It is thirty-six years since Scott made “Alien,” and the true companion piece to that great film is not “Prometheus”-the gloomy, beautiful, and oddly superfluous prequel that he directed in 2012-but “The Martian.” Sigourney Weaver and Matt Damon are cut from similar cloth. When the folks on Ares III, still journeying home, learn that their friend is alive, and that lines of communication are open, Martinez sends him an e-mail: “Sorry we left you on Mars, but we just don’t like you.” He knows that Watney will get a kick out of that, and behind the joshing is the unspoken promise that, come what may, the crew will move heaven and earth to get him back. Again and again, chances for portentousness arise and get batted aside. Much of Scott’s output in the past decade, from “Kingdom of Heaven” (2005) to “Exodus: Gods and Kings” (2014), resounded with a heavy tread, whereas the new film, based on a novel by Andy Weir, is so light on its feet that anybody listening at the door of the theatre might think that there was a comedy playing inside. There are plenty of scenes back at NASA, where the bigwigs-played by good-humored actors like Jeff Daniels, Chiwetel Ejiofor, and Kristen Wiig-struggle to keep up with Watney’s progress, and where even a simple press conference is framed and edited to keep the tone sprightly and deft. When Watney, having made contact with Earth, states that he is “really looking forward to not dying,” he speaks for the whole production, which thrums with an appetite for life. Ridley Scott is seventy-seven years old, yet the startling fact is that “The Martian” appears to be the work of a young man. In short, when he announced, early in his predicament, “I’m going to have to science the shit out of this,” he wasn’t kidding. If there is water on Mars, nobody told Watney, so he has to brew his own. Plug your nostrils, add soil, sow seeds, hang around, and-hey presto-potatoes. “Mars will come to fear my botany powers,” he declares, before gathering the dried excrement of his colleagues. He is the mission botanist, ideally placed to raise crops with which to feed himself. There is also a video diary, to which Watney confides his schemes and ruminations, all of which scorn the existential in favor of the pragmatic. He cuts between the cameras mounted inside the base, which show Watney toiling away (plus, in a worrying side panel, the pressure, temperature, and oxygen levels).
The director is Ridley Scott, who, as if taking a cue from his hero, rejoices in the challenge of solitude. And he has four years to kill, on his world, before anyone can swing by to pick him up.īut how do you dramatize a waiting game? Given the threat of tedium, and the stony desolation of the backdrop, some viewers will be bracing themselves for Beckett in space, with the added twist that Godot could burn up on reëntry. From here on, we have all the time in the world. We scarcely have a chance to get our bearings before they are thrown out of whack, and we see very little of Watney before he wakes up in the desert, on a nice bright Martian day, with a length of broken radar antenna sticking out of his gut. All this happens fast, at the outset of the movie-so fast, indeed, that it’s the only section that feels rushed. Having landed on the planet, and settled into base camp, they last eighteen days before the storm blows in and forces them to abort, blasting off at a perilous angle. The rest of the crew comprises Martinez (Michael Peña), Johanssen (Kate Mara), Vogel (Aksel Hennie), and Beck (Sebastian Stan). Watney is part of Ares III, a NASA mission to Mars, captained by the phlegmatic Lewis (Jessica Chastain), who floats around her ship like a zero-gravity mermaid. The difference is that Mann was cunning and resentful, prepared to cause havoc in his desperation to escape, whereas Watney is cunning and resourceful-not a blamer, or a soul in meltdown, but a model of cockiness and grit as he sets about the business of survival.
This year, in “The Martian,” he plays an astronaut named Mark Watney, who is marooned in a pelting storm and left behind, alone, on the red planet. Last year, in “Interstellar,” he played an astronaut named Mann, who was sent through a wormhole and ended up alone, on a frozen planet.