Well, it wasn’t bad actually, it was quite nice (to watch once) - this is being said by someone who knows nothing about all that science, so I don’t really have any idea if they said reasonable things or just a load of nonsense.
It starts with a group of six people on Mars, doing research and stuff, when all of a sudden there’s a big storm, much worse than they anticipated, and they need to run away and leave. Mark is hit by something, and he should be dead, so the others launch, can’t wait anymore, specially since they think he must be dead.
When Mark wakes up and realises what happened, he has some logical explanation on how he didn’t die, but he’s hurt. He walks to the base, treats himself the best he can, then starts reflecting upon his situation. He knows it’ll be many months, years before he has the slightest chance to get rescued, so he needs provisions. There’s a lot of stuff there, but not enough - they should have stayed a month, so there’s provisions for a month, but they packed double to be on the safe side, so there’s two months, and then there’s the fact that he’s alone now, five people less, so he has food for a year give or take. It’s something but not enough for a smart long-term planner. Luckily, as he says, he’s a botanist, so he sets up a sort of greenhouse, using their toilet waste as fertilizer, and this was easy and obvious, and does something to create water, although it didn’t seem much to me but what do I know, so: he made water, and in due time he has potato-plants, so he can increase his days.
I’m not sure but I think it was like a month after the shuttle launched that some people at Nasa found out that he was still alive, then he retrieved an old pathfinder and used it to communicate with them, and they could talk now.
At first Nasa didn’t tell the other five crewmembers about him being alive, which is good and bad at the same time. I was like ‘don’t tell them’ as well for a while, because they would have felt terribly guilty for leaving him there. It wasn’t their fault and they had no choice, but still !
After a while I started thinking that those five were affected by his death of course, and knowing he was alive would have eased their grief, obviously. Nasa only told them when Mark started swearing at them for not telling them.
Since day one Mark knows where they’ll be landing whenever they’ll come, so he planned a way to get there, which is quite far, the Schiapparelli crater.
Nasa is trying to find a solution, but when one of the greenhouse’s doors explodes, all the plants are ruined, and so is the soil and everything, so he won’t be able to make more food. They try sending him provisions quickly, saving time cutting the tests, and the ‘cargo’ explodes. Apparently it almost never happens during tests, it happened this time.
They are desperate for a solution, because time is running out. Luckily this is a movie so what happens is: Chinese officials are more concerned about saving the life of one American astronaut than they are about their super-top-secret project, and offer to help.
One man figures out a plan that could work, they all say, although hearing it seems rather ridiculous, but again this is a movie so it works.
The director of Nasa refuses the idea because it endangers the lives of the other five astronauts, that should go back to pick him up, but one man (Sean Bean, not sure about everyone’s role in here) tells the crew about the plan, thus ending his career (because in this world everyone is so concerned about the life of one single man... wait, no, because this is a movie, right) and obviously the crew goes on with the plan because they want to rescue him, they felt so bad for leaving him there.
So what I understood is: they accelerate towards earth, grab the Chinese thing with the provisions, then use gravity to get thrown back and they go towards Mars. Mark reaches Schiapparelli and uses the old shuttle-thing after throwing out everything inside because it’d be too heavy otherwise since he needs to go up extra-fast. Without the computers inside he can’t do anything, so one of the crew will pilot it instead. When they are near he’s launched into space, but it’s still too far, so he cuts his spacesuit to use air as propellent as Iron Man and manages to get onboard. Once there, there’s nothing more for us to see, they are reunited and they’ll come back in a year or so.
Next thing we see is Mark on Earth. He’s teaching aspiring astronauts now.
Just one curiosity, during the whole time he kept recording videos of his experience, where are those videos now? On Mars?
Anyway, by reading this it sounds a bit boring but it wasn’t actually, it was fine, although not something I’d watch again too soon.
ITA the Martian-sopravvissuto
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