The Martian (2015)

[Plain Old Tele]

Science the shit out of this thread.

[Avatree]

Have you seen it yet Tele?

 

Science the shit out of this thread.

[Gopher]

A ton of fun. Refreshing to see a space epic that is neither a melodramatic family drama nor full of crazy action. Also a movie in love with science and the narrative and dramatic virtues of trial and error. There's no actual villain in the film, just astronauts and citizens who want the best for each other. Nuttin wrong with that.

[Jake Gittes]

Hugely enjoyable stuff, and a reminder of how fun and engaging and intense it can be to watch people be professionals and actually use their brains to find creative ways around seemingly insurmountable obstacles; in that way, it's the most inspirational film of the year. Also, with all the smart people being smart, it almost feels like Scott's apology for all the morons in Prometheus, although I doubt that he really gives any fucks.

 

Now, visually it's nothing incredible, a couple of the cast members have really little to do for someone of their talent (Chastain most notably), and some of it seems a bit cheesy upon reflection (Donald Glover's entire character, all the crowds in Times Square, the ending montage), but the movie drew me in and kept me invested with such skill that these are all minor complaints. And the song it used over the end credits sent me out of the theater with the biggest grin on my face. 

[lilmac]

A-

 

 

I groaned when I saw "Science!" written on the board of the astrodynamicist, Rich Purnell.  Couldn't be more obvious.

 

 

Other than that, great casting. Witty dialogue. I thought they did as good a job as you can expect in adapting the book (highly recommend it by the way...try the audio version on Audible.com). I was worried that it wouldn't do the novel justice but Ridley Scott and company knocked it out of the park.

[AniNate]

It's quite good. Damon is excellent in his role and I appreciated that they didn't make the Jeff Daniels character out to be an amorally pragmatic kind of boss that they may have in lesser hands. I guess the main thing that sets this apart from Ridley's other recent efforts is that he never loses sight of the central conflict. The movie never takes its focus away from the effort to get Watney back home.

 

I do have some complaints, though. As others have said it gets pretty cheesy at points and I highly questioned the movie's use of time lapse in showing the JPL building the communication setup. I understood using it to show Watney setting up his farm from the perspective of the vlog camera, but in the former case it went on way too long and the added sound effects made it feel very Benny Hill-ish. Really took me out of the seriousness of the situation. Would have much preferred a normal-speed montage.

Edited October 3, 2015 by tribefan695

[Goffe]

Ridley (as usual) did a good job with the material, he was able to salvage most of it, without him TM would be a huge snore. The story is extremely by-the-numbers and it stretches for way too long. Another big problem is Matt Damon, who doesn't have the comic timing needed to pull off a jokester, the jokes either fall flat or doesn't enough impact. Another flaw is the amount of characters that are given substantial screentime, not allowing us the audience to connect with any of them, making them compelling, to care about anyone's fate. 0 character development also bothered me. 

 

Other low points includes the whole China secretly helping US, which screamed "we need dat china money" (man what a fucking disgrace that part was) and some of the dilemmas, like "do we tell them or do we not" and "let one die or risk the lives of five people", was so so bad and beyond stupid. Someone, please fire the guy who wrote Sean Bean character.

 

Also, how many times they had to explain what they were doing/would do using examples? god, that got annoying very quickly.

 

70/100

Edited October 4, 2015 by Goffe

[Goffe]

;visually it's nothing incredible, a couple of the cast members have really little to do for someone of their talent (Chastain most notably)

In the beginning of the movie, when they're escaping from the sandstorm, there is a small bit where she finally accept that they lost a crew member. Man, what a phenomenal piece of acting that was. Yeah, it's too bad her part wasn't bigger.

Edited October 4, 2015 by Goffe

[MrPink]

 

Ridley (as usual) did a good job with the material, he was able to salvage most of it, without him TM would be a huge snore. The story is extremely by-the-numbers and it stretches for way too long. Another big problem is Matt Damon, who doesn't have the comic timing needed to pull off a jokester, the jokes either fall flat or doesn't enough impact. Another flaw is the amount of characters that are given substantial screentime, not allowing us the audience to connect with any of them, making them compelling, to care about anyone's fate. 0 character development also bothered me. 

 

Other low points includes the whole China secretly helping US, which screamed "we need dat china money" (man what a fucking disgrace that part was) and some of the dilemmas, like "do we tell them or do we not" and "let one die or risk the lives of five people", was so so bad and beyond stupid. Someone, please fire the guy who wrote Sean Bean character.

 

Also, how many times they had to explain what they were doing/would do using examples? god, that got annoying very quickly.

 

70/100

 

 

After True Lies and this, I'm convinced you hate people who have actual comedic timing. Matt Damon is one of the best actors out there who's capable of serious work and can deliver sly jokes. His comedic chops are criminally under served.

