wherein Liz sees (and reads) "The Martian"
Dec. 8th, 2015 11:33 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
edenfallingI went to see The Martian today. I enjoyed the movie, but unsurprisingly, I think the book (written by Andy Weir) was better.
Things the movie did better than the book: show the emotional toll the situation takes on Mark Watney. Show the emotional side of the story in general, really. (I especially loved the moment when Watney sees his first potato sprout.) Dramatize Watney's retrieval of Pathfinder -- the scene where he unearths it from a foot or two of sand is very well done. Generally give a sense of what things look like; the book is very non-visual. Give Rich Purnell some actual personality. Reduce and soften Watney's bro-ishness. Create that wonderfully meta moment where Sean Bean talks about the Council of Elrond. Add little tag scenes at the very end showing what happens after the crew return to earth, which provides a nice sense of both closure and continuation.
Other than that... um.
I think the cuts and consolidations in the first half to two-thirds of the film were fine. Using only one rover eliminates a bunch of back-and-forth make-work, as does reducing Watney's farm to a single room with no tables and rovers/tents as supplemental fields. The changes and simplifications to the 'whoops, almost blew myself up with hydrogen' and the 'oh shit, trapped in an airlock and the Hab just explosively decompressed' incidents worked well given the reduced time of a movie compared to a book. I am also okay with ditching the part at the end where Watney has to create fuel for the Ares IV MAV, though I did like that in the book.
The change from written logs to video logs was perfectly sensible given the change in storytelling medium, and I think actually makes the casual irreverence and occasional non sequiturs of Watney's chronicle feel more natural.
After Watney starts modifying the rover for a journey to Schiaparelli Crater, though, the movie gets... weird. I understand why they didn't get into the details of those modifications; that's fascinating to read, but calculations and triple-checking valves aren't very visual activities. But the movie completely ditches the part where Watney accidentally shorts out Pathfinder, which renders at least one later scene nonsensical -- if he still has two-way electronic communication with Earth, why can't anyone give him permission to board the MAV? I am also not at all convinced that he could maintain adequate body heat sleeping outside the rover in his EVA suit for hours on end, not to mention that doing so would presumably wear down his equipment in a way that using the big machines jerry-rigged into the rover would not. And then instead of the sandstorm and the rover crash as dramatic obstacles, the movie gives Watney a smooth drive and invents extra complications in the launch and interception scene, which leads to several minutes of inadvertent hilarity.
I suspect the idea there was to beef up Commander Lewis's role a little, but in practice it just makes her look incompetent. Seriously, Beck is supposed to be the EVA specialist. So even if Lewis feels hideously guilty over giving the order to leave Mars and thereby accidentally abandon Mark, it makes no sense for her to insist on being the one to do the intercept EVA. That is not effective resource management! Also the launch and intercept were plenty crazy enough in the book without actually letting Watney go through with his dumbass 'Iron Man' plan.
And of course his recovery in the movie ends with a group hug in the airlock, which is exactly what the book says would make a nice dramatic bit of closure but is not how things actually went down because A) the others were on the bridge doing their jobs and B) Watney was in hideous pain from several broken ribs, which is not conducive to heartwarming embraces. But, you know, dramatic closure. *wry*
What I found really inexplicable is that despite its increased attention to the characters' emotional states, one place the movie utterly fails when compared to the book is dealing with Beck and Johannsen's romance. This is particularly weird because that relationship is hardly in the book at all! But they are explicitly noted as sharing a bedroom after some glitches on the Hermes necessitate abandoning two rooms, and they get a cute exchange when Beck is going to deal with the airlock before the crew decompresses the ship so they can reach Watney at a safe speed. Only one half of that exchange makes it to the movie: Johannsen kisses Beck's faceplate, then says, "Don't tell anyone I did that." In the book, Beck reciprocates by saying, "Don't tell anyone I enjoyed it," but in the movie he just gives her an ambiguous look and so their relationship remains entirely unstated until the very end montage when we suddenly see them together in a hospital with their new baby. Like I said: a weird omission.
(Also, the bargain the Chinese space agency strikes with NASA -- use of the Taiyang Shen rocket in return for a Chinese astronaut aboard Ares V -- is never verbalized, which is strange since it would only have taken about five seconds to clarify and otherwise their decision to help feels very much like a deus ex machina.)
All that aside, as I said at the beginning, I did enjoy the movie. It was significantly less dumb than a lot of things I've seen in my life, hilarious climax notwithstanding. I just think it could easily have been better.
