Lavish based-on-real-events TV-Movie about something that didn't happen.

Rating: 4/10 (8 October 2015)

I found watching this film a very underwhelming and slightly bizarre experience. It seems to have almost invented a new genre – but one that feel to me utterly pointless. The Martian is basically a factual/historical drama – about something that never actually happened. The style, pacing and storytelling is exactly like Apollo 13 (and I mean exactly) – and fairly familiar to other based-on- real-events films like the recent Everest. But the obvious fact that none of this stuff actually ever took place just seemed to suck any interest right out of me.
Now, clearly, in most films the events never actually took place, but typically fiction usually presents us with interesting dramatic or philosophical questions – none of which are present in The Martian. You could compare it to Contact – which kind of used the same fake-factual/historical drama style, but Contact posed big questions – and took us to places we could never really go and so was interesting. The Martian was so close to life without being more remarkable than life that it just felt dull. I'm sure a lot of people would compare it to Gravity – but they just don't feel much alike to me. Gravity was basically a thriller – and a real cinematic experience But the The Martian feels more like a lavish TV movie which has absolutely nothing of interest to say, show, or make you feel. The film and 3D looks pretty good, but the visuals aren't exactly stunning. Meanwhile, there is almost zero character development in this film. We know literally nothing more about the protagonist, or any of the other characters, at the end of the film than we did at the beginning.
As in Apollo 13, most of the dramatic interest is supposed to come from the characters trying to work out solutions to problems of how to keep the protagonist alive and get him home. But since none of this actually happened and the solutions can effectively be dreamt up out of thin air they lack any real interest in watching at all. I haven't read the book, but can imagine that perhaps the problem solving aspect came across better in print, since I imagine the writer tried to come up with practical/plausible solutions to the idea of being trapped on Mars and work the problems through in detail. But on film the solutions all just feels contrived and redundant.