The botched comical farce ending that he makes fun of in the book becoming the movie ending was offensive… I loved so much of the pieces but talk about a slap in the face.
Also, removing the detail of Pathfinder failure so you have months of mental health issues… Damon did spectacular at emoting the strain in the moment he regains contact with the crew, but it felt disjointed without the context of zero contact and the desperation.
Many of the actors were amazing, but Ridley screwed up bad.
Matt Damon did a fantastic job portraying Mark Watney, though I’ll definitely say movie!Watney had it a lot easier than book!Watney. He didn’t kill Pathfinder, basically the entire long haul to ARES IV was “he did it, he drove to ARES IV”, no sandstorm, no figuring out which way to go, no rolling the rover.
They pussed out on a lot of the mission control characters as well, Annie wasn’t a no nonsense ballbuster, I don’t even remember Mindy the meek satellite girl who grew a pair, and Vince unilaterally sending the Rich Purnell maneuver in defiance of orders and daring them to fire him over it…
Some of that would have been cut for run time; what works in the span of a novel doesn’t work in the span of a film. I think to fully capture the entire scope of the book you’d need a 6-8 hour miniseries. If I want to revisit The Martian, I’m going to play my copy of the audiobook narrated by R. C. Bray.
The botched comical farce ending that he makes fun of in the book becoming the movie ending was offensive… I loved so much of the pieces but talk about a slap in the face.
Also, removing the detail of Pathfinder failure so you have months of mental health issues… Damon did spectacular at emoting the strain in the moment he regains contact with the crew, but it felt disjointed without the context of zero contact and the desperation.
Many of the actors were amazing, but Ridley screwed up bad.
Matt Damon did a fantastic job portraying Mark Watney, though I’ll definitely say movie!Watney had it a lot easier than book!Watney. He didn’t kill Pathfinder, basically the entire long haul to ARES IV was “he did it, he drove to ARES IV”, no sandstorm, no figuring out which way to go, no rolling the rover.
They pussed out on a lot of the mission control characters as well, Annie wasn’t a no nonsense ballbuster, I don’t even remember Mindy the meek satellite girl who grew a pair, and Vince unilaterally sending the Rich Purnell maneuver in defiance of orders and daring them to fire him over it…
Some of that would have been cut for run time; what works in the span of a novel doesn’t work in the span of a film. I think to fully capture the entire scope of the book you’d need a 6-8 hour miniseries. If I want to revisit The Martian, I’m going to play my copy of the audiobook narrated by R. C. Bray.
Look: Boobies! ( . Y . )