RIDLEY SCOTT

god this was a waste of resources for all involved. looks great, a better film than prometheus, but what was the point of any of it? felt like a series of webisodes from an intergalactic gardening vlog for two hours. no sense of tension, danger, just facile, cutesy internet-style humour. its just a generic rescue movie, it could be set anywhere, which might have been fine, but even for that, it seems to resist anything you would get from a normal rescue movie. no peril, no suspense, its all just there unfolding as you would expect. or maybe this is purposely thwarting genre expectations, a film for kids reared on webisodes.

also i think nolan and scott watched (or maybe heard about) primer and thought they needed to start working in tons of real science talk into their movies

am also just not sure what was so special about damons character to warrant us caring quite so much about his fate? i would have left him there personally. he had potatoes (at least until the jeff daniels character, said something like, 'he'll be fine unless something goes wrong', and then whaddaya know, something DOES go wrong in the very next shot)

don't know how this got a PG-13, should have been G

also i think nolan and scott watched (or maybe heard about) primer and thought they needed to start working in tons of real science talk into their movies

i wished it was more real! any vaguely scientific idea was always interrupted by some character being like "can you say that in English???". and when damon said "LET'S SCIENCE THE SHIT OUT OF THIS!!" i was just done.

i like the thought of respecting science (a radical thought to millions of people who will watch this) as a core message of the movie, but man did they beat you over the head with it. they literally lecture you on it at one point!

but really i'm the dummy because i went in expecting a different kind of movie. i didn't read anything about it beforehand, and know nothing of the book. i assumed that being trapped on mars would be a harrowing experience and maybe matt damon would lose his mind and psychotic shit would happen. i didn't realize it was a family movie and that any terrible event would immediately be counterbalanced by matt damon handling everything incredibly well and making early 2000s NBC sitcom-style jokes.

this is the new apollo 13, and that's what it was supposed to be.

you guyz could read reviews before spendin ya money

just facile, cutesy internet-style humour.

yes, this. i guess i'm an asshole for saying this because this describes lots of people, but if you've ever said that you heart something, you will love the humor in this movie

xpost i can't avoid big budget space movies. i like to look at space, can't help it.

you guyz could read reviews before spendin ya money

Dargis liked it and momentarily made me think maybe I wanted to see it tbh

just facile, cutesy internet-style humour.

i'll third this.

absolutely dire. felt, in tone, no different from Armageddon or any other rah-rah space hero movie (except now we're saving Matt Damon instead of the whole human race).

when the camera panned to Kristen Wiig at NASA HQ trying to do her tears-of-joy face I was in disbelief.

i also liked that scene where the Mars mission lead guy was asked "do you believe in god?", and he responded "hmm, i forgot that we haven't mentioned god in this movie yet, which could lead to the criticism that it's an atheist movie. so...yes, i do, but i was raised by people with beliefs that could apply to a number of different religions around the world, not just christianity. but i'm not ruling out christianity either. let's just be clear that i'm spiritual - not an atheist - so anyone watching this around the world, and i hope this is an international blockbluster, will be able to find a way to sympathize with my religious beliefs or at least by reassured that i'm not totally godless, which would be unforgivable, of course. now let's science the shit out of this and save matt damon"

Have any of you read the book? I thought the book was solid, and one of its nice twists was that he wasn't sad/panicked/depressed, and in fact was picked for the mission largely for his upbeat personality. I can see how the movie (which I have not seen yet) may not be as solid, but the book was a pretty great read, not as a thriller but as a journal (more or less) of this guy in a doomed situation making the best of it and using his McGuyver skills to survive. The author, if I recall, is an honest to goodness U of C nerd (go Maroons) with a background in nerd stuff, and the book was exactly what I expected from said nerd.

More importantly, anyone else getting any Don Henley vibes from Ridley as of late?

https://encrypted-tbn3.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcQzsIA-40eMPSFXIlxwGBrhTmLAZ9_rQ469DOZGznR1SVxAjkIL
http://imgick.oregonlive.com/home/adv-media/width620/img/entertainment_news_national_desk/photo/17530579-mmmain.jpg

Well, yeah

Henley claiming in interviews that Don Felder was always a replicant.

enjoyed this thoroughly, the corny humor seemed very appropriate to the kinds of ppl that would be involved (you guys know john glenn was an astronaut right?)(i mean i'm going to science the shit out of this is totally a thing a scientist or engineer would say before tackling a huge problem), am relieved there wasn't any dark night of the soul, happy for an emphasis on problem solving over always value yr feels nolan nonsense. most relieved to not read the book now, which obv was super popular but was written by an engineer iirc so ehh idk man, i'll stick w/ kim stanley robinson thx. gravity was better, easily, but if regular 'what if we put a man... in space' movies where someone somewhere consulted w/ someone (or even multiple ppl) w/ stem degrees becomes a new blockbuster mode i'm cool w/ that, esp if they could conceivably inspire little girls to go into stem. comparing this to armageddon feels like comparing contagion to outbreak.

i'm guessing it's in the book cuz it would be weird if they weren't involved but the late arrival of china to the story did feel a bit like the kind of plot shoehorn w/ an eye towards the international market you get now

u guys may enjoy

https://s3.amazonaws.com/criterion-production/release_boxshots/3103-dabd6e24d777380856b6537a248f2aae/404_BD_box_348x490_original.jpg

China stuff is most definitely in the book.

