Sickly sweet potatoes.

Rating: 5/10 (20 November 2015)

Should have been called 'Avatar:The Red Planet Rescue'. It's a blockbuster pop-corn muncher, but could have been a much deeper and more worthy film. I was hoping for a thriller sci-fi but got a saccharin Disney effort.
Personally I like movies that try to teach us life lessons, often despite struggles and hardship. That narrative was all sitting there in the plot and never touched, such a waste. The acting was heavily wooden, Damon probably through poor direction or too time sensitive a plot fails to engage as a fellow human, he's Mr Prefect and well balanced, even surviving alone in a hostile environment.
I'm no scientist, but the whole of the physics and biology seem far too woolly, convenient and unlikely. Even the movement on Mars seems wrong, there is only about a third of the gravity so things should look like the moon with long jumps or certainly less earth-like. Even the Mars rover looks like it is driving in an Earth desert, not really on Mars. There are so many other examples, too many to list, ranging from not very probable to impossible.
-Sigh- another Chinese tie-in. Our Chinese friends in their space administration help, and are portrayed as the good guys. There's nothing really wrong with the premise, but the reason is simply to make more money in Chinese theaters, a tacky corporate gesture and totally unnecessary to the story. This is very ugly cynical marketing, pandering to the lowest level. Why not have an entire Chinese ending then? Mark is rescued by the Chinese and they call the Americans 'shameless' for their abandonment. Mark learns perfect calligraphy, speech-making putonghua that nobody actually uses in real life (as in the movie), how to use chopsticks and cook up a killer sweet and sour pork in the galley on the way home.
The saving graces are the beautifully rendered shots of Mars which were worth the price of admission, and just the idea that could catch everyone's imagination get the ball rolling on a real manned international mission to Mars sooner than later.
I feel that the story could have been split into two or three feature length parts, explaining psychology, science and the day to day difficulties of isolation on much deeper level. It seems for the company that made this the idea of success is to make as much money as possible, not the best film possible.