The Martian

Ridley Scott proves yet again why space is his domain. From Alien up until now with The Martian he hasn’t disappointed. For those that don’t know, The Martian is a novel written by Andy Weir. It follows the story of Mark Watney who is left to survive on Mars by himself because his crew thought he was dead. Chaos and craziness ensues and as you could probably guess, the rescue mission doesn’t go as smoothly as possible. For a book to movie adaptation, it’s a pretty spot on take. There’s obviously going to be some things missing, but the movie did capture the same feelings I had while reading it. Then the casting and acting were pretty excellent as each actor portrayed their respective characters well. Matt Damon did great as Mark Watney and was really able to carry the majority of the movie by himself. Whether he’ll receive recognition from the Academy for this will depend on later movies released; but this may be my favorite movie of his in a long time; maybe even just favorite of his in all time. Then Jessica Chastain, Michael Peña, Kate Mara, Sebastian Stan, and Aksel Hennie round out the crew of the Ares III. As for the team back on Earth trying to save Mark we have Jeff Daniels, Kristen Wiig, Sean Bean, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Mackenzie Davis, and Donald Glover. These names alone make it a heavy hitting cast; and then throughout the movie there were several faces I recognized. So I think it’s safe to say everyone involved knew how special this movie was going to be. Even though they couldn’t include all details, the pacing of the whole story was well done. There were a few moments where they dragged on a little or like they felt rushed, but that’s a given. Movies are far and few between where it’s perfect through and through. I would rather not get to deep into details about the story because this needs to be seen with fresh eyes so I’ll stop here; and if you read the book, I just have to say there’s very little to be disappointed with. Will this be recognized during awards season? Probably not since it’s a sci-fi movie, but that will not take away from what a great piece of work this was. I want to be cautious about throwing around the word masterpiece with this, and it’ll probably take repeat viewings to really determine if it deserves that word, but it’s one of the best movies of the year at the least.