It’s taken me a while but I finally saw the film The Martian (based on the novel by Andy Weir) over the weekend — and I liked it a lot.

In many ways it’s a retelling of the classic Robinson Crusoe story, combined with a “rescue mission”, giving both a space twist. But as I’ve said before, since there really is no such thing as a truly original story, it’s what you do with it that matters — and I liked what The Martian did with these themes.

Firstly, I think Matt Damon did a great job as the “person alone”, using his ingenuity and the tools at hand to solve problems — survival being the main one.

The book

But it wasn’t just a Robinson Crusoe story, the “rescue mission” aspect eventually brought in the wider community of space exploration: scientists and engineers—in fact, even the PR person got a look-in 😉 — and most importantly the crew of the space ship (Hermes) into the story.

I thought that juxtaposition: of Mark Watney alone on Mars, and NASA and the space community on earth working as a community (humanity at its best, if you like) to bring him home, bridged by the crew on their return journey, was the ‘heart’ of the story and why it worked for me as a viewer.
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That cool spaceship…

In some ways, it is a fairytale, particularly the level of public open-ness about what was going on and the (apparently) no-strings-attached Chinese involvement,  especially in terms of what helping meant for their own space programme. And sure, I thought some of the science aspects, particularly the storm at the beginning were a little ‘wobbly’—but nowhere near as much as in a film like Interstellar, for example.

But The Martian is not a complete fairytale, because we saw something of that sense of selflessness and people working together for something more than their personal self-interest—including the Urban Search and Rescue teams from many countries, and just ordinary Chriscthurch and NZ people—after Christchurch’s February 22nd earthquake in 2011. So in that context, and the wider ambit of The Martian, the matters in the above paragraph really are quibbles.

Overall, I thought the performances, the Mars-scapes, the simple but effective story, the spaceship and spaces scenes, as well as the understated relationships between the astronauts, and the humour—loved the humour—all worked together to make a great viewing experience.

My most powerful scene, though, was that moment when Mark Watney (Matt Damon) sees the first green potato leaves poking up above the manufactured soil in his engineered bio-habitat on Mars.

Something we take for granted: for him, a tenuous hope for survival in an environment that, unlike Earth, does not nurture life.