My Review of the Martian

Rating: 9/10 (3 December 2015)

Gravity, Interstellar, and now The Martian. Three big space epics in three years. So how does this one match up?
"I guarantee you that at some point, everything is going to go south on you. Everything. And you can either accept that, or you can get to work." -Mark Watney The Martian is a film about an astronaut on Mars, Mark Watney, who gets hit by some debris in a storm and is killed. His team leaves his dead body there and begins there journey home. But Mark is still alive. Now he has to get back to base, staple his own wound shut, and examine his options. Unfortunately, all of them result in his death. But he won't accept that. So he has to make contact with NASA, and figure out how to get food and water on a planet with no water, and food doesn't grow there either. Lucky for him, he's the greatest botanist on the planet.
So I'll say up front: I love this movie. What's not to love? There's a great cast playing great characters, the visuals are stunning, and to top it all off, legendary director Ridley Scott is at the helm. But like most films, it has it's flaws. Two of them, to be exact. First of all: in the climax of the film when Mark reaches for Commander Lewis' hand and slips, he grabs on to the tether. As Lewis is pulling Watney towards her, her head moves inside her helmet. The scene naturally, should have been tense and dramatic, which it was, until this happened. It looked ridiculous, and it made me laugh. Of course, I shouldn't have been laughing in that scene. Secondly, and most notably, there was a half an hour where the film just loses Watney. While the scenes on Earth were beautifully executed, the real action is on Mars. It was a significant blow to the film to lose Mark for so long. But none of that matters anyway because The Martian is in fact one of the greatest films of the year, overshadowed only by July's Mission: Impossible Rogue Nation.