is one of those smartass dude characters, but unlike a lot of smartass dude characters he isn't really annoying at all, a fact I chalk up to a mixture of "doesn't use misogynistic humor" and "this man is stranded on a planet that is doing his level best to kill him so he's entitled to some swearing and snark."
Actually re: misogyny stuff. This film is pretty good on that point? There are several named female characters who all work at NASA ( some spoilers clarifying that point ) and they're all competent at their job, and don't exist for sexual gratification and/or damsel-in-distressing. There are also several non-white characters working for NASA ( related to the previous spoiler ) so yeah, bonus points for diversity, guys.
Also, science! I am not very knowledgeable about scientific anything, but I could follow along with what the characters were doing pretty well, and apparently Neil deGrasse Tyson approves of how things were portrayed. It's very much a Man Vs. Nature story, so there's a lot of the characters using their knowledge of physics/chemistry/robotics/etc. in order to figure out How To Make Mark Watney Not Die And Get Off Of Mars.
So yes, it's a pretty enjoyable movie overall and I thought it was well worth the ticket fees. ( More spoilers for a tidbit at the end. )
