Review of The Martian

To start off, I will say that I think this movie is quite decent and watchable, it may even be considered good if one's feeling generous, but it's far from being considered even close to great. To know why I think so, continue reading. The things to like about this movie are present on the surface, good acting, good cinematography, decent direction, Matt Damon plays a likable eternal optimist who actually makes a lot of effort to survive and I really was liking the film till the first half, some minor discrepancies here and there but nothing major, then the quality took a significant drop. At one point well into the second half a plan to rescue Mark Watney (Matt Damon) falls apart and the chips are down, NASA is cornered, and suddenly the Chinese step in to help out Watney....this is bad writing 101. What if the Chinese had failed, who else did you have? Russia? India? At that point it was clear that Mark Watney was not going to die because the writer doesn't want him to die; the writer will go to absurd lengths to keep him alive, and warp common sense if need be. Any film that introduces these "convenient act of god solutions" loses the faith of the audience; up til that point I was so emotionally invested in the film and suddenly it felt as if the film had betrayed my trust, and when that happened I stopped caring about Watney because what's the point? The film will pull out another ace out of their sleeve the next time the stakes are high. This is the biggest flaw of The Martian, no matter how accurate and scientific it was it was illogical (yes both are exclusive concepts to one another), and whenever the "shit was about to hit the ceiling" I knew everything was going to work out and that made this movie painfully predictable. Don't get me wrong I thought it was a decent film, there are a handful of tidbits I enjoyed, I liked that Ridley Scott imitated the surgery scene from his Prometheus but it's not even half as grueling as Prometheus' C-section self surgery, kind of a self appreciation sequence there but I enjoyed it. Also I liked Matt Damon's role he was earnest but don't expect anything at the level of Sandra Bullock in Gravity or Tom Hanks in Castaway (similar situation though not in space). The supporting cast is excellent as well, Chiwetel Ejiofor is the second lead and is fantastic in this film as Vincent Kapoor, a role originally meant for India's Irrfan Khan who had to pass on this because he was committed to multiple other films, that's a shame because he could have really left a mark here. Jessica Chastain is very good in her small role but her screen time is too brief, an actor of her caliber deserves better. Michael Pena played the usual big hearted lovable Mexican like he has done maybe 500 times before? One of the most talented Latino actor in Hollywood and he get's stuck with the same old shtick in every movie. Rest are OK and get the job done. I was also quite irritated by Community' s Donald Glover who is supposed to be a bright physicist but can't join two sentences together and acts like a complete buffoon which was almost physically painful to watch. I also wished the movie gave some screen time to Watney's parents, it was expressly said in the film they were close and it's odd to see the whole world cheering and rooting for Watney and his parents don't show up and their side of the story is not explored. The film also drew a chuckle from me when Sean Bean's character at NASA explains why a certain project was named Elrond (I am huge LOTR nerd). The good news is at least it's better than Exodus which was borderline unwatchable, and a very small improvement over Prometheus. The Martian is a classic example of a movie which has accurate science and still is illogical while some other films may have inaccurate science but are better movies than The Martian because they are logical and play within the rules set in their universe. In conclusion, I would recommend watching Gravity instead, a better film with better editing,acting, direction and tighter run time (91 minutes) compared to The Martian (141 minutes).