I was lucky enough to win a pair of tickets to the Irish premiere of The Martian thanks to Astronomy Ireland.
Having read the superb, compelling, funny, and
unapologetically-technical-but-amazingly-digestible novel by Andy Weir, I
was hotly anticipating the film. I'm normally extremely shy of spoilers
leading up to a film, but with all indications pointing to a very
faithful adaptation by Ridley Scott, my familiarity with the story
dispelled any such trepidation.
So I watched everything.
With each new trailer and promotional tie-in, my cautious optimism
increased:
Would this finally be a film that reveled in scientific literacy in a
light, upbeat manner?!
Whole tranches of dialogue were liberated right from the pages, and with
every successive image in the trailers, it was like viewing a recorded
compilation of my own mental images from reading the book... with a
heavy heap of Hollywood gloss, of course.
As the release date approached, the media juggernaut rumbled on. I
watched the book's subreddit swell with glowing reviews from sources
personal and professional.
NASA, spying an opportunity to curry some additional goodwill, wisely
convened joint press conferences, seating real live astronauts with the
likes of Weir, Scott, and lead actor Matt Damon.
And so, it all culminated at the Savoy theatre on O'Connell Street at 7 pm on the 24th of September 2015.
My friend and I arrived, immediately engulfed by a throng of people.
There was a red carpet, promotional decor (including a prop surface
excursion helmet from the film), and hilariously well-chosen mood music
playing. On our way to the cinema, we had spied a BBC news broadcast in a
bar reporting
live on the London premiere of the film... Attended by the entire cast... Meaning they were not in Dublin!
As it was, the most notable personality I spotted was the wonderfully
avid space enthusiast and journalist Leo Enright, familiar to me from
just about every notable space mission press conference I've ever
watched. From Curiosity to Rosetta, the man gets around! I would have
loved to speak to him, but he was busily chatting to someone else.
His presence was not his only contribution to the evening, however, as we discovered upon taking our seats.
The film was preceded, as people filed into the grand (and
thematically named) IMC Galactic auditorium, by a slideshow of images
from The
real-life Martian, NASA JPL's Curiosity rover. Some
images were less than 24 hours old, processed by Leo Enright himself,
depicting rover's current environs in the foothills of Mount Sharp in
Gale Crater, Curiosity's home for the last three years.
With the place filled to capacity, the lights dimmed, and the screen filled with literal and figurative stars.
While he's never lost his mastery over visuals, I have not been
impressed with legendary director Ridley Scott's recent efforts, so
there was still some part of me waiting for the other shoe to drop after
The Martian's well-pitched marketing campaign.
After so thoroughly enjoying the book, and sharing that enjoyment with
my ten year old nephew (he devoured the novel in a matter of days), I
had a sizeable emotional investment in the characters and the story.
I was fearful of a repeat of Scott's last big space adventure,
Prometheus - a film that looked astonishing, but played out like the
script had fallen into a blender.
I need not have worried.
If you're familiar with the story of Andy Weir's book, let me just
say that there is a special thrill to be had in witnessing something you
hold dear being done
such justice.
If you're not (as was my friend - in contrast to myself, he had seen
little more than a few scene-setting promo videos), everything that
keeps people turning pages in the book is effectively translated to the
screen.
The film takes itself seriously, but by the nature of the characters
humour occurs seemingly spontaneously, and I found myself creasing with
laughter on several occasions.
The opening moments threw me a little by differing in presentation
from the book, but after a few short moments, I developed a Cheshire cat
grin that scarcely departed aside from moments of wincing empathic
pain, dramatic tension or simple, reverent awe at the beauty of the
vistas before me.
Matt Damon was set a herculean task in embodying Mark Watney, the
loneliest person in history. Damon is a capable actor, but Watney
carries the plot, commanding well over half of the screentime solo.
Canadian Astronaut Chris Hadfield wrote in detail in his Astronaut's
Guide To Life On Earth about the philosophical shift that comes with
astronaut training. The methodical, logical manner of thinking that
these professionals in life threatening and immediate situations rely
upon to come out the other side.
