The Martian

[FlowerChild]

While the actual science of the film is grounded in reality, you cannot take the facts seriously because of the way they are presented. It does have one or two inaccuracies or liberties, but that is not the problem. It has a completely inappropriate tone for the subject matter. Maybe the book is this way too, I haven't read it, but I was utterly disappointed and couldn't enjoy the movie at all.

The moment

The phrase "I'm gonna have to science the shit out of it" hit us

I unspoilered the above in my quote as it's all over the trailers for the film :)

Hmmm...ok, now I'm completely confused. The main character's rampant swearing is present in the book as well, and I didn't find it the least bit off-putting. The first sentence in the book (which I somehow doubt they kept for the film) is "I'm pretty much fucked", and really, those bits only made me smile as I found them highly relatable.

The scientists and engineers I've been friends with over the course of my life (and I'd say most of my close friends have been one or the other) have been some of the most hysterically vulgar party-animals I've ever met, and I found the voice of the main character in the book reflected that kind of personality extremely well. Now granted, that's likely a subset, and maybe even a small one, of the scientific community that I have a particular affinity towards due to my own personality (I have a thing for smart and eccentric people), but it does seem quite normal to me.

By contrast, I tend to have a real dislike for what I view to be the pompous nigh-religious fanaticism that I find tends to come across from scientists that I think take themselves too seriously, so I found the tone of the book to be rather refreshing.

So, guess I'm just going to have to see it and form my own opinions on it ;)

[MoRmEnGiL]

My problem is not the swearing, my problem is that line is cheesy as fuck, and 100% pandering to the "fuck yeah science" crowd, a demographic that is "all about science" as long as it doesn't have anything more complicated than a predigested easily related to metaphor :P It's the kind of line that sounds to me like those publicity lines filled with buzzwords the marketing department suggested as trending in today's people.

Seriously you better watch it yourself, it might be just me, as everyone else but me and my brother seemed to enjoy it. I'm notorious for not liking movies just about everyone else likes..

PS: a book is a completely different medium than the big screen btw. You can get away with things that would look totally ridiculous when realised with real actors in a set. Even if that line or most of the lines that made me cringe are lifted verbatim, it's just not the same when translated to a film.

EDIT: haha, now that I think about it, I'm extremely foulmouthed irl too. It strains me to express myself without using over the top profanities :P I would never cringe from a supposed scientist talking like that. I think there was a research showing that swearing a lot is a common phenomenon in intelligent people. What does make me cringe is scenes like the one where the astrodynamics dude or whatever he was explains his calculations to the high ranking NASA dudes. Oh my. (Can't explain any more without spoiling anything)

[FlowerChild]

Seriously you better watch it yourself, it might be just me, as everyone else but me and my brother seemed to enjoy it. I'm notorious for not liking movies just about everyone else likes..

Hehe...well, I'm much the same that way, usually enjoying small independent films much more than the big popular blockbusters. I tend to piss all over movies like Interstellar, Inception, or Gravity, while I'm totally into small budget indie sci-fi films like Moon or The Man From Earth.

PS: a book is a completely different medium than the big screen btw.

Oh yeah, entirely man. I wasn't ruling out your criticism as much as saying I really have no clue right now given it seemed to be related to something that I actually liked about the tone of the book. Looking over the IMDB message board for the film though, I see a few people mention that the humor of the character from the book doesn't translate well over to the film, so it may come down to that. Then again, I see a lot of conversation revolving around whether it's "as good as" Interstellar and Gravity, which has my eyes rolling right out of the gate ;)

The humor was probably one of the few things that kept me reading the book beyond the aforementioned gaff early on. I was totally enthralled up until that gaff, then I wound up reading the rest with the analytic portion of my brain largely turned off because I knew it wouldn't hold up. From that point forward it largely became soft sci-fi and a more general survival story for me, and I continued to enjoy it at that level.

If it had occurred to me though, the book probably would have lost me even earlier due to the whole "you can't get that intensity of storm on Mars" thing that creates the whole survival scenario in the first place, which a lot of people are talking about now. The atmospheric density just isn't great enough to throw stuff around like that, even at extremely high wind speeds (you'd need something like a 20,000 kph wind on Mars to have the same force as a 100 kph wind on earth).

