Out there in space, fiddling with his gizmos and worrying his spuds, is Matt Damon.
He’s adrift in the service of The Martian, Ridley Scott’s adaptation of Andy Weir’s best-selling science fiction novel. Damon stars as Nasa astronaut Mark Watney. Stranded on Mars after a dust storm, Watney must survive the four years until the next crew arrives in a pod designed to last a month. He’ll have to grow his own crops and hand tool a means of making contact with ground control. In his own words he’ll need to “science the shit out of this” to stay alive.
The Martian rides in the slip stream of Gravity and Interstellar with Weir, a space nut with a background in computer science, grounding cosmic fantasy in reality. He’s apparently designed software to plot the trajectory of a successful flight to Mars and says he’s proud that the plot is “science-lead”. Great news for anyone who found Interstellar’s quantum physics bookshelf banjo finale a bit woolly.
The Martian’s supporting cast is a doozy, with Jessica Chastain, Michael Peña and Kate Mara signing up as the crew of Damon’s ship, Ares 3. Kristen Wiig, Chiwetel Ejiofor and Jeff Daniels play the suits on the ground.
A promotional video for the film has Damon as Watney touring the ship and introducing the crew. The tone is not dissimilar to the opening of Alien – establishing the relationships between workmates before letting chaos loose.
The storm closes in. The crew is divided. Watney is missing, presumed dead. He gets to planting and tinkering to save himself from Mars. “Help is only 140 million miles away,” runs the tagline. Scott, who helped to invent the space isolation horror, knows how to make solitude scary. We think The Martian could be stellar. What about you?
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