If you are worried about heading to space again with Ridley Scott after the grim, muddled Prometheus, fear not. His new space yarn, The Martian, based on the science-heavy novel by Andy Weir, is a pure delight, a tense survival tale leavened by an abundance of geeky wit and an array of fine actors at their snappy best. It's the first Ridley Scott picture in a long time that feels energized by its scope and ambition rather than buried under it.
Matt Damon plays Mark Watney, a botanist-astronaut on a manned mission to Mars who, during a scary windstorm, is injured, presumed dead, and left behind by his reluctant crew. With only minor provisions stored in a habitat module (a Hab, in NASA parlance) only meant to be used for a month, Watney has to use his expansive scientific knowledge to jerry rig his supplies and surroundings to sustain him until some kind of rescue mission can be launched.
What follows is not the meditative survivalism of Cast Away, but instead a disarmingly funny, engaging paean to science and ingenuity. The script, by the invaluable Drew Goddard, is loaded with scientific jargon, but maintains its airy levity throughout even the densest of stretches. Scott structures and paces his film beautifully, balancing Watney's survival campaign on Mars with the NASA folks on Earth who are working tirelessly, but with good cheer, to find a way to keep Watney alive and, eventually, get him home. There is never a slow moment in The Martian, as minds and mechanics whir in harmony—Scott and Goddard create an all-hands esprit de corps that is, with just the right amount of corniness, downright uplifting.
When the movie gets serious, and scary, Scott employs a bracing mix of intimacy and zoomed-out scale to illustrate Watney's unenviable plight. While Watney's problems are up-close and immediate, the film never lets us forget the vastness surrounding him. When Watney's crew gets involved in the rescue effort, the film expands to depict not just the harsh, eerie majesty of Mars, but the mind-boggling physics of space travel.
As pieces of advocacy aimed at reviving public interest in the space program go, The Martian is perfect propaganda; it's edifying and consumable, a space adventure that entertains while urging us to appreciate the wonderful, inventive capacity of the human mind. And what a group of humans Scott has assembled to give life to this story. The film is a perfect vehicle for Damon's brand of affable intelligence—a lot of the movie consists of Damon talking to a video diary (he's vlogging, essentially), which could easily feel static after a while. But Damon maintains his effortless charm, knowing just when to humanize Watney before he becomes a too-clever caricature of scientific ego. It's an endlessly likable, nimble performance that's a nice reminder that, while he may at heart be a gifted character actor, Damon can still be a hell of a leading man when he wants to be.
Elsewhere, Jessica Chastain is all steely grace as Watney's commander, Chiwetel Ejiofor is an effective dispenser of scientific exposition as a NASA brainiac, and Jeff Daniels is appropriately slick and smarmy, but sympathetic, as the NASA chief. There's also Kate Mara, Michael Peña, Sebastian Stan, and Aksel Hennie all giving smart support as Watney's fellow crew members, and Kristen Wiig, Sean Bean, Donald Glover, and Mackenzie Davis giving zest to the scenes on the ground. It's a lively, perfectly curated company that takes the movie's spirit of teamwork and bonhomie to good heart. I want to watch them all in another movie together.
The Martian could easily have been a misfire: dull, schematic, too implausible. But with every carefully constructed detail, flourish, and nuance, Scott's picture clicks and grooves like a beautiful machine. A beguiling mix of suspenseful, goofy, and rousing, The Martian is sublime, sophisticated entertainment. I left feeling weightless.