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.
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 . )