A fast-paced rescue mission to Mars captures our curiosity with visual delights

Rating: 8/10 (11 November 2015)

The Martian, a movie rightly praised by critics and audiences alike, deserves its accolades. Following an accident on a voyage to Mars, Matt Damon is separated from his crew, and stranded with limited supplies to stay alive until he can be rescued. The story that follows is suspenseful and engrossing. It has great photography of the surface of Mars and space, humor, science lessons, and a daring rescue attempt.
The scenes with Matt Damon as the only one on screen, talking to himself and audience, are surprisingly absorbing and entertaining. He needs to calmly solve a number of survival tasks to stay alive by overcoming potential shortages of food, water, and power sources. The strategies discussed to rescue him, as well as his separation from his crew and communications with NASA in Houston provide a fast-paced story that never lets up. Will the mission succeed? If you like '70s Disco music, you'll hear lots of it since that's all he's left with up there. The musical score when we don't hear disco also works well.
There are neither contrived romances nor political issues. The Martian combines all elements of an entertaining film: a main character we love, many plot twists, and spectacular space shots that are a feast for eyes.
The Martian can also be seen as a contemporary example of how far we've advanced in ensuring diversity of cast members in major productions like this one, which has been #1 in box-office receipts for several weeks. The leading roles are acted by women (Jessica Chastain as crew commander and Kate Mara as second in command), a Latino man (Michael Pena as Martinez) as co-Captain of the mission, an Asian man as key "architect" of the ground crew to plan a rescue mission, and two African-Americans, one a manager (Chiwetel Ejiofor) and the other a scientist (Donald Glover) who solves the technical problem of how to resolve the engineering challenges. (Ms. Chastain was also the key person in Zero Dark Thirty who located the hiding place of Osama Bin Laden and advised the mission to kill him. However, that was a true story.)
But don't white males also have prominent roles? Let's see. The two chief ones are played by Matt Damon, the stranded astronaut, and Jeff Daniels as NASA director. While they occupy lots of screen time, they're limited in their decision-making. As the lowest ranking crew member, Mr. Damon can only wait and hope to be rescued; in decades past, it would be the "damsel in distress" being rescued by her Knight in Shining Armor, usually a white male. Jeff Daniels, although the NASA head, is disrespected by the African-American scientist who barges into his meeting, presents the engineering solution he alone developed, takes over the meeting without asking to be recognized, and insults the NASA director by asking, "Who are you?" One of his key decisions is reversed.
Can you imagine this happening if the demographics were reversed? What about another white male in the chain of command? He's told he'll be fired when the mission is over. Can a case be made that diversity efforts have gone too far, replacing one set of demographics who were previously minimized (women, African-Americans, Latinos, Asians) with a newer one (white men)? I leave it to you to decide if another episode in the film can be considered political correctness: a key piece of the engineering solution to the rescue mission is controlled not by the U.S., but by China. For more evidence of this trend, note that TV's latest superhero is Supergirl, and in the next Ghostbusters the leading roles will be played by women. Will the next 007 be Jamie Bond? Stay tuned! I suspect that whether or not you agree with my observations will depend on your own identity group, or your support for political correctness. None of these observations, however, should detract from an immensely enjoyable film.