Friday 2 October 2015

The Martian | Movie Review & Discusion


Yesterday I went to watch the movie adaptation of The Martian after just having finished the book and I really enjoyed it! I went into the movie with quite high expectations because the trailer and some of the extra promo videos looked really promising and it was very satisfying to see such a good book to movie adaptation!! There were even tons of lines straight out of the book can you believe it?!

To start off the movie is really intense in a lot of scenes, like you would expect in a movie about someone trying to survive on a different planet, but it managed to capture the comedy from the book and I think perhaps made some of the running jokes even funnier. The whole thing about Lewis' music taste was funny in the book but the disco music playing in the background and the point where Watney just starts dancing along to it in the rover was so hilarious.



I think the acting was great, Matt Damon was not exactly an actor I expected would make a good Watney, but he did and some of his really emotional scenes were perfect. The scene where he's counting his potatoes (oh that was another thing the movie did well, they captured the importance of potatoes [and duct tape] to the story) and there's a huge storm going outside and the Hab was shaking, there were close-ups of Watney trying to not cry..it was hard to watch but a really great scene. All of the other actors I thought also fit their characters quite well (except Vincent/Venkat Kapoor who was a good character but seemed different than in the book).

What I didn't like about the movie was how they changed the part at the end where *SPOILERS* Lewis decides to get Watney from the MAV and floats out into space in her chair thing, gets stuck and then Watney actually uses his Iron Man idea (which he just mentions but doesn't actually carry out in the book) to try and fly himself over to her.Them getting close, trying to reach each other, knocking their helmet things and getting tangled up in the orange rope thing went on a bit too long and as well as that, the whole thing just seemed really unrealistic while the rest of the story was basically trying to be as realistic as possible.

I also think we could have done without the scenes at the end where Watney is a teacher for aspiring astronauts but that didn't bother me as much as the whole stabbing the suit to become Iron Man  situation...

The cinematography with the shots of Mars' landscape were really pretty and the CGI in the movie was really good as well. There were these camera things as well (not sure what they're called) that showed the 'rover cam', 'suit cam' and the ones inside the Hab with the pressure, oxygen levels and things on the sides and I thought those were really cool!

Overall this story worked brilliantly as a movie and fans of the book will really appreciate this movie adaptation. The movie seems quite long being 141 minutes but the pacing is perfect and switches between the narrative on Mars and the one on Earth perfectly.

My rating:


Did you enjoy the movie version of The Martian? What were your favourite/least favourite parts?

2 comments :

  1. *SPOILER-Y COMMENT*
    I loved the book and I really went into the movie with high expectations, and I was not disappointed. It was such a wonderful book-to-movie adaptation and I am so happy with the way it turned out. There were so many direct quotes from the book and I feel like the movie captured the mood and experience of story perfectly. There were beautiful shots of Mars and the CGI was incredible and I loved seeing the book come to life on the screen. It was also really interesting to see all the science Mark had to do through a movie rather than having to imagine it from the book, and I really enjoyed how that was made. There were some intense scenes where things went wrong and it was horrible to see Mark talking about his parents and to see him get thinner throughout the movie, because it was even harder to see it with my eyes than to read about it. I was just so into the movie the whole time and it was SUCH a good movie adaptation.

    They did skip some parts out such as the long drive from the Ares 3 site to the Ares 4 site, but that would add like 2 more hours to the movie so I can see why they did it and it worked well with the story. I couldn't believe it when Mark actually used his Iron Man idea and it was a little ridiculous, but it didn't harm the cinematic quality of the movie and it gave a good climax to the ending. Overall, I absolutely loved it and I am so happy such a good book got the movie it deserved <3

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    1. Yess I got so excited because it's so rare that there are that many quotes straight from the book!! Also I totally agree it was actually helpful to me to see the science on a screen and made some complicated parts from the book clearer. The message he sent to Lewis was so so so sad and it was so long, I was dying in the cinema :'( They did skip some scenes but like you said it would have made it longer and I think Mark already showcased his ability to mess up things quite well without those extra parts in the movie :P

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