Have you seen The Martian?

If so tell me what you thought of the movie and how it compared to the book.

My thoughts: A great script by Drew Goddard plus perfect direction and amazing acting from the cast make this the best movie Ridley Scott has done in a long time. Also Rorie will love this movie because of the amazing power of Science.

I read the book about a month ago completely unaware it was going to be a movie. The book was excellent and very much movie material. Good to hear it's been done justice.

Saw it yesterday, thought it was great; surprisingly funny as well. It's definitely one of my favourite films this year.

I saw it on Friday. It was very entertaining, intense when it had to be, and surprisingly funny. Also, Matt Damon was fantastic. Well, the entire cast was great, but since he is pretty much by himself for the film, he did a great job with no one to really work against.

I haven't read the book, although I plan to now, and I went with someone who had read the book and really enjoyed it (my husband). I liked the movie as someone who had no set expectations, and he enjoyed it as an adaptation. He was able to tell me what was left out, but he didn't seem to think that leaving that stuff out was detrimental to the movie. He had some "a-ha!" moments that he kept to himself, but he told me all about them on the drive home.

Anyway, it's a great movie. Of the "shit goes sideways in space" genre, I would say I liked it way more than Gravity, maybe a touch more than Interstellar, and it's just below something like Apollo 13. Then again, I haven't watched Apollo 13 in some years, so maybe I'm being nostalgic. Either, way, awesome movie and I recommend it to people unfamiliar with the source material and people who have read the book should like it a lot too, since the adaptation is pretty spot on.

I really enjoyed it. I never read the book yet (though it's in my to-read stack). Direction was great and performances were good. One of my favorites this year so far, just behind Sicario, Mad Max, and Inside Out.

Looking forward to seeing it this evening. Was lucky enough to get to work on the visual effects for it! So I suppose I am an bit biased toward the film but also really enjoyed the book.

Anyway if anyone is interested in how some of the visual effects were created fx guide have a good long article up about it.

It does talk about some story spoilers so beware if you want to avoid any:

http://www.fxguide.com/featured/life-on-mars-the-vfx-of-the-martian/

I was a huge proponent of the book. Forcing it on people whenever I could. The movie was fun. One bit of casting I wasn't expecting and left me laughing. And it made me feel better about Ridely Scott. That man can make space seem lonely and terrifying. I saw it with a friend who liked Prometheus and I had to admit, it left me more curious about that sequel, and of course Micheal 'Dreamthrob Heartboat' Fassbender.

It's like top 3 movies this year. Southpaw, ex machina being in there too.

Yep. Had high hopes due to Scott/Damon and it didn't disappoint.

Now I feel I should finally watch Interstellar.

Never read the book, but I absolutely loved the movie.

It was a fine movie, nothing special. It was kind of different then what I expected, though. I was never on the edge of my seat, I just relaxed and Matt Damon was fine as well (most of the time). He made surviving on Mars look easy.

Towards the end it became kind of cheesy as well, the same way Gravity had its cheesy moments. They make some (absurdly) risky choices in space, but it never feels like it could fail.

Really liked the look of Mars and the space equipment, though. Some good shots in there too. 3D was looking good (they shot on a stereo rig and you feel that), except for the huge environment shots (which were fully created in post production probably): like every other 3D movie they use too much 'depth' on the wide shots, which makes it feel like watching a miniature. Too much parallax makes the mountains feel like molehills and spacestation like a toy.

I loved the book before even going to see the movie, which I loved as well.

The movie streamlines the events of the book which helps with the pacing. Though one thing I did miss from the book was how Mark kept talking through all the science of how and why he's doing things a certain way. In the movie he definitely goes through the same process but since he doesn't offer as much explanation I wonder if the audience is able to keep up him.

No.

Matt Damon is great, but the " I'm going to have to science the shit out of this." line in the trailers really freaked me out. Thats a bad line.

Yeah. That was a red flag before I'd read the book. The protagonist lays on the internet humor pretty thick.

fantastic movie with witty dialogue and smart science.

@csl316: Not sure you should watch interstellar after the Martian. The other way around seems like the better way 'round.

I'm sad they took out the Aquaman joke.

Ok, I'll just stick with Ghosts of Mars, then.

@drbroel: The joke was put into the promotional material instead. One of the teasers features a psych evaluation of Mark where he uses that line.

The book definitely has a different tone. Book Whatny does a lot more exposition with all the science and engineering stuff that he works through to solve his problems. There's also this great...mundaneness to chunks of the book. Whatny is on Mars for a long ass time, so there are passages dedicated to just him dealing with how to pass time. The movie feels more urgent, I'm sure for time constraints. Watching the movie is easy to forget that it takes place over many months. That being said they're both fantastic.

