The Martian: Ridley Lite

If you’ve been following my blog for a while you know I am a fan of Ridley Scott. (See posts: The Insightful World of Ridley Scott – 4/13, No Two Replicants- 5/13). There are therefore few Ridley Scott movies that I do not like (The Counselor, GI Jane), but I do recognize that even within the well made films he has two styles, which I will call Ridley Deep and Ridley Lite. I like both, don’t get me wrong, but obviously prefer the former. The Martian, the movie that opened in theaters yesterday, is Ridley Lite.

By now it’s clear that a genre Scott dominates is science fiction, and Blade Runner and Alien are the jewels in his crown in that field. Those two, along with Prometheus (the Alien prequel or sequel, nobody is quite sure which), are Ridley Deep. They are deep because the magnificently depicted future and story line is not flat and acts mainly as a setting to have us reflect upon the ways of us humans within this little planet called Earth, a speck in the universe.

Roy Batty (Rutger Hauer) in Blade Runner

In Blade Runner the meditation is around technology and our relationship with the machines we create “in our own image” (there’s a divinity theme there, frequent in Scott’s movies) and perfect to the point that they become independent of us and, ultimately, turn on us. But there is more. It is also about the limits of our humanity. When the replicant Roy Batty gives his beautiful Tears in the Rain speech at the end of the movie (“Quite an experience to live in fear, isn’t it?”), after demonstrating the depths of his humanity, we’re thrown into a whirlwind of thought about the things we create and destroy, the extent of our feelings for others, the world we were given and have gone through with such disdain.

Ripley (Sigourney Weaver) and cat in Alien

Alien pits humans, a woman this time, against a being that has possibly been engendered as a weapon by those “God-like” creatures we see in Prometheus. This is the weapon that the humans in the corporation behind the Nostromo want the crew to bring back to Earth. As Ash, the android on board the ship, so aptly states: “The Alien is a perfect organism. Superbly structured, cunning, quintessentially violent (…) How can one not admire perfection.” The value of human life for corporate greed could be one way to put the theme behind the movie. It’s also somewhat present in Blade Runner, where the Tyrel Corporation has created the replicants for profit. Again we are looking at the limits or boundaries of our humanity. And it is ultimately the woman –a gender much disdained in our world- who faces the Alien. She says: “This is Ripley,W564502460H, executive officer, last survivor of the commercial starship Nostromo signing off (…)Come on cat.”

Matt Damon in The Martian

And then there is The Martian, much closer to the present than the other futuristic movies, about a NASA mission to Mars; no corporations this time, although in real life there is already a private company looking into getting people to Mars. It’s hard to find a deeper theme here than the story line itself, basically a space Robinson Crusoe. Could it be that we’re to reflect on whether the NASA program should be continued? Maybe a lesson in how  one life is worth the billion dollars it takes to save it? Maybe that Mars is really not quite that uninhabitable and should be the next planet to colonize? That’s already a given, more so now, with those photos of liquid water sent from Mars.

Even so, it is a movie worth watching, because nobody does science fiction like Ridley Scott. The panoramic views of Mars, like the awe inspiring opening views in Prometheus, the detail with which technology is presented, the FX, the cinematography, set design, acting, score and more; everything so carefully executed. Matt Damon is great in the movie and totally outperforms the other actors in the movie and leads it, sort of like Sigourney Weaver did in Alien. It is about a man’s will to survive and also our scientific minds. But it’s still lite because this is as far as it goes and because it has such a good-feely sentiment to it, kind of like a better Armageddon.

The Aries space craft in The Martian

It is also, curiously, a little bit careless in its science. Not to the point of Alfonso Cuaron’s Gravity, with its Wall-E-like fire extinguisher scene, but it does kind of melt down towards the end. For example, the story probably takes place in the not too distant future, but still probably no earlier than 2080, given that it’s estimated we could send a small human mission to Mars around 2030, but it will probably take longer to develop the Aries IV space ship we see in the Martian.  So about 80 years into the future, yet everybody on Earth is totally 2015. Then there is the pretty well known fact (it’s been on NPR) that a lot of the equipment needed for a human mission to Mars has already been developed, including the MOXIE, the machine that separates the Hydrogen from the Oxygen. So scenes like the one where Matt Damon blows himself up trying to do just that is something baffling. We also know quite a lot about Mars, for example the gravity (62% lower), the radiation a person would suffer on Mars (forcing humans to have to live underground), and more.  A lot of which is omitted in the movie. The implausibility of the final rescue scene is well within Gravity sloppiness.

Space rescue in The Martian

Ridley Lite is still Ridley Scott, which is to say he’s still way better than most directors. So enjoy. The Martian is a movie that will keep you in your seat, eyes glued to the screen, rooting for the man everyone wants to bring home. It is a movie that fills you with a warm feeling about the strength of the human spirit and the power of the human mind, in particular when it decides to "science the hell" out of things.