Again, I'd have no objection to any of this if this wasn't self-proclaimed hard sci-fi that prides itself on scientific accuracy. If it was just a straight soft sci-fi story that wasn't throwing around "facts" that inspired me to look critically at each detail, I think I would have liked it a lot more.

I'm reminded yet again of that bit in Starship Troopers (excellent book, hated the movie) that really turned me onto Heinlein when I was younger where the main character, while describing how his power-armor functions says something along the lines of "but I'm just a grunt. If you want to know how it all works you'd have to talk to a tech" which I thought was downright brilliant: the main character doesn't understand it, so the reader isn't setup to expect to either. On the other hand, if you start throwing around numbers and scientific "facts" to back up your story, perhaps when it doesn't even need them, then you're setting your audience up to critically evaluate your work on that level.

You'll notice with my mods I'm very careful not to setup expectations of realism, and even tend to revel in the blatantly unrealistic, and it's largely because of the above. I'm basically hanging a big old sign up saying "This is not your reality! Do not think of it on that level!", because I know that once you start going down the "realism" slippery slope, you're begging the audience to tear apart every detail on that level when, at least unless you are a top expert in a particular field, somebody out there inevitably knows more about it than you do.

[kazerima]

I'll be honestly, I probably enjoyed the movie as much as I did because science fiction movies lately have been pretty disappointing when it comes to being hard science fiction. I've come to expect pop antics comedy from just about everything in the genre and given up on hard fi making it into film altogether lately. I wasn't expecting a Heinlein or Asimov kind of depth from a PG13 movie billed as NASA's attempt at public marketing nor a "science the shit out of this" trailer line.

As modern science fiction movies seem to go lately, it held up some level of internal consistency, and unlike gravity it didn't try so hard to be a tragic emotional thing that it missed the mark. It knew what kind of story it was and threw itself into it with reckless abandon. I have heard KSM's Mars Trilogy is going to be getting a television adaptation at some point though, and while I'm cautiously optimistic about how it will turn out, as far as I can tell the hard science fiction genre is as good as dead where modern authors are concerned.

[MoRmEnGiL]

totally into small budget indie sci-fi films like Moon

Now you are making me go totally off topic but man, that movie was one of my best cinema experiences. Not only was the movie absolutely brilliant, I had the extreme luck of watching it in an amazing theater. It was a very old actual stage theater, the kind with lush velvet everywhere and expensive looking woodwork, and second floor balconies for rich people. Old and rustic, it had been converted to cinema. It was relatively small as far as theaters go, warm and inviting, and had no fancy sound system or anything. Still ran the old analogue projectors, that used actual film. Complete with the (very slight but so lovely) vinyl-like noise and visual imperfections that go with that. It was a night to remember :]

I agree in everything else you said on that post, with the exception of Starship troopers, which I acknowledge as a very bad adaptation but somehow hit all the marks of a great bad movie, including Ironside. It's bad,campy, silly and downright poorly filmed but I like it. :P (do not go near the direct to dvd sequels even with a hazmat suit though)

[FlowerChild]

Now you are making me go totally off topic but man

It's the right forum for it :)

I agree in everything else you said on that post, with the exception of Starship troopers, which I acknowledge as a very bad adaptation but somehow hit all the marks of a great bad movie, including Ironside. It's bad,campy, silly and downright poorly filmed but I like it. :P (do not go near the direct to dvd sequels even with a hazmat suit though)

By the time that movie came out, I had read the novel years before and had already become a big fan of Heinlein (can't handle reading him anymore due to the bidet and polygamy obsession mind you), so I think I was fairly incapable of just enjoying the movie for what it was. It's always rough going from a beloved book to a film.

I should probably give it another shot one of these days as I don't think I've seen it since it first came out in the theater. I may have forgotten enough of the book by now to enjoy it on its own ;)

[DaveYanakov]

Having actually been in situations where I had to convince myself to keep solving problems in order to not die cold and alone, this film struck a deep chord of authenticity in the tone. If you lose your ability to make light of a situation while maintaining respect for it, you're going to have a much more difficult time surviving. The acting in that regard was superb and the writing offered a good way to showcase it. You could see the moments of panic and despair just as clearly as you could see a conscious choice to not give up.

