A definitive, eye candy success!

Rating: 9/10 (4 October 2015)

The Martian was a great, fun science fiction staple in Ridley Scott's career. Of all genres of films that he's tried, this one was definitely spot on where it needed to be. Visuals were great, acting was very warm, and appealing to the audience. In short, the film is about an astronaut stranded on mars with almost no way of contact top earth.
Be prepared to have your mind positively blown by the visual effects in this film. This film takes the effects in Gravity, shuts them off, and tears the switch off. The setting literally looks like mars. A perfect red sky, red desolate sand, and lots and lots of red barren mountains. Zero gravity in the film is practically flawless, however Scott is really picky and choosy with Martian gravity which is about a third of earth. One aspect of gravity effects that was rather impressive was the shift from zero gravity, to earth gravity all on the same ship. Nothing like that has been done before.
Scott was for the most part pretty solid on keeping the science reasonable. The facts about the martian soil were correct, the rocket science was pretty much correct, so expect to be even more amazed that a lot of what happens in the film is pretty much possible! However, the time delay for radio signals would be about a half an hour, and that was pretty much ignored in the film.
The film had an all star cast. Matt Damon did a fantastic job playing an astronaut scientist who knows what he's doing, and can keep both his sanity, and his sense of humor even though he could die at any moment. A good actor knows how to make every character different than the other he played, and Matt Damon showed no trace of his previous roles, and carried out his own phenomenally. Be prepared to fall in love with Damon's performance.
The plot was very linear, and was super easy to follow. The screenplay wrote enough not to make obvious exposition lines, but also made it clear to the audience what was going on. The screenwriter didn't just throw you into the dark and expected you to make sense of the universe on your own. cough* Christopher Nolan. However, he used way too many sour jabs at humor. There were so many pointless jokes and gags that made the plot seem less serious. It really takes away from the suspense.
Definitely go see the film. Definitely worth seeing in theaters. Be prepared for a fun, epic joy ride from start to finish.