![]() ![]() There’s also a running joke about Matt Damon’s character having to suffer Jessica Chastain’s character’s awful taste in music (she loves disco, lol!). I don’t know if she takes herself way too seriously in real life, but every single one of her characters does. I guess they needed a reason for Jessica Chastain to scowl and tear up, and become fiercely determined and eventually triumph. ![]() Do we really have 25 minutes to spend pretending to care about the crew’s feewings? There’s a dude on Mars growing potatoes in his own sh*t and a whole crew of sexy physicists on Earth trying to get him home (one of whom is named “Mindy Park,” who is, hilariously, a blonde white girl, played by Mackenzie Davis and her perfect lips, of Halt And Catch Fire fame). Many tense boardroom meetings ensue over whether to tell the crew about Matt Damon, and honestly WHOOOOOO CAAAAAAARES. I guess Ridley Scott and Drew Goddard (or maybe it was in the book, I don’t know) figured the vastness of space and a planet inherently hostile to all life weren’t enough of a challenge and had to throw in a “tight-assed, image-conscious functionary” character for good measure. Much is made of NASA honcho Jeff Daniels’ initial decision not to tell the crew that Matt Damon is alive on their long journey back to Earth. You’ve got two minutes before Matt Damon’s chest hair grows out, so make it snappy.” “God dammit, Jenkins, I hate when you’re right. I… I think we owe it to Matt Damon, sir.” “Quirky Young Maverick, how the hell did you get in here? I thought we fired you months ago for skateboarding in the beaker room. (*guy in the back of the room raises his hand*) (*grave faces all around, close-up of Jeff Daniels looking constipated*) In fact, here is a power point presentation I made about how all hope is lost and we’re all definitely doomed.” You go, Matt Damon! Make space your bitch! Every time he conquers a new challenge, he brags about it to the camera like Tom Hanks making fire in Castaway. Luckily, Damon’s character is a sh*t-hot botanist who could grow potatoes in your mom if he wanted to, capable of MacGyvering up a greenhouse using nothing but sports bras and spent condoms. And that’s assuming no more freak storms (a threat that curiously vanishes after the first ten minutes of the movie). It will take four years for a rescue or supply mission to reach him, and he only has enough food for a month. Presuming him dead, they tearfully f*ck off back to Earth (“I’ll miss that hilarious hairless son of a bitch,” they probably thought) leaving him to fend for himself for the forseeable future, without so much as a saucy robot to keep him company. Matt Damon gets bonked by some space stuff, and his suit’s alive-detection thingamajig gets merc’d. Matt Damon, Kate Mara, Michael Peña, and Jessi Chastain (Zero Mars Thirty?) play the Mars exploration crew, who in the first scene get hit by a freak storm. And who better to play a glib genius than Matt Damon? It’s a fine, breezy watch, only occasionally groanworthy, and the deepest thought I had on the way out was whether it should be called “Sasstronauts” or “Good Will Spacing.” ![]() The Martian is an unabashed attempt to fulfill that wish. We’d all like to see ourselves as hilarious geniuses, quipping in the face of death, boldly facing the unknown, able to improvise our way out of any problem, and curiously devoid of unsightly body hair, no matter how many months we’ve spent stranded on an alien planet without a razor. What if all astronauts were sexy redheads or lovable, wise-cracking goofballs? That’s the question posed by Ridley Scott’s The Martian, which takes all the least challenging parts of Gravity and Interstellar and cuts them into one long rah-rah sizzle reel for NASA (no shame in that game, “bring back NASA” is a perfectly admirable goal). ![]()
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