Sorry Morm, but I'm going to have to take a 180 stance in opposition to you on this one.

[Equitis1024]

Having actually been in situations where I had to convince myself to keep solving problems in order to not die cold and alone, this film struck a deep chord of authenticity in the tone. If you lose your ability to make light of a situation while maintaining respect for it, you're going to have a much more difficult time surviving. The acting in that regard was superb and the writing offered a good way to showcase it. You could see the moments of panic and despair just as clearly as you could see a conscious choice to not give up.

Sorry Morm, but I'm going to have to take a 180 stance in opposition to you on this one.

But that doesn't make cheesy pandering lines any less cheesy or pandering. *That* was the tone problem in my view, not the humor itself (which I thought was a great approach to take). Maybe I'm overly cynical for seeing things that way, but it's not without reason: the "fuck yeah science" demographic that Morm described is real and very obnoxious. Unlike Morm though, I thought the acting here was fine, but the writing absolutely felt lazy to me. I don't need to be surprised in a movie, but it's nice if the scenes don't play out so predictably. Still, I thought it was a good popcorn movie and I had fun watching it, which is more than I could say about Gravity and Interstellar (ugh, I just have to accept that Nolan will never make anything I like as much as Memento ever again).

[MoRmEnGiL]

By the time that movie came out, I had read the novel years before and had already become a big fan of Heinlein (can't handle reading him anymore due to the bidet and polygamy obsession mind you), so I think I was fairly incapable of just enjoying the movie for what it was. It's always rough going from a beloved book to a film.

I should probably give it another shot one of these days as I don't think I've seen it since it first came out in the theater. I may have forgotten enough of the book by now to enjoy it on its own ;)

My relationship with Heinlein has always been strained. As a fundamentally anarchist and generally anti-state and anti-authority person, Heinlein's concepts for citizenry and military duty and general militarism are very aggravating to me. At the same time he does introduce essential scifi concepts, heck, he "invented" power armor, a staple of the scifi genre. Plus the theme of humanity struggling versus an insect-like alien hive race is also a classic. Really strained relationship man.

But I will tell you this, I don't think I've seen a film adaptation of a book I have previously read that I liked. Adapting a book to film means so much gets lost in translation I rarely ever see the point. Worse offender is, things that the book, by virtue of its non visual nature, leaves to your personal imagination, are forced upon you in a predetermined form in film. A form that can rarely live up to your personal interpretations, and that is where every single adaptation fails for me, even if it got everything else right. (Which is extremely rare in itself)

@Dave: Equitis1024 pretty much covered me. I know we have very different tastes, so it doesn't surprise me that we are on the opposite sides of the spectrum on this :] To sum it up, it's not what he does, it is how it is presented that made me hate this film.

[valiant11]

Did they correct the part from the book early on where he starts spouting some mumbo-jumbo about the number of oxygen atoms in a molecule of H20 bearing some weird mystical relationship to the volume of liquid it produces when combined with Hydrogen?

Hello guys, I was absolutely thrilled when I read Dave's June post about this movie, and was waiting impatiently for this movie to hit the big screens. I'm going to see it on Wednesday. I'm curious what will be my reaction to it after reading all these comments. Of all the movies mentioned, I hated Interstellar, didn't like Gravity much, liked Starship Troopers when it came out and "Moon" is one of my all-time favorite SciFi movies.

Whatever.

What I wanted is to mention this H2O thing:
1 l of liquid oxygen = 1.14 kg
How much water made of 1 l liquid oxygen = 18/16*1.14 = 1.24 l
So, "100 l of water made of 100 l of oxygen thing" is more or less good "rule of thumb" of the above (which is also an approximation in itself). So, the error in calculation is obvious, but it probably didn't do any harm to the actions main character took.

Anyway, FC, if this above stands through the (scientific?) criticism, then it might change your view of entry pages in the book (which I will have to read also, but I'll take it after seeing the movie, just in case...).

[FlowerChild]

Anyway, FC, if this above stands through the (scientific?) criticism, then it might change your view of entry pages in the book (which I will have to read also, but I'll take it after seeing the movie, just in case...).

