Self-sufficiency on the red planet

Rating: 7/10 (22 February 2016)

During a service mission on Mars astronaut Mark Watney (Matt Damon) finds himself separated from his crew after a fierce storm on Mars. Due to the severity of the storm the crew and personnel at NASA presume that Mark is dead. However, Watney does survive the storm (barely) and must now try to survive on Mars until he is rescued against seemingly impossible odds.
Adapted from the novel by Andy Weir The Martian is another 'big' film which uses space as part of its theme and follows in the footsteps of both Gravity and Interstellar (although the Martian is set mostly on Mars as opposed to being set in space itself). I found both Gravity and Interstellar to be impossibly overrated and not particularly engaging story-wise. Therefore I was pleasantly surprised to discover that The Martian is actually a worthy entry in the science fiction genre.
OK so the concept of one man surviving against the odds isn't particularly ground-breaking or original but sometimes putting a slight twist on an unoriginal idea can have the desired effect. The key thing with an unoriginal idea is that you need to make sure that the narrative is engaging and this is where The Martian does work well. We all know that Watney is forced to try to survive on his own, but it's discovering how he achieves this and what desperate measures he has to take in order to survive this seemingly impossible ordeal - as someone who hadn't read the book I had no idea what to expect.
I also liked the fact that a 'tongue-in-cheek' approach was used in order to deliver the material. I remember there being one moment where one of the NASA crew says something along the lines of 'God knows what sort of hell he's enduring up there'? and then we see Watney dancing and enjoying himself in the next scene. It's the sort of thing that you can see coming a mile off, but it's still funny. Watney's generally positive approach to his ordeal prevents the film from being too depressing and actually makes the picture more enjoyable. Watney's behaviour here is also probably more believable than you may think - sometimes remaining positive in the face of adversity is what keeps people going!!! The picture is quite suspenseful and tense but perhaps not in an 'edge of your seat' way but more in a sense that you're left intrigued as to what Watney will do next? How will they rescue him? Etc. It isn't a particularly exciting film, but the story has enough flesh on it to keep it engaging and considering its generous running time it very rarely hits any lulls.
The only thing that perplexed me a little about this film is the music; whilst some of it is understandable and fits quite well with the film (I think Bowie's Life On Mars played at one point), but then later in the film we had Waterloo by Abba which just seemed rather random. This isn't really a criticism, but I just thought that some of it was a bit strange.
Yes you can pick holes here and there in The Martian but at the end of the day it never tries too hard and seems happy telling a relatively interesting 'one man' survival story with fairly linear delivery and for that I am eternally grateful.