The Martian

The Book

On a NASA manned mission to Mars, a storm hits the Habitat and the crew have to evacuate the planet. Botanist and mechanical engineer Mark Watney is hit by flying debris and separated from the rest. Despite a desperate against-the-clock search, the crew have to leave without him, assuming him dead.
The rest of the book is an exploration of the inherent will to survive against all the odds, as Mark explains in his log the day to day struggle to live on a hostile planet totally alone. The thorough and technical descriptions given on the processes of setting up camp, growing potatoes etc can become a bit dull and difficult to visualise for the unscientific mind, but Mark's humour and positivity keep you engaged, as do shifts of focus to NASA control and the rest of the mission crew, who are all well written characters.
A real tension sets in once a rescue plan is instigated and the reader feels the frustration with every unexpected and sometimes forbiddingly signalled setback.



You do begin to wonder if so much effort and cost is worth the rescue of just one man, but Andy Weir ends the book with the very humanitarian view that our basic instinct is to help one another. In an emergency, people will pitch in to help others survive - after natural disasters, famine or escaping from war.


 Official movie site


The Film

After the confession by Watney that it's true - in space no-one can hear you scream like a little girl - it had to be Ridley Scott, director of Alien, to make The Martian movie.
 
The look of the film cannot be faulted and the panoramic vastness of the alien Martian landscape can only be appreciated on a wide screen. Matt Damon, to paraphrase Mark Watney, acts the shit out of being stranded on Mars and cooped inside a space helmet for half the film.

NASA has conveniently provided lots of cam's in all the habitable areas and vehicles, so Mark can talk to the camera and record his log rather than write it or voice over. The visual medium does mean we are spared a lot of the technical detail and processes, replaced with several montages of tinkering to 70s disco. 

It's interesting that over half the setbacks that Mark endures have been cut from the movie - he is able to maintain communication with NASA during his journey, not having fried Pathfinder during the Rover modifications; there is no soft sand to cause the Rover to roll and loose the trailer and there is no storm that is in danger of cutting light to his solar panels. Perhaps the writers felt that these were beyond human capacity to continually bounce back from or stopped the motion of the narrative.
  
The final rescue in space veers slightly off course as well - why, after being so cautious and methodical, would Mark unstrap himself from his seat and dangle out of the spinning MAV spacecraft? It does add a tense ending, however, as he gets to try out his Iron Man idea and the margin for error in grabbing someones hand shoots up. The spinning camerawork and inexorable floating is reminiscent of Gravity, but it works very well.

I'm not sure about the coda - I guess they wanted to let the audience know that everyone gets back to Earth safely and live happily ever after, but its a slight anti-climax after the reunion with the Hermes crew. It still leaves you with an uplifting experience of the human spirit to survive and what can be achieved when we all work together, though, which is good to walk out of the cinema with into the cold but breathable atmosphere of an Autumn evening.

If you enjoyed the book, try Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe
If you enjoyed the film, try Robinson Crusoe on Mars or Apollo 13