Actually, no I looked all that up afterwards, so I realize the error in the end result it creates isn't huge. What is huge to me is the mystical mumbo-jumbo used to explain it :)

[Gilberreke]

Just saw it. Enjoyed it immensely. I have to disagree with Morm's assessment, the foul-mouthed engineer humor worked for me. There's one major thing I didn't like about the movie, and that was the NASA mission control stuff though. I could've done without most of those scenes and they felt really awkward compared to the awesome portrayal of what was going on on Mars. Overall, that didn't affect my enjoyment of the movie much, so big thumbs up from me :)

[dawnraider]

I definitely have to agree with Gil here. I just saw the movie, and thoroughly enjoyed it. I generally watch movies with an exceedingly critical eye, especially for scientific inaccuracies, so while I definitely saw some, I still thought it was quite good.

On the note of, as Gil put it, the foul mouthed engineers, I am one such person, as well as basically all of my close friends, so to me that humor definitely worked for me as well.

I didn't really mind the mission control stuff, but I do definitely think the mars end was much more interesting (though the mission control segments served as a change of pace at least)

[AdmiralJonB]

Sean Bean is in this movie for more than one minute and doesn't even die :P

That was certainly weird, made me wonder why they chose Sean Bean. Surely it couldn't just be for the fact that he would

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be a part of the council of elrond

I bought the book when travelling and read it by the time I was back and loved reading it all the way through. I also really liked the film, but there were a few inconsistencies in the humor and story based on what they cut from the book.

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How can he be the first space pirate when in the film he was in communication with NASA who gave him permission to go, whereas in the book he had lost contact by that point.

Maybe I got the ordering wrong though, my memory is not as good as it used to be.

Overall, I think it was a good adaptation though. I highly recommend it.

[MoRmEnGiL]

Slightly off topic but not completely. This is very interesting and somewhat related to some of the themes of the book/film https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-yAcD3wuY2Q

[DaveYanakov]

Gil, the mission control scenes were vital to the movie for me. It wasn't just about Watney, it was about everyone else who were putting their lives and careers on the line. It really served to emphasize just how much of a massive team effort it took.

...I bought the book when travelling and read it by the time I was back and loved reading it all the way through. I also really liked the film, but there were a few inconsistencies in the humor and story based on what they cut from the book.

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How can he be the first space pirate when in the film he was in communication with NASA who gave him permission to go, whereas in the book he had lost contact by that point.

Maybe I got the ordering wrong though, my memory is not as good as it used to be.

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The movie clearly stated that NASA had no given him permission and he had lost contact with them after leaving the Hab so they could not grant it before he arrived at the Ares 4 site. Don't remember if it actually worked out that way but they did cover the fact that he set out without that premission.

[AdmiralJonB]

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The movie clearly stated that NASA had no given him permission and he had lost contact with them after leaving the Hab so they could not grant it before he arrived at the Ares 4 site. Don't remember if it actually worked out that way but they did cover the fact that he set out without that premission.

All right then, I guess I just missed it :(

[Gilberreke]

Gil, the mission control scenes were vital to the movie for me. It wasn't just about Watney, it was about everyone else who were putting their lives and careers on the line. It really served to emphasize just how much of a massive team effort it took.

Oh I agree completely, just saying that the acting was pretty terrible on those scenes

[FlowerChild]

Well, I finally saw it yesterday, and for once I don't have a strong opinion on something and am just feeling rather middle of the road about it :)

Having read the book, I already knew what was coming at most points so wasn't really surprised by anything and had already exhausted any geek-rage I had about inaccuracies. Having seen some of the complaints here as well, which may have covered any of my own objections, I also didn't react much to any of the things that inspired them.

Like the potentially cheesy aspect of some of the dialog that Morm mentioned: yeah, I can kind of see the awkwardness of some of the lines like "I'll science the shit out of it" or whatever, but I think that's largely due to the absence of some of the more detailed descriptions of how he's surviving in the book rather than any real failing in the lines themselves or how the actor delivered them. Lines like that are much more amusing after an extended description of how he's breaking down hydrazine or something, whereas in the movie they fall a bit flat because you don't really have that contrast between technical and "just a guy" relatable bits. Having already read all those technical bits before though, and having accepted that Damon is playing the same Watney from the book, those lines were fine to me as I already had the internal context built up to support them.