"absolutely dire. felt, in tone, no different from Armageddon or any other rah-rah space hero movie (except now we're saving Matt Damon instead of the whole human race)."

yes, i didnt understand why we had to care about one man, who despite being likeable and everyman-ish (this is what everyone says about damon), didnt seem particularly notable.

the way chastain seemed to talk about leaving him there at the end, it seemed professional rather than emotional. the way you might go back to the office when you forgot your dinner in the fridge rather than you left a human being on another planet.

if the stakes were a tad higher, i could at least be a bit more invested in it, but when its just one guy, one very NORMAL guy, who yes, can grow potatoes on mars, but apart from that, didnt seem that special (which ok, is prob the whole point, but are people that allergic to drama now that EVERYthing has to be crushingly banal and everyday?), which doesnt make for a very interesting movie.

if it was that earth could no longer grow potatoes and damon had to show them the way to do it on mars so the human race could continue eating carbs and starch shuttled to them from another planet, i could get behind that a little easier.

also, WHO were his videos for? was it ever explained? was it for his family? or just for posterity? or just to keep him sane?

tomorrowland did family-oriented sci-fi much better, and actually had a slightly more interesting message (why are we so obsessed with seeing foreboding forecasts of the future? where has humanity's optimism for the future gone? that actually made it a bit of a meta sci fi film in a sense, but the fact that they developed that inside a family sci fi movie with clooney makes it much more interesting than the martian's 'just one man and his potato crop' narrative).

also, the lord of the rings joke that featured sean bean

The book is essentially a blog written by a Mars engineer. OK with that, but have little desire to see a filmed version.

A little surprised at the pushback to the idea we would months and months and spend billions of dollars to rescue one normal dude left behind on Mars. This seems exactly like something we would do!

Also, forget science, even if "The Martian" is a turd I find it utterly implausible that "Tomorrowland" is better. That movie was like watching CGI paint dry.

That movie was like watching CGI paint dry.

i dunno that kind of sounds cool to me

Different strokes. You might like this, then:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N1JI_shx3n0

would buy criterion collection edition with bonus footage

better than Tarkovsky

why yie-odda..

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solaris_(2002_film)#/media/File:Solaris2002poster.jpg

http://www.impawards.com/2002/posters/solaris_verdvd.jpg

http://derricklferguson.files.wordpress.com/2011/10/s-0080_solaris_quad_movie_poster_l.jpg

I rescree- saw Prometheus a couple days before this and thought:

the dust storm
the one person left behind in the storm
a survivor waking up in the dust with the system alarm alerting the survivor they were short on oxygen
the abdominal injury/surgery that required staples

were at worst pretty repetitive and at best rather coincidental between the two films.

That said, I liked both Prometheus and The Martian and am anticipating Prometheus 2: The Martian Chronicles when it comes out.

felt so bad for k wiig the sad PR lady everyone had to explain with great exasperation LoTR references and science

soderbergh's solaris is underrated. one of clooney's best movies.

though im not a fan of the original. the fact its always cited as the benchmark for sci-fi, or what sci-fi could be, if you know, it was less exciting, more ponderous, and less interesting, and far longer than it needs to be, probably makes me dislike it more (it might be one of those things where its self-satisfied supporters and fans make you hate the thing theyre a fan of more than you otherwise might). perhaps i need to watch it again though. all i remember thinking while watching it the first time was 'great shots of water'.

https://twitter.com/markcousinsfilm/status/649978676243730432

As I watched new sci fi film The Martian, I thought of Billy Wilder's great Ace in the Hole/The Big Parade. Then it became something softer.

Tarkovsky is boring as all hell.

Even though the drama/suspense was slight, I thought it kinda refreshing that it didn't adhere to the 'just when you thought the situation couldn't get any worse, it gets much worse' spiral that a lot of films have instead of a satisfying plot. Apollo 13 comparison is spot on too.

How does it compare to Moon?

It's quite different, lacks Moon's sense of slowly approaching dread, it's very much like Apollo 13, tonally.

ive yet to see mirror, but i found myself exasperated by stalker and solaris.

moon is more like 2001. the martian is more like a youtube tutorial.

"I thought it kinda refreshing that it didn't adhere to the 'just when you thought the situation couldn't get any worse, it gets much worse' spiral"

this is what i think, sort of, but i cant help thinking that there must be something better, than this, to replace the old rescue movie/survival movie arc with.

The Maryian = "I Fucking Love Science: The Movie"

This was Not For Me. I walked out halfway through.

Tarkovsky is boring as all hell.

― Hey Bob (Scik Mouthy), Tuesday, October 6, 2015 8:57 AM (9 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Slow, maybe, but boring....no. There is more to unpack aesthetically, thematically and cinematically in a single frame of any Tarkovsky film than in the entirety of The Martian.

I loved a lot of the visuals in this, but the story was rough. The last hour was an incredible drag toward the inevitable. The palpable sense of danger that Gravity and Apollo 13 convey in very similar scenarios is absent in this. The disco jokes made me want to die.

The disco jokes made me want to die.

― polyphonic, Tuesday, October 6, 2015

qft

I walked in halfway through.

Heh

I will qualify my opinion by mentioning that I had a stressful weekend which might have predisposed me to be impatient with this movie

I walked in halfway through.

― hunangarage, Tuesday, 6 October 2015 19:26 (2 hours ago) Permalink

he was walking out, i was walking in...

If people on this hack director thread want to diss Tarkovsky a fitting punishment ought to be to watch this shite all the way through

man travels all the way to mars without taking any of his own music, then has the temerity to bitch about someone else taste in tunes for two hours. eat a bad spud & die, ya big shitfarmer