The Martian

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When I heard that Matt Damon would be playing astronaut Mark Watney, I thought he was perfectly cast. I knew he could portray a guy who could figure out how to survive on his own, while also being able to show the emotional effect it would have on a person being stranded on Mars, and, finally, also have the dark sense of humor carry over from the novel. I believe he did an excellent job in the role.

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The movie was pretty faithful to the book. There were certain plots that were removed, but they did not affect the overall story too much. I thought they might throw in a huge storm that he was headed towards at the end of his travels, but that part was removed. One smaller part that I wished had been kept in was when he lost power to his drill due to a mistake he made. I think that would have been interesting to watch and also show that Watney wasn’t perfect at everything he did. Instead he is shown reacting to things outside of his control.

As for the rest of the cast in the movie, they seemed almost unnecessary and not really fleshed out, but then they were not completely fleshed out in the book either. Kristen Wiig played a PR person that was most there to ask questions to move the plot along. It would have been nice if her character was made into something more in the movie, and given Kristen Wiig something to do, but her character was the same amount of nothingness that she was in the book. The same could be said for Donald Glover. He was a plot device, but not much else. I did feel like I got to know the crew members more in the novel than I felt I got to know them in the movie.

When I would read the parts in the book that were not about Watney, I couldn’t wait to get back to him to see what he was doing, so it almost seemed like the movie couldn’t wait to get back to him too. I thought all the scenes focusing on Watney were really good. I loved the scene where he sits on a mountain and stares out at the expansiveness of Mars. Going in, I wondered if I would find the movie as tense since I knew what was going to happen, but I still found it really tense throughout.

When I read the book, I thought the ending was a bit abrupt. One thing that I thought the movie did well was tack on a bit longer of an ending. It was a nice way to wrap everything up.

Rating: B

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