re: The Martian

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Ridiculous premise that the entire world would gather in the streets with white knuckles as the fate of one man hung in the balance.

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That would happen for sure in this scenario. It's not 1 person's life in the balance, it's 6. It would be the news story of the century. The world at large would be heavily invested in it.

And I haven't read the book, but I really liked the movie. A nice return to form for Scott, and I think Damon did pretty good. Really liked the unexpected humor within it.

eh, I was absolutely rooting for Watney to make it by the end. The scene where he was giving the commander instructions for when he dies after the airlock to the potato farm blows, I was absolutely emotionally invested in him. The only thing I wished they showed more of (as a non-book reader) is the desperation and fear on Mars, and the return of the mother ship to Earth after rescuing him. I would like to have seen some drama in how they made it back with the right approach angle and velocity after having to blow the nose out to dramatically slow down at Mars. I mean sure, it's very logical that they had 6 or 7 months to figure it out, but I still would like to have seen it.

Overall, fantastic movie, will watch again. Hopefully after Interstellar and now this, we can get a few more good space movies and start to swing public interest back towards actually doing something as a species.

SPOILERS

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I would like to have seen some drama in how they made it back with the right approach angle and velocity after having to blow the nose out to dramatically slow down at Mars

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I hear you, but the movie was already two and a half hours long and the plot hinged on the rescue. I think editorially it would have been silly to show the crazy arse rescue and then show the crazy arse descent into earth's atmosphere. Would have felt like two endings to me.

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While I expected them not to be able to cover the science of what he was doing and the factors of his situation, they took it a step further and whitewashed pretty much ALL of his struggles. As far as I can tell, the only problem Mark had other than isolation was having to endure disco. No problems or issues other than that. Pretty much twiddling his thumbs waiting for time to pass.

No trial and error to figure out how to manufacture enough water. No cowering in the rover for days as he realized that he fricked up and turned the whole Hab atmosphere to hydrogen.

The trip to the MAV was the worst....no dust storm and no tumble of the rover. No loss of communication to NASA due to a momment of dumbassery. It was literally just a 5 minute montage across Mars. They spent more airtime to bring up the whole space pirate crap in multiple situations than to any problem. Even when they insinuate a problem with their earth bound testing, it never really materializes in any form in practice.

I've seen joy rides with more stress than what he suffered on his long trip to the crater. Hell, at least half of the 5 minute montage of the trip was showing him just chilling and sleeping.

Apparently that was his biggest problem on the trip: the boredom.

Even with the included Hab breach, they toned down the danger. He didn't pull a miracle out of his arse after recovering. Nah...just slap some ducttape on his suit, and he is good to take a leisurely stroll, checking out plants and stuff, before getting a new helmet and calmly walking back to the rover.


I know the run time was 2 hours and therefore things had to be cut.

But the whole story is that of survival on such a harsh and inhospitable world. Gimme SOME adversity. frick.

I'll give the movie this though: its ending is far superior to the book ending of "I reek to an absurdly shocking degree but hey, all of humanity worked together to bring me home so we are all okay"

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I agree with just about all of this. I rarely read books, but for whatever reason I knew I would like this one. And I read it and did love it. So while I normally don't have to compare books to movies, I did for this one. And while the movie was good, this rang true for me:

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but I am stuck comparing it to the book

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It's hard not to compare it to the book. Especially considering the subject matter.

The book was mainly log entries from Watney and conversations back on Earth. That's one reason it was so easy to read. But for the movie, they literally skipped through the entire book at lightning speed. I realize there will always be too much shite to put in a movie, but I agree with Volvagia that you have to at least put SOME of the important shite in there.

There were some VERY serious happenings on Mars, yet we either don't see them, or we see them for like 30 seconds and it's onto the next scene. I guess my main problem with the movie is that it felt way too rushed. I felt like they tried to cram as much shite in there as they could regardless of if it was important or not.

Hab breach lasted about 2 minutes. Sand storm was nonexistant. All of his frickups from the book weren't even addressed most of the time. At no point did I ever feel like he wasn't gonna make it...and while you go into the book expecting him to make it out okay, there were some legitimate concerns along the way. And that's another cool thing about the story...being faced with those situations and seeing how he thinks his way through them toward a solution.

Also, I wish they'd have gotten into the science more in the movie. I know they did at one point with him burning the hydrogen, but even that was pretty brief. One of the cool things is that the science is accessible in the book. Yeah, it's complicated shite, but it's explained in a way that's easily understandable. So I wish we'd have seen more of that in the movie.

I don't know. I liked it all right, but it just felt WAY too rushed.

^^^ All of this

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did anyone actually die in this movie? I saw it last Friday and as far as I can remember no one died.

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I'm trying to remember as well, but I don't think so. Toward the end I liked to think they all died in a horrific fireball in Earth's atmosphere upon their return, but then they cut to him teaching a class about being ready for the universe to frick you over, so obviously that didn't happen.

I kept thinking that one guy who was doing the space walk and setting off the bomb was going to die at some point. But, it didn't happen.

I saw it last night without reading the book first and I really enjoyed it. It wasn't an amazing movie by any means, but I am glad I went. Like others have said, the humor was a nice surprise. The 2nd half of the movie was really nice in 3D as well.

yeah, i didn't have any expectations going in. Didn't read the book. All I knew was it was a movie about a guy stranded on mars.

I don't get caught up in the " that could never happen" thinking.

i mean it was a guy stranded on fricking mars i didn't think it was supposed to be believable.