Although we seem to spend a ridiculous amount of money trying to bring him home... Saving Private Ryan, Interstellar, The Martian... This guy needs to stop getting stranded.sgt.null wrote:it has Matt Damon, always a good start.
On a side note, that last scene that he's in gave me quite a start... He looks like an adult now! He's always seemed so boyish, even in movies like Bourne or that awful one about the CIA, but here he just looks... mature. He finally grow'd up.
Anyway, back to the movie, as compared to the book: I really didn't mind any of the cuts they made, plot-wise. Everything just worked. There wasn't perhaps as much tension as there could have been, but they did what they could.
Most of the tension in the story doesn't come from wondering if (or how) Watney's going to survive, but rather which risks people are willing to take. In that regard, Jeff Daniels' character (the director of NASA) came off much more sympathetic than I expected him to. It's easy to villainize the administrator, someone who has to make tough calls about acceptable risks, but the movie didn't go that route. He made hard decisions, he explained his reasoning, and he also took the blame when things went wrong. I would have liked more of that, since everything else in the movie is pretty straightforward and conflict-free.
As for the science itself, everything seems pretty good. The flyby/catch at the end was a bit sensational, but not overly unrealistic. I do see the problem with the storms on Mars; the very first one was a gimme in the book, necessary just to set up the plot, but the movie kept them recurring throughout just to add tension.
I'm also glad they kept god and faith out of the movie. There's no hint of it in the book, but popular movies about survival almost always include some kind of higher power or learning to believe or some such bull****. There was none of that, which is refreshing. It's just a person deciding not to give up, and then working through their problems one at a time.
Overall, it wasn't a masterpiece, but it certainly is the best Scott movie I've seen in a while, going back at least to American Gangster or Matchstick Men. It's nice to enjoy a Ridley Scott movie again.
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Oh, and I forgot how much fun it is to see a movie in the theater. No matter how big your TV is, the theater is the way to go.
). The storm scene at the start didn't bother me (although I did ask myself the question, why would you set up that way on a planet prone to such fierce storms? Would you not have guy lines etc.?). The rest of the film stayed fairly realistic until the rescue scene at the very end, when it became a bit cartoonish. (Also, why were some of the astronauts EVA-ing without tethers? 
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