[WrathOfHan]

This movie was fantastic. Ridley Scott is doing some of his best work right here. Drew Goddard's script is tight and captures the spirit of the book complete with humor. Not a lot was cut from the book, and what was cut was chosen wisely, especially the storm on the trip to Ares 4. Matt Damon was perfectly cast for Mark Watney. My favorite moment of his was after the airlock explosion when he's in the rover. If he doesn't get nominated for an Oscar I'm going to be extremely dissapointed. The rest of the cast was good as well, Jessica Chastain probably had the best secondary performance. It's really hard to think of any negatives, this is just a great movie.

A-

[Impact]

Saw it yesterday afternoon-fantastic film, loved the acting and visuals. It was also quite surprisingly funny as well. Loved the disco parts-those were pretty amusing.
Scott should get a overdue Oscar IMO.

A

2nd best film of the year behind Inside Out

[PanaMovie]

Amazing film!! Incredible performance of Matt Damon and Chastain

 

My favorite movie of the year only behind Inside Out

 

9/10

[Jessie]

Seriously you guys are simply wrong. Chastain was like a blank of wood in the movie.

[Blankments]

Lots of fun. I wish I hadn't seen it in 3D; it ended up giving a headache despite the minor benefits of cool effects. Damon holds it together fantastically, and the cinematography is gorgeous. I also really liked Ejiofor in this; a very good actor ground the story at home. Only weak link in the cast was Donald Glover, but his character in general was a weak part. Quite funny at points, but also with bits of poignant acting (mostly from Damon), I'm happy I saw it. A

 

More movies should do what this did in the end credits. The epilogue with the names appearing next to the actors as they appeared was actually a highlight for me, and I'm being positive on the film.

[Kvikk Lunsj]

Overall a very enjoyable movie. I felt the movie had some pacing problems. I thought all the acting was good and same the visual effects

3.5/5

[Jake Gittes]

[JohnnY]

ok i really need to write about this before i start forgetting stuff

 

It was impossible for me to not compare The Martian with Gravity and Moon, they have their differences but all of them are about people "lost" in space trying to get back to earth. But if the other two movies managed to reach our deepest feelings with a 90 minute long story, TM spent 140 minutes trying to be too scientifically cohesive, sometimes things were so thoroughly explained and I just felt a mix of "who cares?" and "I don't get it". I didn't really feel for the main character, I didn't get emotional nor anxious, I just got bored at his "I fucking love science" monologues.

 

Everytime it felt like something big would happen, but nope... Sometimes the score would get really loud but it would not build to anything important, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vKW-Gd_S_xc, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U4DQ1_PCBs0. The music was just like TUM DUM DUM THE SHIT'S GONNA HIT THE F... oh no it's just some nice chinese guys who wanna help us. Now, seriously, what the heck was all that China thing? It felt so out of place. Those guys were like "if we don't do that, nobody will know who we are", but hey, I still don't know who you guys are, and it didn't seem that the people in the movie realized who you were. And the movie kept going back to China, showing lots of chinese people looking at a big screen (who caaaares) but never trying to explain to us what exactly is China doing in this movie. I also didn't know why it was such a big issue to tell the crew that he was alive, wouldn't they actually feel relieved that he could still be helped? I just felt like the plot was so thin that they needed to exagerate the importance of every small issue. I could rant about other stuff like why did they need to leave Mars so badly in the middle of that storm, if that cabin/capsule still seemed to be perfectly liveable after it ended? But never mind about that, my main complaint was what i stressed in the previous paragraph.

 

Ok, now I must admit, it's a really well done movie, it's not even a bad one, I was just very disappointed. How can Gravity, in all its simplicity, be such a powerful and emotional movie; and The Martian, apparently a much more elaborated one, be so shallow, so dim, so paltry? Once I heard a guy saying that Gravity and Moon aren't really scifi movies, they are just dramas happening in space and that scifi movies actually try to integrate scientifically plausible elements in its narrative... I don't care if this definition is right or wrong, but it did feel like The Martian was screaming I'M A SCIFI MOVIE from beggining to end, and that just went over the top, in a really annoying way. By the end of the movie when the characters were celebrating, and I honestly wasn't even sure why they were celebrating anymore because they celebrated half a dozen times in the last 20 minutes, I just felt exhausted and desperate to leave the theater and go home. 

 

60/100

Edited October 6, 2015 by JohnnY

[baumer]

While I liked it more than Johnny i agree with everything he said.

I loved the scene know where they are talking about Lord of the Rings and Sean Bean is actually in the room discussing it with them. That made me laugh out loud quite a bit.

[Ethan Hunt]

While I liked it more than Johnny i agree with everything he said.

I loved the scene know where they are talking about Lord of the Rings and Sean Bean is actually in the room discussing it with them. That made me laugh out loud quite a bit.

Oh shit... Didn't even think about that

[RobinHood26]

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Edited January 9, 2019 by Jay Hollywood