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.
