Watchable but no Thriller

Rating: 5/10 (21 October 2015)

I am a big fan of Ridley Scott. I am a big fan of Matt Damon. "The Martian" was always going to be a difficult translation from book to screen. Scott did a good job on the technical side and Damon earned his paycheck but I never really got emotionally involved with his character the way I did in the Bourne movies. There was no "wow" factor at any stage in the movie for me. I found it quite watchable but it was not riveting and it felt like "Apollo 13" just on a grander special effects scale. Rescue missions don't usually make for exciting entertainment for me even when as in "Apollo 13", it was based on a real event and this is just a work of fiction. It would have been better if whilst marooned on Mars Damon had found signs of alien life or something and this had opened up a thought-provoking line to follow. But it was following the book and as a result there are no real scares or shocks in this movie - just a guy and a NASA team overcoming technical problems one by one. As it is I can only give this a 5 and it disappoints me to have to do so because I am a big fan of most science fiction movies.