He told me about the call from Ridley Scott, how cool that was, and how amazing it was to lead his set designer, the same guy who made the arenas in Gladiator, around the habitations they were building for Mars, what smart questions he asked, how many details he wanted to get right, and were right, in the film. I asked Green about just why it is that NASA appeared to be all in on this particular film. When he tells his story, the story of his book, he uses the word Cinderella, often. Weir is in person exactly who you’d like for him to be, and wears the expression and intonations of the luckiest nerd in the world. They began to explain but then Damon asked, “Wait, how much do you know?” and the man from the audience said, “Well, I’m an astrophysicist,” and there was a fantastic “oh shit” pause as Damon and Scott sort of inhaled and then launched into their reasoning, which was, more or less, that movie magic hasn’t figured out a good way to account for 40 percent gravity, which is cinematically not nearly as satisfying as zero gravity, so they ignored it. Someone asked if they-Scott and Damon-had thought about the portrayal of gravity on Mars, where there is 40 percent less of it. He wisely shrugged off these questions or deflected them toward Feustel, the real astronaut. There were a lot of embarrassing questions directed at Matt Damon, about his prowess and understanding of the astronaut life and mind after so much experience in a space suit. Also you will grimace, early on, when Mark Watney surgically removes a metal rod from his abdomen.Īfter the screening, Sir Ridley Scott and Matt Damon as well as Jim Green and Drew Feustel, a real life astronaut-gamely dressed in his blue NASA jumpsuit-came onto the stage to take questions. The best part of the film is obviously Matt Damon, who is not just extremely good at being an astronaut, but is funny, and it is nice to see him get to do that, because he is good at that, too. Chiwetel Ejiofor plays, with extreme confidence, the token super brilliant black dude in a space movie. Jeff Daniels plays the head of NASA, which is obvious casting. Jessica Chastain plays another astronaut, the mission commander, and it is also great casting. Kristen Wiig plays a NASA PR flack, which is great casting. I wondered which had come first but quickly lost that line of thought because, man, there are a lot of stars in this movie despite it being pretty much only about Matt Damon/Mark Watney. Then the work-in-progress movie screened and the first scene of it perfectly mirrored the NASA advertisement. We watched a sort of preview, complete with plenty of CGI and hashtags (#journeytomars) of NASA and JPL’s Mars missions, past and future, ending of course with not a rover scooping up dirt samples, but a man. For this reason, above all others, NASA was over the moon about The Martian. And the premise of the story is based on just the type of mission that NASA is planning. Its set in a version of the future that is not distant or fantastic, but familiar and possible. It’s that The Martian is extremely recent science fiction. But the most important fact about The Martian is not all of the extreme close ups on Matt Damon’s handsome astronaut mug (there are many!). The Martian is a deadly simple tale of an astronaut named Mark Watney (played by Matt Damon) trying to survive and eventually escape from Mars after being stranded there. Scott, or Sir Ridley, or the dude who has directed several of the greatest sci-fi movies of all time, plus Thelma and Louise, was in the early stages of his newest movie, The Martian, based on the mega-popular novel by Andy Weir. The day Ridley Scott called NASA was a great day for NASA. Matt Damon as Mark Watney, an astronaut who becomes stranded on Mars.
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