Space movies have my vote as one of the best sub-genres in cinema history. From the right winged adventure Armageddon, to the underrated greatness of its same year rival, Deep Impact, and more recently, the dramatic, beautiful, movie First Man. All these movies are among the greatest of their genre. And use space amazingly for the plots and settings of their movies. Among the greatest of all time in this aspect of cinema is certainly Matt Damon's The Martian. The tale of a man's will to survive in the greatest of unknown frontiers. I had the pleasure of watching this movie this fine Thursday morning and I found it to be phenomenal.
Let's start with a few notes as to what I thought made it so brilliant.
First of all I must say that the special effects were surprisingly realistic. You obviously cant film real Mars storms on set because no human has ever set foot on the red planet. But it sort of looked like they did. They did a great job making the set look like mars and it was all very convincing.
Also, I love how the balance between Damon adapting to life on Mars and the NASA organization working to get him back was more of a 50-50 split instead of 90-10 in movies such as Cast Away. Cast Away is an amazing movie and I may or may not choose it over the Martian, but it was all Hanks and no one else. And trust me, I'm the biggest Tom Hanks fan you'll ever meet. But even I would rather a nice deep variety of actors instead of just his one character being shown on screen for two hours.
Matt Damon's video logs I thought were an important part as well. It is crucial to include some humor and comedy into your movie to make your dialogue easy to digest. And Damon's character had a good sense of humor. A major plus for any movie.
And a crucial part of these movies about people being stranded somewhere is the stuff they get for assistance. For example, the FedEx boxes that also survived the plane crash in Cast Away. If you are going to supply your character with items to assist them in their survival, they can be overly convenient, but they have to be believable. For example, Hanks can find those FedEx packages, sure. But it's not like he can find a hunting gun or a fire starter kit because that's just lazy writing. The Martian does a good job of making what he gets as assistance look real. They give him the portable house that they left behind in the hurry to escape the storm, along with the rest of the remnants from the mission. Including a solar powered rover, some solar panels, and the rations left in the portable house.
These set up the movie to become a great adventure filled with many ups and downs and twists at every corner.
The Categories:
Most Crucial Scene: The scene in the movie that was most crucial to the story, but most of all to the movie's popularity and entertainment factor. There are plenty of great scenes in this conversation but to me one definitely takes the cake. But I will run off some nominees first. First of all, the storm that separated Damon from the crew in the opening. This is my favourite show of special effects from the Fox crew. The storm looks like an actual disaster that astronauts would have to deal with if they make it to mars. And it was a great way to set up the plot for the rest of the movie. Secondly, the scene where they realize that Damon is still alive and stranded on mars. This one for sure doesn't win but it set up the rest of the characters in the movie and had some great acting.
But of course. The undisputed winner in this category is the rescue mission to save Damon. It may be a bit of ludicrous, but it was action that won the day, not writing. As it included some of the most phenomenal space action ever displayed in a movie. First of all, Damon had to fly out of Mars' atmosphere with no roof, no windows, and no control panels as it was remote controlled by NASA in Houston. And then Commander Lewis flying out into space on a floating chair, and my favourite part by far, Matt Damon, and I quote: "Flying out into space like Iron Man.". He is about 100 meters short of the crew trying to rescue him, so he rips a hole in his spacesuit glove to create a momentum boost with the air blowing out. He then flies out into the endless abyss of space to be caught by the Commander in the floating chair. Which is totally insane considering that if she doesn't catch him, he is lost, stranded in space with no hopes for a ship's rescue. So the amount of pressure in that 2 minute span is unbelievable.
Actor Podium: This is where I list the top three acting performances from the cast. This is not a great subject for the first Actor Podium on this blog. But there's still plenty of characters to choose from.
Number one on the list is non-debatably Matt Damon. It's nearly impossible for him not to win number one as he is really the only actor it focuses on. It would be like saying Wilson had a better acting performance than Tom Hanks in Cast Away. But he took his almost guaranteed number one spot and ran with it. He had to keep us interested for about a whole movies' worth of acting. With just him on screen. But he excels in the role and keeps us intrigued the whole time with his great sense of humor and Oscar-level acting performance. Not only the best in this movie, one of the best of the year 2015.
Second Place would go to Jessica Chastain, the actor for Commander Lewis. She was one of the only other big roles in the movie. She did a great job and was definitely the best actor of the crew.
Third Place goes to Michael Peña because Peña is awesome and any movie with him is immediately better.
Overall ranking: Overall I would give The Martian eight out of ten stars for really having no flaws. But not being a ten in each category. It is an amazing drama and action movie and in my guess one of the best movies of the 2010s.