On the other hand, while you might be lacking context for the one liners, the lack of technical detail is also a bit of a boon as it means there's less stuff to find issue with than in the book ;)

But yeah, overall I just didn't have a strong reaction either way. I just kind of passively sat back and enjoyed watching some very pretty Martian scenery and cool looking space ships in 3D for a couple of hours without having any kind of real reaction other than "oooo...pretty" to the whole experience. I thought the whole thing might be a bit rushed, where it felt more like a rapid fire succession of individual exciting events rather than a prolonged survival experience, but that may also have been because I was zoning out some on the story bits.

Oh, yeah, the "Iron Man" thing was particularly cheesy in comparison to the book (where the idea is mentioned by Watney but dismissed as a really bad idea), but again, knowing it was coming, I just kinda shrugged and said "yeah...whatever" :)

[MoRmEnGiL]

Hehe, so you can partly thank me for dialling down expectations :P I think I would have enjoyed it more if I had the background covered by the book, so I had the gritty info in my head instead of a huge gap where the movie explains virtually nothing but still makes big claims of sciencing stuff. And if someone had told me beforehand that the movie sucked, so I went in expecting a very bad movie. That is usually the recipe for enjoying movies like this I think.

But no matter what, the scene where that dude explains the slingshot manoeuvre to the nasa head honchos by turning into a 4 year old kid with head trauma was unbearable..

[FlowerChild]

But no matter what, the scene where that dude explains the slingshot manoeuvre to the nasa head honchos by turning into a 4 year old kid with head trauma was unbearable..

Christ, I'm drawing a complete blank on that scene when I just saw the thing yesterday, so you really just emphasized how much I was zoning out at various parts of the film. I know I caught my mind wandering several times and then snapping back to awareness when something pretty appeared on screen :)

That's not necessarily a negative statement about the film mind you. Like I said, I already knew what was coming from reading the book, and I've had a lot on my mind these days where I've been drifting off like that in a number of situations.

[MoRmEnGiL]

Hah, I've actually caught myself zoning off too many times when watching stuff in the past few days. You are very lucky not to even remember that scene. But yeah I do have concentration problems myself lately, and it gets very bad if what I'm watching is not engaging enough for my brain needs..

I guess the moral of the entire story though goes along the lines of "haha, read the book, noob"

[DaveYanakov]

The main reason I get excited by movies like this is because they are acessable even to people with very little scientific background. It makes the average person feel like they can have a stake in the exploration of space and that kind of public support is what future missions need.

[FlowerChild]

The main reason I get excited by movies like this is because they are acessable even to people with very little scientific background. It makes the average person feel like they can have a stake in the exploration of space and that kind of public support is what future missions need.

Absolutely, and I agree. However, I'm sure you'll agree that what's good for society is often vastly different from what an individual enjoys. Heck, I know for myself, those two are often in polar opposition :)

Also: I feel it worth mentioning that me having a neutral reaction to a modern "hard" sci-fi flick is about as good as it gets. I hated both Gravity and Interstallar, so by comparison, my neutral reaction to The Martian is the equivalent of a glowing endorsement ;)

[MoRmEnGiL]

I find myself once again in a weird position. I understand what you say Dave, but at the same time, accessible was never one of my highest sought after qualities in a movie. In fact I enjoy things I do not understand thrown at me, because it motivates me to look them up and learn something new. Also I like it when a movie mentally engages me and keeps me alert and information absorbent :P Of course very few movies can actually pull these things off in a balanced way that doesn't make for an incoherent incomprehensible mess.. But when it happens, it is a film I will always remember. Call me an elitist but I become snobbish when a movie tries hard to predigest its contents so the general audience doesn't have to put much mental labour in. Sure I might know little about astrophysics, but that never becomes an excuse for me not want to have some thrown at me.

That said, I do not always want to overwork that tired brain of mine, so I do appreciate simple movies if they are well made. In fact simplicity I find, is often an art in itself, and is equally hard to pull off. And I will always have a soft spot for some kinds of mindless fun, like splatter comedies or zombie gore flicks or comedies based on absurdity. It's all a matter of expectations after all.