'The Martian' Is A Ray Of Light(ness) Amid The Darkness Of Space

THE MARTIAN

There’s no villain in The Martian. It’s an action movie with no evil to overcome, no fistfights, no small-minded bureaucrat, no starched-shirt dean. There’s no violence, no sex, no subterfuge, no dark side of humanity. If there’s an antagonist, it’s literally nothing: the unfeeling void of space. “It’s space, it doesn’t co-operate,” warns Matt Damon, the All-American Astronaut who, struck by debris in a dust storm on Mars, is left behind, presumed dead.

But The Martian, befitting its villain-free status, is a movie where no one dies. The presence of Damon and Jessica Chastain in space — and the fact that it serves as another essential ad for NASA — will lead to inevitable, constant comparisons to Interstellar, but these two things are not like the other. Leave the grim struggles with mortality, temporality, and the survival of the species to Christopher Nolan. The Martian is concerned only with the survival of one man. And, tonally, it couldn’t be more different: here, being marooned on Mars is a zany lark, a feelgood frolic filled with wonder at the survival instinct and ingenuity of humans.

Presumed dead, Damon is, in fact, alive and well, a lone-survivor cast away on an inhospitable, hostile planet. To beat back death, he has to — as the film’s great catch-phrase goes — “science the shit” out of the materials he has. Like all castaway movies, survival is presented as a series of problems to solve: food, water, shelter, contacting the outside, eventual escape. But unlike, say, Robert Redford’s solitary sailor in All Is Lost, there’s no feeling that Damon is slowly sinking; never any doubt that Private Ryan will again be saved.

Andy Weir’s novel, on which the film is faithfully based, gained a fervent following for being a nerd’s-fantasy run amok. And it’s tale of engineering fantasy and geek-out good-times starts with its conversational, comic narrator; who, unlike Robert Redford’s solitary, silent sailor in All Is Lost, won’t shut up. With his comic banter often centred on the fact that — like Joe Simpson being haunted by Boney M whilst near-death in the Andes in Touching The Void — the only music he’s been left with are feelgood disco hits, Damon’s turn is part stand-up routine, part MacGyver (and, if you want to get cynical, part White Colonialist).

Damon rails against the void to a disco beat, his Human Ingenuity one great feelgood ‘fuck you’ to Mars. He turns hydrazine, via flame, into water, thereby being able to irrigate a makeshift crop of potatoes, fertilised by the vacuum-sealed packs of human faeces left in the space-station toilet. He works out how to extend the battery life of the land rover, how to turn thermoelectric radioisotopes into a makeshift heater. He duct tapes the shit out of so many things (duct tape also has prized status amidst the dystopian decay of Ben Wheatley’s High-Rise; never leave home, Earth, or your symbolic tower-block apartment without it!). He finds a defunct Pathfinder probe, and uses it to communicate with NASA back home.

Back home, a collection of comic caricatures scurry this way and that, occasionally disagreeing but mostly working together, pushing themselves to the limit in order to ready future supply drops and rescue missions. Scott and Nina Gold understand it’s a comedy, and cast accordingly: Kristen Wiig plays a wry, cynical press agent; Jeff Daniels NASA’s pissed-off boss; Mackenzie Davis the bespectacled obsessive; Chiwetel Ejiofor, Donald Glover, Benedict Wong, and Nick Mohammed variations of the manic, socially awkward egghead. The science is kept simple, but remains the core of the story: as problems are solved, both on Mars and back on Earth, we’re talked through “the math”: on engineering specs, calculated days of survival, oxygen levels, and theoretical astrodynamics.

Eventually, Damon’s old crew members — Chastain, Michael Peña, Kate Mara, Sebastian Stan, Aksel Hennie; all crackin’ wise with the comic banter — return to save him. There’s never any doubt that they’ll be able to; no tension to their interplanetary rescue mission. There’s no conversation about sinking billions of dollars into rescuing one white male vs using that money to feed starving millions on Earth, either. In fact, beyond vague American flag-waving and a crucial space-program assist from China, there’s little that’s particularly political.

The Martian depicts a world in which all of its citizens are concerned with Damon’s fate, and all of its characters work together to bring him back home to Earth. Where alien invasion films or monster movies give you the opportunity to cheer for the non-human foe — to see them as righteous shadow figures, punishing mankind for its sins — here, with no villain in sight, and a host of attractive movie stars banding together, there’s no Option B. It’s an All-American film with an All-Inclusive message: Humanity: Fuck Yeah!