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The Movie

Ridley Scott’s The Martian gives us an opening hour that is tuned into precisely the same wavelength as the novel, and navigates the necessary liberties taken with skill. For example, Mark’s solitude on Mars begins when a satellite antenna impales him on the way to the MAV launch with his teammates. This is chronicled in Weir’s The Martian by a log entry containing a detailed portrait of what happened and how Mark survived the breach of his suit in the Martian atmosphere. The movie does what it must to provide the visceral impact that Mark’s words give us in the book. The botanist, played by Matt Damon, makes his way back to the Hab with the antenna sealing the hole in the suit, and extracts the antenna fragments in a methodical self-surgery scene that is tense and bloody without being gratuitous or exploitative; think a PG-13 variant of what Noomi Rapace does to herself in Scott’s 2012 film Prometheus.

There is another example, one that marks a point where the film actually improves on the delivery of the source material. After Mark establishes communication with NASA - utilizing the discarded Pathfinder rover and a positioning camera - there is a terse exchange between him and Vincent Kapoor (renamed rather pointlessly from the novel’s Venkat Kapoor, and played by Chiwetel Ejiofor) wherein Mark, told that his crewmates on the Hermes have not yet been debriefed on his survival, lets loose with a string of profanity. In the novel, this is written out as a direct punchline. It succeeds, but it succeeds more because of timing than because of content. In the film, to sidestep any sense of the line reading going south (and to prevent the film from slipping over into the R rating it certainly would have gotten), Mark is seen from outside his vehicle, cursing soundlessly. Kapoor reminds Mark to watch his language, because his words are being broadcast live to the world. In the novel, Mark’s immediate response is very simple: Look! A pair of boobs! -> (.Y.). Funny, yes, but simple.

In the film, though, Mark’s response is never shown or explicitly described. We get as far as Kapoor’s admonishment and then we see Mark’s face as he types. Then we cut to a scene with Kapoor, on the phone with the President, apologizing for the content of the message. Also funny, and since it lets us use our imagination, the content of Mark’s response takes any number of forms.

I mention this exchange in such detail because it’s noteworthy to witness a major studio picture, even one with a relatively modest budget of $108 million, take the route of implication over explication when it comes to such a high concept as “man abandoned on Mars with a ticking clock”. With a scenario like that, you expect risk avoidance from the producer(s). In essence, you expect bells and whistles to be pulled out at every opportunity. To its considerable credit, Scott’s The Martian goes for explication only when it’s the most appropriate way forward for the story.

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