Rewatching The Martian

We just rewatched The Martian (2013), the extended edition, and I wanted to share some thoughts.

(In the unlikely event you haven’t seen it, the movie is based on Andy Weir’s 2011 science fiction novel about an astronaut stranded on Mars. Read the Wikipedia page if you want more information.)

To begin with, this movie is unabashedly hard science fiction. The film happily leaps into science and math — infectiously, I think, and often playfully. Even when things turn bad, like one rocket problem, we get serious science without dumbing it down. (Yes, there are inaccuracies. Picking them out is part of the hard sf tradition.)

The Martian gets some criticism for being talking, but I think it actually succeeds in doing a good amount of visual storytelling, without redundant dialogue. For example, the scene where Watney wakes up from disaster and does basic medical care on himself occurs utterly without verbal or textual description. We have to pay attention and figure out what’s going on. In another, the hab explosion and immediate recovery take place without verbal explanation. Not until a following scene does one character quickly add a bit of information.

The film preserves a lot of the novel’s humor, from astronauts ribbing each other to rebellious joking. Added in are some movie jokes, like a Lord of the Rings gag played utterly…