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The Martian is Matt Damon‘s character, Mark Watney, part of the six-strong Ares III mission, visiting the red planet to collect soil samples etc. Unfortunately, some planet seem to have worse weather than Greater Manchester (yes, I know, it’s a rarity) and the upshot is that Watney is marooned on Mars after being assumed dead.
As you’ll know from the basic premise, he’s still alive but on a planet where nothing grows, he has around 30 days of supplies and has to make it last four years until the next mission, Ares IV, touches down there. Thankfully, he was the botanist on the mission so knows about planting seeds to make food and creating water in order to help them along, since it’s kinda essential. But when you’re a man with nothing to lose, you’ll try anything. However, the sticking points include that no-one knows he’s alive and he has no way of contacting NASA, and the battery in the one remaining Mars Rover won’t get him to the Ares 4 landing site, which is several thousand miles away.
This is a fantastic ‘Robinson Crusoe’ premise, but it gets a bit preposterous that, with no reason to look at the post-take off satellite maps of Mars, NASA’s Mars mission director Vincent Kapoor (Chiwetel Ejiofor) comes into the room blabbering on about how he wants some satellite time to identify and sell the remaining stocks of supplies left behind on Mars, presumably to sell to countries hosting future missions since otherwise how would you get them off the surface? However, with that, they deduce Mark is alive, and so sets the train of thought in motion about what to do next – do you rescue him sooner rather than later? And how? And will he survive by the time they get there?
There’s a number of humourous moments, including Mark bemoaning running out of ketchup, since that is also one of my staple foods. Also, there’s the fact that the only music he’s stuck with is disco, left behind by Ares III Commander Lewis (Jessica Chastain), so when Gloria Estefan‘s Turn the Beat Around blares out, he responds, “No, I will NOT turn the beat around, thankyou very much(!)”
Some of this music is also quite poignant, such as with ABBA singing about “finally facing my Waterloo”, David Bowie – “There’s a Starman waiting in the sky” and, of course, Gloria Gaynor‘s I Will Survive.
This is the second time I’ve seen The Martian, and while the first time it felt very flat in the storytelling and delivery, with a cast that’s going through the motions of “Here’s problem A. Let’s work out a solution. Here’s the solution. Oh, look, now there’s problem B!” and so on, watching it in the home on my own – as opposed to a cinema – you feel like you have more of a one-to-one with the character of Mark Watney and his scenes, which make up the majority of the film, come across a lot better (although I am sat closer than you should be to a 50″ TV). As for the rest of the cast, it was fun to see Nick Mohammed, from the CBBC sketch show Sorry I’ve Got No Head – and I’d love to see that show get a movie version, just like Horrible Histories has with Bill, but not many single other members onscreen were really firing on any cyclinders, from a Martian space rocket or otherwise, as they go through they motions, most notably everyone along for the ride in the Hermes, as well as Kristen Wiig and Jeff Daniels.
And while I felt the film didn’t really need to be in 3D when I saw it that way, I’ve now seen it all again in 2D and I think it works much more in that format. Yes, it was shot in 3D, but despite director Ridley Scott falling in love with the format, and in shooting movies in 3D, with Prometheus, I felt that here it wasn’t used a great deal. Yes, the visuals of Mars are stunning but Prometheus had a number of scenes cleverly mixing on-set filming with computer graphics, as well as filming entirely in a world that’s alien*, if you’ll pardon the phrasing, and with the IMAX version being a combination of open-matte and some shots cropped from 2.35:1 to give a bigger impression on the large screen, the 3D was incredible. Here, apart from the occasional establishing shot, it does not feel well-used, and you get a lot of the depth from basic perspective anyway as, for example, Matt Damon wandering about the surface of the red planet. There’s also a lot of scenes set on Earth, in this film, which mostly consist of NASA employees sitting around, and like with the recent Everest, such a scene does not a useful example of 3D make.
(*I take into account that both movies were partly filmed in the valley of Wadi Rum, in Jordan, which has been used for many Mars-based outings over the years).
Go to page 2 for a look at the presentation and the extras.
The film is presented in the original 2.35:1 widescreen ratio and in 1080p high definition and you’d be surprised if it was not a top-notch transfer for a brand new film. There are no issues with it whatsoever. For the record, I watched this on a Panasonic 50″ Plasma TV.
The sound is in DTS HD 7.1 (English version only) and while there isn’t huge use of split-surround rear speakers other than occasional atmosphere – since it’s more a drama than something laden with aural effects, the music and dialogue play out without issue (unless you hate ’70s and ’80s disco tracks).
