Really?

Rating: 1/10 (3 October 2015)

I like sci-fi as a genre but I completely hate it when film makers assume a general level of dumbness in their audience and resultantly try to peddle whatever they think can sell. I am appalled both by the movie as well as the number of people here on IMDb who actually found the movie worthwhile. I am not even going into the scientific aspects of what Whatney did and whether or not the fiction was any close to truth. In general, I don't like to poke holes in sci-fi, simply because the second word is 'fiction'. What got me was just the childish and rather superficial treatment accorded to everything. Not once did you feel for Whatney or any of the other crew members. The dialogue is gcheesy, bordering on inane. Clichés abound - there is a half-hindu (a separate dialogue was introduced in the movie just to highlight this fact) good-natured scientist and helpful Chinese space agency to boot. Even the special effects are underwhelming. There are instances where you can quite clearly see and feel its a toy car on the red soil. I think Hollywood is running out of ideas, 2015 has generally been god-awful and Martian is just another on that list.