The Martian

Matt Damon needs to be rescued. Again… So the bestseller Handbook of Young Martians written by Bear Grylls finally got a blockbuster film adaptation. And this adaptation is so successful that it rectifies most of the weak points of the original (especially the repetitiveness of the first half). In any case, advertising of NASA through the fate of the botanical MacGyver, who starts to like Abba, sand, red, taste of potato and solitude, is fun, stylish and what is nice is that it is relaxed and humanistic in a feel good style that is rather unusual in terms of survival films (let alone sci-fi blockbusters). It is as unusual as refreshing and surprisingly fitting. (06/10/2015)

This seemingly unfilmable collection of technical details and sarcastic monologues became surprisingly easy to adapt in Drew Goddard's hands. Albeit at the cost of simplifying or even completely omitting Mark's struggles with producing air, water, or stone inscriptions, meaning that his fate in the first half is not really something to worry about. However, in the end, where after all the disasters and crises the source material merely struggled, the effort to rescue the main protagonist turns into a strongly graduated symbiosis of all involved. The main triumphs are surprisingly not the great Matt Damon, but Sean Bean perfectly cast as Mitch and especially the entire crew of the Hermes, led by Jessica Chastain. (15/10/2015)

The anti-Interstellar. Nolan’s sci-fi opus was a space colonisation western about the search for an alternative to our devastated blue planet. By contrast the “coloniser” in the delightful The Martian has to be rescued from a wilderness that somewhat resembles Monument Valley and returned to Earth. The celebration of the human ability to make maximum use of available resources is only one level of the narrative, which in the film is better interwoven with the parallel organisation of the rescue mission than it was in the book. The cutting between events on Earth and on Mars starts earlier than in the novel and the two storylines are better synchronised. As a result, the film has more momentum and, unlike Mark, it never loses its breath. Despite the individualistic title, Matt Damon’s lonely face on the poster, and its reputation as the ultimate professional drama for geeks, The Martian is, in my opinion, a particularly successful example of a story with a collective hero. Even in the interconnected world of high-speed internet, enabling media coverage of events in other countries, on other continents and even on another planet, it works best on the principle of mutual cooperation and coordination. Each of the many characters enjoys their own moment of glory. Thanks to their gradual introduction to the scene and the clear establishment of professional and personal relationships between them (there are no characters in the film who fight solely for themselves), we have no problem remembering them. Not only people of different races, ages and genders, but also of different nationalities join forces. The Martian creates the illusion that the individual comes first in a massive organisation like NASA, as well as in a totalitarian country like China. The creation of sound bridges between scenes and the precise editing, when a question directly or indirectly asked on Earth is answered in the following shot from Mars, reinforce the cohesiveness of the narrative and the impression of a global village, where even a distance of tens of millions of kilometres is not insurmountable. The Martian is outstanding feel-good entertainment that may not restore your faith in humanity, but it’s highly probable that your faith in Ridley Scott’s skill as a director will have been restored by the time the end credits roll. 80% (05/10/2015)

It’s been a long time since I’ve had to pause the movie and think about how I don’t want Matt Damon to stop colonizing Mars. I get that it’s mental to live there for some time, but apart from him doing well in the beginning, he had some really ironic and cynical remarks, which only made the movie better. Now I’m not even surprised that it won Best comedy at the Golden Globes. The award might be as cynical as Mark Watney, but who cares. The Martian is an absolutely amazing, realistic sci-fi movie and its story flows in a completely logical way. All while the story was written for a blog; that’s how far this sort of an enthusiastic expression can go. (28/02/2016)

The Martian surprised me by not being about atmosphere and philosophizing, but about people and the joy of telling a positive story. It also offers a pool of inspirational ideas for emerging film editors. Matt Damon is great and Jeff Daniels got a good role after a long time. It is a pity that the movie has a weaker climax, which in the long shadow of Gravity has no chance to impress. If you compare The Martian to Prometheus, however... Ridley is still a champ. He just needs a good script. (06/10/2015)