The Martian (2015)
TOMATOMETER
AUDIENCE SCORE
Critic Consensus: Smart, thrilling, and surprisingly funny, The Martian offers a faithful adaptation of the bestselling book that brings out the best in leading man Matt Damon and director Ridley Scott.
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Cast
as Mark Watney
as Melissa Lewis
as Annie Montrose
as Teddy Sanders
as Rick Martinez
as Beth Johanssen
as Mitch Henderson
as Chris Beck
as Alex Vogel
as Rich Purnell
as Mindy Park
as Venkat Kapoor
as Tim Grimes
as Zuo Tao
as Guo Ming
as Mike Watkins
as Brendan Hatch
as Jack
as Ryoko
as U.S. President
as Bruce Ng
as Wen Jiang
as Timer Controller
as Satcom
as Launch Control
as Capcom
as Guidance
as Telemetry
as Comms
as NASA Break Room Worker
as Vincent's Secretary
as CNN Reporter
as Reporter 1
as Reporter 2
as Reporter 3
as Robert Lewis
as Vogel's Wife
as Marissa Martinez
as Ming's Secretary
as JPL Store Man
as Chinese Translator
as JPL Pathfinder Team Member 1
as JPL White Room Worker 2
as JPL Pathfinder Team Member 2
as Chinese Flight Director
as JPL Clean Room Worker 1
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Critic Reviews for The Martian
All Critics (346) | Top Critics (50) | Fresh (315) | Rotten (31) | DVD (1)
Damon has never seemed more at home than he does here, millions of miles adrift. Would any other actor have shouldered the weight of the role with such diligent grace?
It's pretty sunny and often funny, a space oddity for a director not known for pictures with a sense of humor.
Bringing optimism, nerd-itude and a touch of crazy to his character's solo ordeal -- at one point, scraggly Watney calls himself a "space pirate" -- Damon is the key to the movie's exuberance.
The film is a profound testament to the rare-and underrated-virtue of simply not screwing anything up.
The Martian plays to both Scott's strengths and weaknesses. By relegating Mark's predicament to a purely survivalist scenario, he keeps things humming along without ever widening the horizon. But there was an obligation to widen the horizon.
It's a brisk, funny piece of competence-porn sci-fi.
Audience Reviews for The Martian
With a great 3D that explores very well the red landscapes using mostly a large depth of field, this smart science fiction also knows how to use exposition and works so well due to its delightful sense of humor and efficient moments of tension when it needs to be tense.
Super Reviewer
I was so not into the 1 1/2 chapters of the book that I slogged my way through, so of course, I fully expected the Hollywood powers-that-be to transform this novel (in terms of scientific accuracy) yet utterly juvenile (in terms of literary skill) self-published book into a big screen Cinderella wagon hitched to Matt Damon's star. It's pretty good. The hokey exposition of Mark Watney talking to himself is tempered by Damon's self-deprecating tone. The action sequences are suspenseful and devastating, and Watney's agricultural, geographical, and semiotic ingenuity is ingenious. Damon gives an emotional turn, especially when he performs surgery on himself and right before the final launch when he finally lets himself cry and feel the last-ditch enormity of the moment. The middle of the movie with all the other countries' SNASAs plotting with or against the US is a little convoluted, but on the whole, the movie is nicely light and triumphant for being about a man stranded on the Red Planet.
Super Reviewer
Matt Damon gets saved a lot, like a lot a lot. On his resume alone are eight films (including this one) where he needs to be from things ranging from space to Nazis. In his second film playing a space adverse astronaut in recent years ("Interstellar") Damon plays the role of Mark Watney, who is lost on Mars and has to be retrieved by his old crew. Based on the hard sci-fi book of the same name by Andy Weir, "The Martian" looks to a future that NASA purports will exist soon; the agency already offering trips to Mars in the coming years. Read more at bluefairyblog.com
Super Reviewer
The Martian Quotes
| Mark Watney: | I am definitely going to die up here ... if I have to listen to any more god-awful disco music. |
| Mark Watney: | I admit it's fatally dangerous, but I'd get to fly around like Iron Man. |
| Mark Watney: | [after finding out the intercept distance is too far] Did you say 312? Yeah, I'll just wave to you guys as I go by. |
| Mark Watney: | Did you say 312? Yeah, I'll just wave to you guys as I go by. |
| Mark Watney: | At some point, everything's gonna go south on you and you're going to say, this is it. This is how I end. Now you can either accept that, or you can get to work. That's all it is. You just begin. You do the math. You solve one problem and you solve the next one, and then the next. And If you solve enough problems, you get to come home. |