I've not read the book but I loved the movie. It was a great performance by Matt Damon and if he hadn't killed it the movie would have failed. Fortunately, he did a great job. The rest of the cast did well too. It was surprisingly funny and I loved how they didn't do any crazy alien crap to explain how he got home. I did figure out how he was going to get home but it was so well done I didn't care that it was an obvious ending.

@csl316: Not saying it is bad. There are a lot of things they get right, but there are also a lot of dodgy things.
The 'emotional' core of the movie still seems effective enough to make it a good movie to watch. It just didn't hit all the marks.

I loved both the book and the movie. The only thing I wish they did put in the movie was more explanation as to why some events went wrong. It was one of the things that I liked in the book, where Andy Weir would spend some time going through the events that lead up to certain things not working. In the movie there's one point where they gloss over it entirely and my girlfriend picked up on it straight away and asked me why that had happened.

Not really into the idea of seeing Matt Damon being rescued for the third time in a movie. That boy is always getting into trouble.

It was pretty good. I wonder how it is to a non-science person though. Having read the book I understand why some things were cut, but there were two major plot points that I feel should of been there.

1) the drill shorting out pathfinder thus loosing communication with NASA again.

2) Figuring out during the drive that there was a Realistic sandstorm happening. (The opening sandstorm is something that can't happen on mars air is to thin for it to have that much force) At that point he has no contact from NASA and he figures it out with science and adjusts. This causes time pressure during the Ares 4 modification stage.

Some beautiful CG though and very good portrayal of office politics. I <3 the JPL stuff so much. They also nailed the act of dropping stuff to the surface at reduced gravity, so goodddd!

The most upsetting thing was the lack of character building, you get very little of it in the movie. The rest of the crew just feels like people that had to be there instead of characters. I feel bad for the people I went with because I kind of went on and on and on about little and big things either right or wrong.

I enjoyed it though!

But yeah, lets talk about this!

Wait. What?

Those two elements are seriously not in the movie?

Yes. It was great, although I was bummed by the lack of Tars*

*Yes, I know this isn't a sequel to Instellar**

**No, I don't give a damn, I love me some fucking Tars

@historyinrust: Yeah... the rover driving in general was really kind of just glossed over.

I also feel like they ran out of prop money at some point. lots of just clear plastic tarps instead of like Crysis woven carbon stuff I had envisioned in my head.

@historyinrust: @mikemcn:

Was totally going to mention this. Those lines (another example being "Mars will come to fear my botany powers") really rubbed me the wrong way for whatever reason. I guess because it's the kind of thing people on the internet who aren't real scientists would say and it didn't fit the character.

Overall I thought it was an excellent movie though. Sean Bean survives, Jeff Daniels dunks on everybody. Starman is used rather than Life on Mars which was a good decision I felt.

@walkertr77: I dunno man, a lot of real scientists I know (me included) would say something like that! Although it would be to other scientists and not just randomly... In the books those lines work really well (along with pirate ninjas) but in the movie it's hard to pull off because half of the character building isn't there but I think Damon does a good enough job.

yesh

oh, discussion!

i've still yet to finish the book but i went and saw the movie anyway, and as far as i can tell it's mostly accurate though a lot of detail is glossed over. i appreciate that it seems more grounded and plausible than Gravity did. Got the idea there'd be more Matt Damon sciencing shit on mars, would have loved to see more survival plotline. Felt like it wrapped up a little too neatly. Also found Donald Glover's character a little insufferable (way too much the aloof scientist). I know it could have only really ended with them saving Mark, but they could have twisted the knife a little more than they did.

@walkertr77: As a scientist I can confirm we do say some stupid shit.

I will say one thing that did kind of bug me in the movie is that movie Whatny is only ever established as a botonist, and somehow is able to solve every single engineering problem that comes his way. In the book it's explained that every crew member has two forms of expertise, so book Whatny is a botonist and mechanical engineer, which makes his ability to solve all his problems a lot more plausible.

@ichthy: As a dude with a degree in immunology I can concur. That info does go a long way to explaining his hyper competency throughout the film, and I suppose if you're NASA and you can only send 6 people to Mars those are exactly the kind of people you send.

Also, Jessica Chastain is now Commander Shepard in the Mass Effect movie that exists in my head.

I really enjoyed the book, and thought the movie was as good as could be expected with a few exceptions.

Teddy was portrayed as too much of a bad guy. In the book he's just weighing his options, and he arrives at the uncomfortable but statistically superior choice.