The extras are as follows:
- Signal Acquired: Writing and direction (9:36): Director Ridley Scott and author Andy Weir talk about turning the book into the film, with Weir saying he wanted it to be just about the problem solving, and less about the deep psychological issues – and that’s where the problem was for me.
- Occupy Mars: Casting and costumes (14:13): A bit of costume discussion, but it’s more like another part of a general making-of. Really, these individual pieces could’ve been stitched together as one feature, and better edited into specific chapters.
- Gag reel (7:33): Outtakes. Lots of ’em.
- Ares III: Refocused (17:18): From here on, the majority of the extras treat the movie as if it was a real event, this one being particularly great – imagine a post-Martian made-for-TV exposé – with a deep-voice voiceover – on what went on at NASA, with all the conflicts between the staff. This is what you get. Headstrong Mitch Henderson (Sean Bean) finds his f-word exasperations getting bleeped (as they would on a US TV documentary – and it also helps the Blu-ray and DVD keep its 12-cert rating).
- Ares III: Farewell (3:35): A brief piece as ‘Mark Watney’ takes a camera around the crew for their opinions on the Ares III trip prior to leaving Earth in the first place.
- The Right Stuff (3:20): The crew in training before their trip, each being interviewed by a psychologist after each spending 10 days in off-screen isolation.
- Ares: Our Greatest Adventure (3:39): A promo piece set before the mission, with a presenter explaining in gung-ho terms what it’s all about.
- Leave Your Mark (1:03): ‘Mark Watney’ in an Ares promo.
- Bring Him Home (1:34): A promo piece about the campaign to bring Mark Watney home.
- Theatrical trailer (2:55): In the original 2.35:1 theatrical ratio. And so it could be shown on TV, Watney was “going to science the *hell* out of this”. Interesting that they twist the trailer so that the shot of someone looking at their children was made to appear to be Watney doing this and not Martinez (Michael Peña).
- Production art gallery: Designs (and number of pics in brackets) for Earth (8), Hermes (74) and Mars (114).
- Audio descriptive track: Does what it says on the tin.
The menu features clips from the film set to a very short repeated piece of the score. Chapters are plentiful with 32, and there’s also subtitles in English, Spanish, French, Portuguese and Chinese.
Again, despite the multiple language and subtitle tracks, Fox do the public down by only listing English on the box. Then again, I know people enjoy reading my reviews for the accurate information in this department.
The Martian is out now on Blu-ray, 3D Blu-ray, 4K Blu-ray and DVD, and click on the packshot for the full-size image.
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FILM CONTENT PICTURE QUALITY SOUND QUALITY EXTRAS |
7 10 8 7 |
| OVERALL | 8 |
Detailed specs:
Cert: 
Running time: 144 minutes
Studio: 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment
Cat.no.: 6456007001
Year: 2015
Released: February 8th 2016
Chapters: 32
Picture: 1080p High Definition
Sound: DTS HD Master Audio 7.1 (English only), DTS 5.1, Dolby Digital 5.1
Languages: DTS HD Master Audio 7.1 (English), Dolby Digital 5.1: Spanish, French, Portuguese
Subtitles: English, Spanish, French, Portuguese, Chinese
Format: 2.35:1 Redcode RAW (6K), H.264 (4K)
Disc Format: BD50
Director: Ridley Scott
Producers: Mark Huffam, Simon Kinberg, Michael Schaefer, Ridley Scott and Aditya Sood
Screenplay: Drew Goddard (based on the novel by Andy Weir)
Music: Harry Gregson-Williams
Cast:
Mark Watney: Matt Damon
Melissa Lewis: Jessica Chastain
Annie Montrose: Kristen Wiig
Teddy Sanders: Jeff Daniels
Rick Martinez: Michael Peña
Mitch Henderson: Sean Bean
Beth Johanssen: Kate Mara
Chris Beck: Sebastian Stan
Alex Vogel: Aksel Hennie
Vincent Kapoor: Chiwetel Ejiofor
Bruce Ng: Benedict Wong
Mindy Park: Mackenzie Davis
Rich Purnell: Donald Glover
Tim Grimes: Nick Mohammed
Zhu Tao: Chen Shu
Guo Ming: Eddy Ko
Mike Watkins: Enzo Cilenti
Brendan Hatch: Jonathan Aris
Jack: Gruffudd Glyn
Ryoko: Naomi Scott
U.S. President: Geoffrey Thomas
Reviewer of movies, videogames and music since 1994. Aortic valve operation survivor from the same year. Running DVDfever.co.uk since 2000. Nobel Peace Prize winner 2021.
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