A tale of survivalist

Rating: 7/10 (22 October 2015)

I have an idea of why the Martian has been so successful at the box office. It's not because it's a remarkable movie, but because of the times we live in. See, the Martian is a success story. It's a story about a man who is placed against insurmountable challenges, which he beats. It's a story of how other people are doing their best to safe the man in trouble as well, going as far as showing how other nations, which might normally have cold relations, are willing to help each other in order to safe one of us in need. Simply put, the Martian makes it easier to feel good about humanity and the state of the world, while in the real life we life in a world where we are not threatened only by political unrest, but terrorism and continuously freezing relations of modern superpowers. What I want to say is, that the Martian stands out for its own benefit from among the movies that try to be more grim and bleak.
So let's tackle the basics. The Martian tells a story of how an astronaut Mark Watney (Matt Damon) is left stranded on Mars after a hasty evacuation the Mars team has to make due to a storm. Believing that Mark is dead the rest of the crew blasts off, only for Mark to wake up to find that he's now the only human in Mars, with very limited means of making a contact back to NASA or his crew mates. But with some scientific ingenuity he doesn't only manage to solve his food problems, but also establish a new contact to Earth. The Martian is not a complex story. It's a kind of a take on Robinson Crusoe, but with people knowing where they can contact him, while planning his rescue.
As the Martian is directed by Ridley Scott, it's also technically well made. The plot, while simple, works well under the steady direction of Scott and as usual his style looks very nice and the actors perform well. So all around it's just as steady of a movie you'd expect a director of Scott's caliber to do.
So that's the Martian. It's a feel good movie and that's pretty much it. It's probably not a contender in the category of future classics, but it is a nice movie none the less.