Went To See Ridley But Bumped Into Roland

Must . . . find . .  the terrorists . . .

 T   here's no escaping it: when we go to the movies these days, we have certain expectations. Some directors deliver one kind of movie and others just make films to break box office records. Take Rambo, Independence Day, The Day After Tomorrow and Godzilla (1998 or 2014) and you have formulaic crowd-pleasers and about 1 billion dollars in profits. Take Alien, Blade Runner and Gladiator and you've got two of the best science fiction films of all time and an Oscar winner. Simply put, with this in mind, I went to see The Martian expecting a Ridley Scott movie. Was I being unreasonable?

On Mars, a thirty-day mission is cut short due a terrible storm and the crew of the Ares 3 is forced to vacate the Red Planet post-haste, but wait! They are also forced to leave one of their friends behind, as they assume he is already dead after getting smashed into oblivion by a large piece of flying debris the likes of which would take down a 747.  

Guess what? He's not dead. With just a minor surgical procedure and a couple of staples, our botanist hero Mark Watney (Matt Damon) is alive and well free to take over -200 degree temperatures like they are a walk in the park while cleverly devising a way to grow potatoes out of his own human waste. Starvation and loneliness are no problem for Mark. He is funny, resourceful and when faced with an insurmountable problem he simply says "I'm gonna have to science the shit out of it.”  

The duct tape and tarp starts being unrolled and laid down, plugging holes in space helmets and staving off high winds as it seems that Murphy's Law does not apply on Mars. Watney not only finds a way to survive there, he also finds a way to communicate with Earth.

Lo and behold, after almost pulling a "Capricorn One" (an old Peter Hyams movie where astronauts are murdered to hide the fact that their mission to Mars never took place at all), the big bosses at NASA decide to divulge the fact that they see movement on Mars via satellite and admit that Watney is alive. It would appear that the life of one man is all of a sudden worth NASA's time and resources and they have an unexplained change of heart and decide to try and save him after all.

With disco tunes aplenty and an abundance of CGI effects at his disposal, Ridley Scott then takes his film into more foolishness, and the American flag starts waving with more vigour than a Rambo flick. 

Everyone in the film is typecast and from the director of NASA (Jeff Daniels) to the comic relief character (Michael Peña), Ridley Scott takes no chances in a movie that is about as interesting as adding ketchup to potatoes to give them flavor (something Mark Watney does throughout the film) and about as long as the 500 car commercials that play before the film even starts.

   

When the words "The Martian" first appeared on the screen, a chill ran down my spine. With just a slick lettering style and a few notes of music reminiscent of Jerry Goldsmith, I felt like I was really watching Alien! 

I thought to myself, Ridley has not lost his touch!

But by the film's end I discovered that I had in fact just been watching a Roland Emmerich movie.