Used to be, when folks said The Martian, they may have thought of this guy...
Or perhaps these...
The really science fiction aware among you might have even though of this...
Buckle up, space cadets. Mars now has a new face, courtesy of author Andy Weir, director Ridley Scott and actor Matt Damon as astronaut and botanist Mark "Mars will come to fear my botany powers," Mark Watney
Seems at some point in the not too distant future, our friend Mark will have a run of bad fortune and find himself stranded on the forth planet out from the sun. What was intended as a stay of a few months will be much longer and Mark, if he is to survive, will need to summon all of his will and skill to overcome all the obstacles Mars will throw at him. And Mars will do just that. You see, Mars, right now, is a place not set up for ready survival for humans. But...given some material and a can-do American spirit, a guy has a chance.
And that is just the scenario presented in the book written by Andy Weir and adapted by filmmaker Ridley Scott, a smart, able, willful guy presented an improbable scenario and challenged to overcome.
There are those who have written of The Martian as being an ode to science. And it does have that element, not only with our desire to explore and dare to go to those difficult place to broaden our horizons and presence, but overcoming hardship by "doing the math". But that is not the end of the story, as it were. The Martian is about those virtues of people in difficult circumstances, willing to make those decisions that don't necessarily have the support of the numbers. The crew of the Ares, who unwittingly left Watney behind, are willing to risk their careers, their ship and their lives to spend several years in space just to attempt a difficult rescue of their stranded comrade. The director of NASA, Teddy Sanders (played by Jeff Daniels), is depicted as almost bureaucratic and insensitive at first, but he lives at the top of a pyramid that isn't necessarily the most stable and he has to juggle politics, public perception and mission success, with them sometimes seemingly fiercely competing and he has to make it all work. Despite the easy trope of making him the evil technocrat, though the movie may dance with it a bit, they never take him down that route. They create some suspense with him weight hard decisions and taking some risks during the crisis. Some of them even fail, yet still he carries on.
And then, there's the Chinese. Again, the temptation might have been there to play them as the villains or the hardball competitors looking to see America fail, even if it cost the lives of astronauts. But in this film, though there is a sense of rivalry and calculation, which of course there would be, they are also depicted, the Chinese space scientists and admistrators, that is, as ultimately having common cause with the Yankee explorers.
We live in a world with much fear and anger at this point in time. Some of that is quite real and rational. Some of it, well, cynical minds might say it is an indictment of our lightning fast mass media and those who manipulate it for various reasons, as well as a gullible public looking for easy answers in a complex, challenging world. It might be tempting at the time to let the fear take over.
But through it all, the stars beckon us forth, reminding us gently, every night, that when we get around to it, when we decide to focus, a grand adventure awaits.
The Martian is one of those gentle reminders.
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