Entertaining, Informative and quite inspirational

Rating: 7/10 (9 October 2015)

Mark Watney is the Ares III Mars mission's botanist astronaut. A few days (sols) there, a storm rages through the Hab site forcing the team flee the planet on the Mars Ascent vehicle (MAV). Hit by a debris and presumed dead, Mark is subsequently left behind. Awaken, he patches himself up and starts video-logging his activities. With no communications and the next Mars mission in four years, Mark has to 'science things up' to survive. He rations food and plants stash potatoes in his own feces. He creates water by oxidizing hydrogen and nitrogen. NASA eventually learns of his survival and announces it but refrains from telling it to the Ares III crew. Mark mods the rover to enable him drive longer distances. NASA engineer Vincent Kapour finds Mark is traveling to the 1997 Pathfinder rover. As Mark recovers it, Vincent is able to control it from earth, enabling a simple communication.
Vincent's team instructs Mark to hack the Rover's OS to enable text communication. NASA finally reveals the truth to the Ares III crew. As NASA prepares a supply mission at the least, Mark becomes somewhat a celebrity on earth. One night, a malfunction in the airlock destroys Mark's second potato crop. Mark's left with his food, which left a limited time before NASA can reach him. Mark chats with the Ares III crew and rebuilds the Hab. NASA tries to launch a supply probe but their rocket explodes mid-air. CNSA, the Chinese NASA, helps out with the propulsion technology. Meanwhile astrophysicist Rich Purnell contacts Vincent about his calculations that instead of sending a new mission to rescue Mark, NASA can just resupply the Ares III's spaceship Hermes to go and get him. Even though the NASA director disapprove the plan but the mission director secretly sends course plan to the Hermes, thus the plan is underway.
NASA and CNSA cooperate to relaunch a probe to resupply the Hermes for their return to Mars. Meanwhile Mark starts his journey to the site of Ares IV's MAV. After seven months he reaches it. NASA tells him to dismantle the protection layers to lighten it so Mark can reach the Hermes better. As the Hermes gets into range, its crew remotely ignites the MAV with Mark in it.Floating on space, Mark still can't reach Hermes automatically, so the Ares III's Commander Lewis 'bungee jumps' herself to catch him mid-space, with him puncturing his suit to make an "Iron Man style" flight to approach Lewis. With that Mark safely board the Hermes and gets back home to earth.
In essence the story doesn't really offer something unpredictable as a big picture. Everyone who has seen the trailer, let alone read the book which I haven't, will easily know that the movie only tells of an astronaut mistakenly left on Mars and have to utilize his craft to survive the overwhelming odds. And with the current trend in Hollywood movies and literature, with the exception of true story based tragedies like the recent Everest (2015), one can safely assume that this movie will have a happy ending without having to watch the whole thing.
But with that kind of expectation this movie still able to give me wow moments as it use so many scientific points which are logically understandable without having to delve deeper back into the science textbooks. There are a lot of technical stuff lying around in the critical story flow, even technical abbreviations and jargon. But the movie went on with confidence to insert them without having to explain them in the duration. This is quite smart considering that The Martian (2015) took advantage of the steady flow of space movies since 2013's Gravity, which exposes the audience to the technicalities of space travel. The setting and location filming, with aid of CGI, do worth a mention. The end results look so convincing indeed that I gave up searching for unedited set bloopers after about thirty minutes in. Coupled with all the factual physics and space travel knowledge, this adds into the enjoyment of watching the movie.
Acting-wise, the movie presents us with a nice level of acting work, although it's kind of weird to see most of the cast list of familiar faces only take less significant faces. Matt Damon of course nailed his parts very well. His balanced up depiction of Watney's ingenuity and despair at different times completes the story angles well. Jeff Davis provided the skeptic and cautious angle very nicely to the story, Sean Bean gives us a more entertaining performance through references to his other work, rather than his actual role here. It's very nice to see other familiar faces like Sebastian Stan, Kate Mara, Jessica Chastain, Michael Pena, Chiwetel Ejiofor, and even Kristen Wiig brightening up the cast list.
my say for The Martian is a solid 7 out of 10. A recommendation surely goes out to see it in the cinemas. It's very entertaining and indeed also informative.