ArpitGarg's Weblog

At the onset would like to mention that I liked the movie. However it suffered a bit due to the Interstellar and Gravity hangover which never let the movie standout and carve a niche for its own.

All through the drama I had this feeling of déjà vu. Like I have seen this all before. Space travel and spaceship gave me a feel of Interstellar. Space survival drama a bit like Gravity.

As I said overall the movie is good. Science is top notch. The hexadecimal communication is brilliant. So are other survival solutions. Movie has its heart and mind at the right place. What is missing is the novelty. Maybe if had come a bit later, when we were over the recent sci-fi’s, it would have made more impact. The fact that Matt Demon was himself stranded on a planet in Interstellar didn’t help either.

I found it more on the side of a pop corn thriller. The CNSA part looked artificially induced plot to score big in China (not unlike Transformers 4). A helpful but helpless aid of the in-charge sending encoded message to the Ares 3 crew also seemed borrowed. Tom Hanks has already done the stranded drama not once but twice. So when Matt is all alone on Mars, again it felt nothing to sit up and notice.

As I said apart from the science, which also at times is not explained to common people properly and I bet will go over the head for most, there is not much originality in the movie.

All in all, The Martian is a feel good pop-corn sci-fi with nothing new to offer. At the same time, whatever it offers has been made with a good heart. I wanted the movie not to end as I was enjoying it a lot. My feelings are kind of mixed. Not path breaking but entertaining. Much like Armageddon.