They streamlined the hydrazine burn too much. Mark ended up stuck in the rover overnight for fear of blowing up the entire HAB, but in the movie they turned that very critical hazard into a "watch Mark be overconfident" gag. They also removed the drill mishap, which leads to my next splinter:

The complete removal of the increasingly dangerous terrain approaching the Schiaparelli crater, the sandstorm, Mark's testing and navigation around the sandstorm, and the rolling of the rover took out a ton of important aspects. Andy wrote the book out of a hobby of imagining realistic disaster scenarios and then figuring out feasible solutions. Movie Mark didn't have things too bad compared to Book Mark. He had the hydrazine explosion, the airlock rupture, and the MAV's ascent difficulties. That's like a tenth of what Book Mark went through.

The ending sucked to Hollywood and back. "I'm the commander who left him to die and I'm the commander who'll save him." No, you're a good commander so you'll delegate intelligently and let the EVA crew member do the EVA. "We're going to actually go with poking a hole in my spacesuit and fly around like Iron Man." No, the author and the character of Mark both know enough to realize that would never work, even refusing to untether because that introduces unpredictability.

I did really like how much abuse Matt Damon had to go through physically. He's ripped on Sol 18, but he looks malnourished and thin as he's prepping the MAV. In fact, I thought the whole food situation was handled very faithfully.

So yeah, read the book, it's been complimented by physicists and astronomers on its surprising degree of accuracy.

I may go see it Thursday.

Loved it!!

Of course the book is better, movie is missing scenes, different ending, etc, etc, but the ride was really interesting, emotional and fun.

Very highly recommended if you like space stuff.

I thought it was totally okay. I would have liked it a lot more had the movie been more about Damon surviving on Mars than constantly switching back to the Nasa scenes.

Now I really wish I would have read the book first. It's nearly impossible for me to go from reading a book that has a movie adaptation without seeing and hearing the actors' in my heads while I read. Oh well I guess...

The movie was pretty great. I know most people don't really enjoy Interstellar, but for me they're two very different science fiction movies that deal with way different scenarios and that's perfectly fine with me. I enjoyed both for what they had to offer. If anything this movie has more in common with Gravity and I definitely liked this way more than that.

The Martian is treated more lighthearted and I think it goes to show that not every space disaster movie needs to be this dreary "humans will never survive in space." Yeah we get it, space with our current technology and near future technology is going to be real risky business. So it was nice that this movie wasn't carried by the tragedy of the situation.

Ridley Scott is a great visual director who can make magic when he has a good script. That's why Prometheus was so disappointing; visually it was striking, but it was a plot nightmare. I still anticipate most movies he makes, but always am reserved.

Anyways I haven't seen the movie yet. I've read the book and adored it. Hoping to catch the movie this weekend.

I haven't had a chance to see The Martian but I would love to see it.

@mlarrabee: While I totally agree with everything you say, the movie was still 2 hours and 20 min without all of that. Turning that book into a standard feature film length was going to be hard and it was handled pretty well.

Except that the whole thing that sets things in motion can't really happen on Mars..

Also about your spoilery bit; they did this in post production. :)

Another little fun fact about the visual effects: they shot almost all of the shots with spacehelmets without the actual visor in it, because it would reflect greenscreens, set and crew. They had to make them in post production and even model the body of the person wearing it, because the arms sometimes would reflect in the helmet.. Crazy.

Love the book, one of the best books in the last 10 years or so. The movie was good but disappointing. There wasn't enough science and every time it switched over to earth, I wanted to go back and see what Watney was doing. Still, enjoyable, especially if you haven't read the book.

I'm pretty disappointed that the sequel to Prometheus is now known as Alien: Paradise Lost. I thought he wanted the sequel to separate even further from Alien, but now he wants to tie it all together. Sounds like he wants it to sell better.

I really need to see this. Maybe this weekend.

Now I'm just wondering which Matt is the real one: Buff Matt or human-sized Matt...

And which triggering event were you referring to? I assume you're talking about the dust storms (1, 2, 3), but that's only a guess.

EDIT: I did some reading about the inaccuracies. The highest recorded wind speed was 30 meters per second. The extremely thin atmosphere keeps the wind itself from being much of a hazard, but the dust capacity of the high speed air leads to dust storms much worse than on Earth. But NASA would definitely build an ascent vehicle capable of withstanding storms well beyond expectations, especially if the MAV was built after the completion of their first Ares mission.

I saw it on Sunday, it seemed pretty faithful to the book overall and the parts that they cut seems reasonable considering it's already a 2 1/2 hour movie. The scenery looks real beautiful, I'm sure they had to CG it up a fair amount but the shots of Mars were all pretty great. Some of the science and math stuff is missing but I'm still pretty impressed with just how much they put into a mainstream film.

Makes me sad we living in a world were US presidential candidates can't no longer state they believe in evolution without some nasty right wing tantrum

Makes you wonder, What would ever happened if the US space program never stopped ?