(Image: Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation)
Towards the end of Ridley Scott鈥檚 , marooned NASA astronaut Mark Watney (played by Matt Damon) says goodbye to the habitat that has kept him alive for more than 500 days. As he enters the airlock to leave, he pauses, turns 鈥� and there, on a table, is his space helmet. Sourly, he snatches it up: he has nearly gone and killed himself again.
Advertisement
Set about 30 years in the future, The Martian tells the story of how Watney survives at the very cusp of death, at which every trivial error, every moment of forgetfulness, will kill him in about 35 seconds. Jeopardy is the stuff of adventure movies. What makes all this different is its remarkable lack of interest in what jeopardy feels like 鈥渋nside鈥�, and its loving depiction of how people should deal with it.
The film is based on a story by , a software engineer and self-confessed geek who ignored traditional publishers in favour of a blog through which he could work out technical solutions to Watney鈥檚 problems. Watney has been left for dead on Mars without enough food and water to survive until the next mission 鈥� due in four years鈥� time.聽But there is much more to it than that.
Before he shot his last scene at the Korda Filmpark, outside Budapest in Hungary, CultureLab caught up with Damon, who was tasked with conveying what it would be like to survive for 18 months only on potatoes grown in your own faeces. He explained: 鈥淩idley and I agreed The Martian is not one of those existential survival movies. Neither is it just a popcorn kind of whizz-bang, he鈥檚-never-really-in-danger type of experience. The key is to have the audience feel the enormity without it seeming ponderous. And it has to be funny, because Watney and his colleagues are capable of doing really dangerous things and having a good sense of humour about them.鈥�
No wonder NASA got behind the film: its tale of the administration鈥檚 daring, unsanctioned bid to rescue one of their own gives every department a hero. But where The Martian gets interesting is in its refusal to take heroism at face value. Watney survives because he is smart and knowledgeable, can get by without company and likes the sound of his own voice; and because coming up with a strong, snarky one-liner can make his whole day. He survives because, as he says in a message meant for his parents, 鈥淚 love what I do and I鈥檓 really good at it.鈥�
鈥淚t has to be funny, because Watney and his colleagues are capable of doing really dangerous things and having a good sense of humour about them鈥�
This distillation of NASA鈥檚 philosophy is endorsed by Ellen Ochoa, director of the Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas, who praised Weir鈥檚 book for encapsulating aspects of mission training. 鈥淚t is a very realistic scenario of what we go through when we train crew members and flight controllers, who must quickly analyse a situation and prioritise tasks,鈥� she said. She added that resilience is 鈥減robably the single most important characteristic to have as an explorer, and Watney proves to be extraordinarily resilient鈥�.
The film鈥檚 whole approach favours accuracy over visual bombast. Less spectacular than Alfonso Cuar贸n鈥檚 Gravity (2013), and a lot less silly than Christopher Nolan鈥檚 Interstellar (2014), The Martian has exploited NASA鈥檚 enthusiasm well, conjuring up habitats, spacesuits, spacecraft and launch vehicles that carry its stamp of approval.
Is The Martian a nerd thriller? For sure: you can鈥檛 have Damon declaring he will 鈥渉ave to science the shit out of this鈥� and not find yourself moving your biros to your shirt pocket. But it鈥檚 more than a love letter to science. It is an entertaining depiction of a way of behaving that keeps people alive in extreme circumstances: love your job; embrace the little you can do and do it; like it or not, death is always coming, so to hell with it. This, more than any amount of Mars-mission razz, is the real heart of The Martian, the source of its optimism, and a quality deserving of praise.
The Martian directed by Ridley Scott: on release in the UK from 30 September and in the US from 2 October. Watch the trailer below:
Like this? Read The Martian: The science of surviving a space catastrophe
