You know what’s crazy? I’ll tell you what’s crazy™
The Martian.
The Red Planet stars as the evil spheroid that threatens to devour all who tread upon her.
The Martian is one of the best films you will see this year.
It certainly is the best SCI FI film you will see this year.
It’s cast-a-way meets marooned.
It is dynamic and energized and cinematically charged.
For the 1st time in a while, Matt Damon isn’t the evil guy. What’s up with that?
The Martian is personal and close up, as we breathe the last seconds of air in an astronauts space suit.
The film is also vast and sweeping as we traverse the Martian landscape for hundreds of miles in a rover.
Matt Damon is astronaut Mark Watney, who is stranded on the red planet.
He lives for 500 Sol’s in hostile isolation.
Sols are Martian days, and how the movie keeps track of time on the planet.
I love the end of the movie which brilliantly begins with Day 1. You’ll see.
The story is simple.
A human is the only life form on a planet tens of millions of miles from Earth. He has supplies, but not nearly enough to last for the rescue mission that is being hastily conceived.
Unless Damon figures something out, he will be an astronaut popsicle by the time his fellow astronauts arrive.
So on one level the film is about him surviving long enough for NASA to rescue him.
But on another level, the film is about the spirit of man to survive, to overcome, to live until his last breath is taken from him.
Though Damon is alone on Mars, the planet itself has a personality.
It is red and foreign and inhospitable. Mars can be quiet and serene, a quiet place for our astronaut to conduct his business.
And then, suddenly, like a fire-breathing belch, it becomes bellicose like mutant space bees stinging everything in sight.
Mars is bad luck waiting to happen. If it can break it breaks. If it can explode, it explodes. If a man could give up under extreme conditions, he would.
But Matt Damon is relentless.
He is a space pan handler working the bottom of an exit ramp, not taking NO for an answer.
“We’re going to science the shit out of this.” He says in one of the movie’s funniest scenes.
And science the shit out of it, he does.
Faced with a problem, he overcomes it.
His space helmet cracks? Thank God for duct tape!
He blasts off with only a tarp protecting him from 12 g’s of force.
Holy pass out batman!
Running out of food?
I’ll grow potatoes in the Martian soil fertilized in astronaut dung.
That’s a crazy concept.
“I’m the greatest botanist on Mars,” he proclaims.
Spoiler Alert: Prepare to wince at this scene
Matt Damon pulls it off.
This is Cast-a-way without palm trees.
Instead of Wilson as a side kick, Matt Damon talks to potatoes he grew in his own crew’s poop.
The movie is funny and exciting.
There are times when we are inside his helmet, filled with danger and sweat and fright. There are times when we are breathing pursively, struggling for air, a computer voice alarm warning us that our oxygen supply is depleted.
The Martian is believable with just enough reality and spacial inertia to keep the audience remembering they failed high school physics.
The movie is an exercise in loneliness.
Matt Damon should have died in the 1st ten minutes of the movie.
He spends the next 2 hours fighting to survive.
He engineers antiquated machinery buried in the martian soil.
He creates an alphabet to communicate with NASA.
He passes the time listening to disco music which is a constant theme and a great juxta position for the harshness of the Martian landscape.
Nothing says trapped on a hostile planet in the solar system like Donna Summer’s “Hot Stuff”.
And since he has no actors to talk to he talks to himself. He talks to potatoes, he talks to anything not nailed down.
His existence is painfully isolated and unbearable. He wants to cry, he wants to scream.
But who can hear your anguish in the red vacuum of space?
I don’t want to ruin it for you, so I won’t.
I’m just saying if you like to be entertained, if you like to be transported to another place, if you like to feel something and root for characters who are likable, then the Martian is your film.
Director Ridley Scott Filmed the S**t out of this move.
I give it 2 thumbs up.
Life’s Crazy™