The Martian

Hello. Today I'm writing about a movie I saw recently called The Martian.

Last Friday I saw the new movie The Martian with my girlfriend, Jillian. I was pretty excited to see the movie because it was directed by Ridley Scott, who also directed Alien and Prometheus, 2 of my favorite movies. The movie also got a very good rating on IMDB with an 8.2 out of 10. The Martian is a realistic science fiction movie about an astronaut named Mark Wattney that is accidentally left on Mars alone. The movie takes a journey about Mark trying to survive in a completely inhospitable environment with limited supplies and NASA desperately trying to find a way to bring him home alive.

The movie opens in the near future with the crew of Ares 3 collecting samples on Mars. Conflict quickly ensues when an enormous sandstorm starts heading their way with winds much higher than they anticipated. The crew collectively decide to head back to the rocket before it's too late except for Mark, who being the most reluctant to give up on the mission is the farthest back in the group heading towards the ship. During the storm Mark is hit by a satellite dish and thrown into the storm, too far away for the group to rescue and completely out of site. When the crew reaches the rocket they find out that Mark's suit is sending no life signs to the ship and they presume him dead and leave just before the rocket would have been tipped over.

Mark wakes up on Mars and makes it back to the habitat station and pulls the satellite antenna out of his abdomen that severed his life sign signaler on his suit. There he acknowledges in a video log that since he has no way of contacting NASA he has to grow food to last him 3 years until the next mission to Mars is launched. Mark learns that he can grow potatoes using rocket fuel to manufacture water and his and his crews mates feces as fertilizer. Eventually he finds the old Pathfinder probe and uses its camera to finally get in contact with NASA. NASA broadcasts across the world that Mark Wattney is alive on Mars and the entire world unites to try and bring him home. After there's a disastrous explosion that destroys Mark's potato crop and numerous failed attempts to give him more rations by NASA, a slightly crazy scientist on Earth finds a way to save Mark. The scientist proposes a plan to send the rocket carrying the crew around Earth and on back to Mars to rescue Mark. The plan is deemed to dangerous by the head of NASA but an employee secretly sends the plan to the crew onboard the rocket and the crew collectively makes the decision to disobey NASA and go back to Mars and save Mark. Mark travels for days across Mars to reach a small rocket capsule capable of barely getting him out of Mars' atmosphere and from there is an extremely intense climax involving the crew of Ares 3 and Mark trying desperately to attach to Mark's capsule and bring him safely to Earth. After a near failure 1 year later Mark is teaching a class of Astronauts on survival in space, laughing and joking about his experiences on Mars.

So there was The Martian, a very good science movie I highly recommend. Bye.


- By Ashton