By DANNY BUTTLER
The Martian (M)
Starring: Matt Damon, Kristen Wiig, Jeff Daniels
The Martian brought something out of me that I never thought would happen. I walked out halfway through and bought a second choc-top.
It was an unprecedented move, but I really needed something to help while away the hours between start and merciful finish.
Don’t get me wrong, everything about The Martian is done well. It has good actors, an adequate plot and it looks just super.
So why did the story of an astronaut abandoned on Mars leave me and my posse feeling as empty as space itself?
Could it have been the “seen it all before“ factor? Gravity did the daunting beauty of space better than any other film. Castaway was a terrific tale of survival against isolation and starvation. Interstellar even had Matt Damon left alone on a planet, for Pete’s sake.
Is the view from space getting tired? Like the Western before it, which told tales from the saddle with the backdrop of a spectacular American landscape that most would never see, perhaps we have now seen Earth from a porthole too many. The interior of spaceships – even with the cool, non-gravity floatation of the crew- has been seen scores of times by any adult with a passing interest in films.
Was the science too much for my feeble brain? Maybe. More likely, however, was the lack of an engaging storyline involving the NASA eggheads working out how to get our hero back to Earth before he starved or went mad. There just wasn’t a credible narrative to the rescue mission – at least not one that this Year 9 science drop-out could easily follow.
Was it just a bit boring? Yep. A man growing potatoes in space is still just a man growing potatoes. I kept hoping Ridley Scott had kept an Alien or two in reserve to spice up life on Mars.
The Martian isn’t a failed mission and it certainly didn’t explode on take-off. It’s just more like one of those space missions where they do tests, come back safely, but nobody really cares. Worthy, but dull.
– Danny Buttler
