Movie Review: The Martian
Oct. 23rd, 2015 03:27 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
hrjI hadn’t expected to like this movie as much as I did. Not that I expected to dislike it, but I’m not really into techno-space-thrillers and haven’t watched the last several in that genre that were getting lots of buzz. But I’d heard enough positive things in the right flavors to decide to see The Martian in the theater (and quite frankly, it isn’t the sort I’d be likely to pick up to view at home) and made a date with my BFF to check it out. (Which was the right decision, because we both needed hand-holding at the same plot-critical moments. Never doubt the comfort of seeing a move with someone to whom you can admit the need for hand-holding!)
I expect most readers will already know the basic plot: manned Mars mission, one guy gets left behind , believed dead, during an emergency evac, must survive until rescue with only what he can scrounge from a habitat never meant to serve that purpose. (Heck: must arrange for rescue by mission control who believes him to be dead.) The only plot-essential point that had me going “Wait, is that correct?” was the presence of disastrously high-velocity windstorms on Mars. But I was willing to give that a pass.
The plot chucks human-scale problems at the protagonist, who solves them with an emphasis on the intersection between scientific rigor and creative ingenuity, and is ultimately rescued (I hope that isn’t a spoiler!) by the triumph of communication, cooperation, realistic brain-power, and international goodwill. There are only a few digs at bureaucracy and PR as pseudo-villains. I particularly liked that the characters of the scientists and engineers felt “real” to me, as someone who works in a strongly science/engineering field.
Despite the requisite straight white male protagonist, the cast was deliciously (and realistically) diverse in race and gender. (But not, as far as I can tell, sexuality. And don’t tell me that there’s no reason for us to know any of the characters’ sexuality, because a lot of those characters were shown at some point in the context of a opposite-sex relationship of some sort. So there’s no reason why one of the minor characters couldn’t have been casually indicated as being in a same-sex relationship in just the same way.) *ahem* Where was I? Oh, right. The people in this cinematic high-tech industry looked a great deal like the people I see in real-life high-tech industries, and it’s a critique of Hollywood that I find that noteworthy enough to call out.
It’s easy to see why NASA has been supportive of this movie: it may be the feel-good space exploration movie of this decade. Without minimizing the hazards or problems, it leaves you cheering for the glories of scientific achievement and international cooperation and the plain old sense-of-wonder that space fiction was once famous for.
I expect most readers will already know the basic plot: manned Mars mission, one guy gets left behind , believed dead, during an emergency evac, must survive until rescue with only what he can scrounge from a habitat never meant to serve that purpose. (Heck: must arrange for rescue by mission control who believes him to be dead.) The only plot-essential point that had me going “Wait, is that correct?” was the presence of disastrously high-velocity windstorms on Mars. But I was willing to give that a pass.
The plot chucks human-scale problems at the protagonist, who solves them with an emphasis on the intersection between scientific rigor and creative ingenuity, and is ultimately rescued (I hope that isn’t a spoiler!) by the triumph of communication, cooperation, realistic brain-power, and international goodwill. There are only a few digs at bureaucracy and PR as pseudo-villains. I particularly liked that the characters of the scientists and engineers felt “real” to me, as someone who works in a strongly science/engineering field.
Despite the requisite straight white male protagonist, the cast was deliciously (and realistically) diverse in race and gender. (But not, as far as I can tell, sexuality. And don’t tell me that there’s no reason for us to know any of the characters’ sexuality, because a lot of those characters were shown at some point in the context of a opposite-sex relationship of some sort. So there’s no reason why one of the minor characters couldn’t have been casually indicated as being in a same-sex relationship in just the same way.) *ahem* Where was I? Oh, right. The people in this cinematic high-tech industry looked a great deal like the people I see in real-life high-tech industries, and it’s a critique of Hollywood that I find that noteworthy enough to call out.
It’s easy to see why NASA has been supportive of this movie: it may be the feel-good space exploration movie of this decade. Without minimizing the hazards or problems, it leaves you cheering for the glories of scientific achievement and international cooperation and the plain old sense-of-wonder that space fiction was once famous for.
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no subject
Date: 2015-10-23 04:45 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2015-10-23 04:52 pm (UTC)I only remember the five astronauts shown in relationships, but it's entirely possible I missed NASA ones.
The author is a local product and went to Livermore High a couple years behind Juan Santiago.
no subject
Date: 2015-10-23 06:36 pm (UTC)Perhaps it is, but I don't mind spoilers, and I'm glad you wrote it because otherwise I probably wouldn't want to see the movie.
(And I hate those jigsaw-puzzle captchas. Bad Livejournal!)
no subject
Date: 2015-10-23 08:28 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2015-10-26 06:45 pm (UTC)It's a little disconcerting how encouraging it was to see a realistically diverse representation of what people in STEM really look like. I'm hopeful that young people of various genders and ethnicities will now have an internal image that they, too, have a place in science.
no subject
Date: 2015-10-26 10:07 pm (UTC)Sometimes that's what makes you realize just how strong a grip the unmarked state has even on our vocabulary. I still remember that when the tv show Xena first came out, I tried unsuccessfully to find a neutral way of expressing how delightful it was that Lucy Lawless wasn't Hollywood-skinny. I never could find words that didn't either imply, "she's overweight but I'm being polite" or "women with Hollywood-default figures should be ridiculed for the system that exploits them."