Things the movie did better than the book: show the emotional toll the situation takes on Mark Watney. Show the emotional side of the story in general, really. (I especially loved the moment when Watney sees his first potato sprout.) Dramatize Watney's retrieval of Pathfinder -- the scene where he unearths it from a foot or two of sand is very well done. Generally give a sense of what things look like; the book is very non-visual. Give Rich Purnell some actual personality. Reduce and soften Watney's bro-ishness. Create that wonderfully meta moment where Sean Bean talks about the Council of Elrond. Add little tag scenes at the very end showing what happens after the crew return to earth, which provides a nice sense of both closure and continuation.
Other than that... um.
I think the cuts and consolidations in the first half to two-thirds of the film were fine. Using only one rover eliminates a bunch of back-and-forth make-work, as does reducing Watney's farm to a single room with no tables and rovers/tents as supplemental fields. The changes and simplifications to the 'whoops, almost blew myself up with hydrogen' and the 'oh shit, trapped in an airlock and the Hab just explosively decompressed' incidents worked well given the reduced time of a movie compared to a book. I am also okay with ditching the part at the end where Watney has to create fuel for the Ares IV MAV, though I did like that in the book.
The change from written logs to video logs was perfectly sensible given the change in storytelling medium, and I think actually makes the casual irreverence and occasional non sequiturs of Watney's chronicle feel more natural.
After Watney starts modifying the rover for a journey to Schiaparelli Crater, though, the movie gets... weird. I understand why they didn't get into the details of those modifications; that's fascinating to read, but calculations and triple-checking valves aren't very visual activities. But the movie completely ditches the part where Watney accidentally shorts out Pathfinder, which renders at least one later scene nonsensical -- if he still has two-way electronic communication with Earth, why can't anyone give him permission to board the MAV? I am also not at all convinced that he could maintain adequate body heat sleeping outside the rover in his EVA suit for hours on end, not to mention that doing so would presumably wear down his equipment in a way that using the big machines jerry-rigged into the rover would not. And then instead of the sandstorm and the rover crash as dramatic obstacles, the movie gives Watney a smooth drive and invents extra complications in the launch and interception scene, which leads to several minutes of inadvertent hilarity.
I suspect the idea there was to beef up Commander Lewis's role a little, but in practice it just makes her look incompetent. Seriously, Beck is supposed to be the EVA specialist. So even if Lewis feels hideously guilty over giving the order to leave Mars and thereby accidentally abandon Mark, it makes no sense for her to insist on being the one to do the intercept EVA. That is not effective resource management! Also the launch and intercept were plenty crazy enough in the book without actually letting Watney go through with his dumbass 'Iron Man' plan.
And of course his recovery in the movie ends with a group hug in the airlock, which is exactly what the book says would make a nice dramatic bit of closure but is not how things actually went down because A) the others were on the bridge doing their jobs and B) Watney was in hideous pain from several broken ribs, which is not conducive to heartwarming embraces. But, you know, dramatic closure. *wry*
What I found really inexplicable is that despite its increased attention to the characters' emotional states, one place the movie utterly fails when compared to the book is dealing with Beck and Johannsen's romance. This is particularly weird because that relationship is hardly in the book at all! But they are explicitly noted as sharing a bedroom after some glitches on the Hermes necessitate abandoning two rooms, and they get a cute exchange when Beck is going to deal with the airlock before the crew decompresses the ship so they can reach Watney at a safe speed. Only one half of that exchange makes it to the movie: Johannsen kisses Beck's faceplate, then says, "Don't tell anyone I did that." In the book, Beck reciprocates by saying, "Don't tell anyone I enjoyed it," but in the movie he just gives her an ambiguous look and so their relationship remains entirely unstated until the very end montage when we suddenly see them together in a hospital with their new baby. Like I said: a weird omission.
(Also, the bargain the Chinese space agency strikes with NASA -- use of the Taiyang Shen rocket in return for a Chinese astronaut aboard Ares V -- is never verbalized, which is strange since it would only have taken about five seconds to clarify and otherwise their decision to help feels very much like a deus ex machina.)
All that aside, as I said at the beginning, I did enjoy the movie. It was significantly less dumb than a lot of things I've seen in my life, hilarious climax notwithstanding. I just think it could easily have been better.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
(no subject)
Date: 2015-12-09 10:05 pm (UTC)I loved both, but I think we're on the same wavelength. Beck should have been the one to get Mark since Commander Lewis going out was just bad policy. I guess they wanted the redemption moment for her, but it didn't jibe with the book's "this is REAL LIFE AND NOT HOLLYWOOD!" tone. It kind of undermined the message.
Still, it was a lot of fun and I'll likely be buying it since I DO want to have a chance to rewatch to catch the detail.
(no subject)
Date: 2015-12-09 11:55 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2015-12-10 03:15 am (UTC)I do wish Weir delved a little more into the emotional reactions of his characters, but I think The Martian was his first published book and everything else is so well done that I don't mind that lack much. Besides, that's why we have fanfic. *grin*
(no subject)
Date: 2015-12-10 03:20 am (UTC)