I love Ridley Scott. I have grown up with his films. Along with James Cameron, George Lucas and Steven Spielberg he is one of the most influential movie directors there is in my life.
Go through his filmography for yourself (okay, we'll miss out the stinkers, of which there are many).
Fast forward to now - the only question that matters, "Is this film any good?"
And my answer is, sadly, "Meh"
Based on the book of the same name by Andy Weir (look up how it came about) the movie tells the story of an astronaut marooned on Mars, his struggles to stay alive and contact Earth and his crew-mates, and the various struggles to decide the best course of action.
It's Ridley Scott so we'll get the obvious out of the way - it looks spectacular, sounds spectacular, casting and acting is first-rate and the whole thing has a sleek and precise feeling (some wonderful mise-en-scene on display) - carefully crafted with nothing happening without a reason. The complete antithesis of Prometheus in some ways for example, or Gods And Kings. Or the godawful Counselor (to name recent examples).
And astronaut/space/engineering/science stories are usually catnip to me. Show me a space-launch on film and I'll weep like a new-born (you should see me watching a real one). Show me intense men and women locked in a room with an intense manager saying "failure is not an option" intensely and I'll crumble at the knees. Show me a whiteboard session where an engineer desperately tries to dumb the message down to a level that the "suits in Washington" (i.e. the audience) might understand it and I'll openly weep.
For the first-half or so this film is brilliant. A wonderful affirmation of the can-do attitude and eyes-wide-open wonder at "sciencing the shit" out of something that only hard work, applicationn, engineering and the purity and indivisibility of maths can give. It's stunning ...
And then ... it loses its way. Action movie beats come in. The setbacks and challenges come as signposted. The hero moments arrive. And while ***SPOILERS*** it ends positively the outcome is never really in doubt - it would be a brave movie indeed (which won't happen at this budget level) which dares to buck the narrative setup.
Which means, for me, it became less engaging. When it came to the big climax I had kinda lost engagement. I mean, it's still very well done but the ending was done better in "Gravity" and the big emotional pay-off never happened. There's a neat coda, which brings "closure" and the "message" (just in case Joe Average from Dipshit, Idaho, hadn't got it) and the end-title sequence gives all the players a name-check which will have you going, "oh, so THAT'S who that was ...".
***SPOILERS*** Sean Bean doesn't die. Though there's a rather shoe-horned Lord Of The Rings reference which goes on slightly too long ...
A game of two halves then.
Look, it's better than 95% of the dross in Multiplexes. You should see it because it's about science and engineering and the triumph of humanity and there are damn few movies these days which promote that. It looks fabulous - really, you should see it on a big big screen 'cause those Martian landscapes look brilliant. Set design is impeccable, as you would expect. The effects are seamless. The performances are all solid - Matt Damon does most of the heavy-lifting but everyone else does their part too.
It's a good film. It SO TOTALLY SHOULD be a five-star, knocked-out-the-park, winning-kick-in-the-world-cup, Sir-Ridey-of-Scott masterpiece.
But it isn't.
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