That "right stuff" is present in spades in Damon's Watney, but so too
- straight from the page - is his sardonic, cutting wit, near-boundless
positivity and resourcefulness, and his genuine awe-fueled enthusiasm
for his happenstance position in the universe.
These moments come off as tender, honest, and breathtaking, and make
full use of Scott's visual prowess, serving up grand, crater-pocked
landscapes, steely cold skies scudded by high altitude clouds - and
never too long a wait for Phobos or Deimos to pass unassumingly overhead
in the distance.
In fact, from stark, elegant spacecraft, and rich,
succulently-detailed orbital views of Earth and Mars, to NASA's
Epcot-inspired installations and the cramped, cluttered college dorm
aesthetic of JPL, the film is not short on visual artistry.
While Damon carries off his isolation as seemingly-effortlessly as
Watney, the rest of the sizeable cast divide into two ensembles and play
off each other beautifully. In fact, to single anyone out is to do an
injustice to the others, though Daniels, Glover, Bean, Mara, Ejiofor,
and Davis all get their chances to shine.
That I spent the last few minutes editing that list of names repeatedly
speaks to how strong every link in this chain is...
...It also speaks to the egalitarian nature of the script!
For a film about isolation, there is an even hand played to each
character, allowing everyone some measure of depth and development.
Of course, in any adaptation, there are changes wrought.
The
labyrinthine plot of the book is straightened in some sections - parts
are left out here and there, but never in a way that damages the
consistency of the overall story or significantly alters its central
themes. In a few areas, characters are gifted new scenes, and the
opportunity for growth is never wasted. Some of the funniest parts of
the movie are moments that weren't in the (extremely amusing) novel.
Conversely, some of the funniest moments in the book don't make it
into the film - though one priceless stream of consciousness from Mark
is faithfully repurposed in one of the promo tie-ins.
If I had one issue with the film's presentation, it would be the 3D
implementation. It may have been our choice of seating, close to the
screen, but the depth in a lot of scenes didn't really seem to tally
with the footage it was applied to, leading me to suspect a somewhat
botched post-conversion to 3D.
The alignment seemed so far off that it created the optical illusion of
mountains and rocks twisting and bending unnaturally in certain
scenes... It could be mildly distracting.
Lastly, as a recurring member of Astronomy Ireland and a space geek, it's gratifying to see a film getting so much
right from that scientific perspective. In recent years we've been increasingly spoiled on that front, with Gravity
nailing
the free floating ballet of microgravity, and Interstellar succeeding
where Gravity failed in orbital mechanics (and in GLORIOUSLY using
general relativity as an incredibly emotional driver of the plot).
As befits a film adapted from a book by a guy who wrote his own
simulation software to account for the effects of long-duration ion
engine burns (as opposed to the more easily-calculated staccato burns of
chemical rockets), there are no glaring errors in the treatment of
distance, thrust, relative velocity, or signal delay in The Martian.
I had to scratch my head at one or two scenes where the ships engines
seemed to be pointing away from the destination during supposed
deceleration burns, but I can rationalise that as some kind of framing
or compositional quirk I didn't immediately cogitate.
In reference to Gravity, that film's sound design was a marvel (sound
was only transmitted through contact with the characters' space suits),
but no such attempt at auditory realism was made here - action in space
and on Mars'surface is as deep and as loud as it would be on Earth (so
much so that I'm beginning to suspect that it was entirely filmed
here!).
Similarly, although much is made in the dialogue of Mars' atmosphere's
remarkable thinness, the wind howls, flaps 'pressurised' hab canvas, and
causes people to lean into it to make progress at times.
And for that matter, there are very few instances where Mars' 0.38g
surface gravity becomes apparent.
However what we have here is a gorgeously shot, immersively acted, cleverly scripted piece of top notch drama.
It could have been a brainless action fest.
It could have been a depressing critique on the follies of human ambition.
It could have been a psychological horror on the spectre of living with only your own thoughts to accompany you...
... But it's not.
What it is, is a love letter to exploration, to determination, to
persistent positivity, to resourcefulness.
It's an affirmation that what we astronomers do is part of a push
towards space exploration that is going to define this century for the
rest of human history...
And its a really bloody good film!
Thank you, Astronomy Ireland, for the opportunity to see it so soon - it was damn worthwhile.
