Ridley Scott’s The Martian (2015) is one of those great movies that makes you feel terrible about your own survival skills. While I like to think I have decent problem-solving instincts and can think on my feet, everything that happens in this movie is so far out of my league on a technical, mathematical, and spiritual level that I’d probably give up by day two of my adventure.
If I woke up on Mars to find my entire crew had ditched me in a split-second panic, I’d make a giant party tray out of all the food rations, enjoy one magnificent last freeze-dried supper, and out of boredom, hit the airlock switch just to see how far I’d get launched before my body exploded from the pressure difference.
Matt Damon’s Dr. Mark Watney, on the other hand, stays calm and goes straight into problem-solving mode. It’s really cool to watch, but it also makes me feel embarrassed about the last time I spilled coffee on my car’s upholstery and decided it would take an entire day to clean it up.
Watching A Guy Solve Problems For 142 Minutes
The Martian’s plot is so simple it’s stupid, and that’s the beauty of it. Through that simplicity, we get to watch Dr. Mark Watney’s brain work at full capacity. When a dust storm forces the Ares III crew to evacuate, Mark is left behind. We can’t blame Commander Melissa Lewis (Jessica Chastain), Major Rick Martinez (Michael Peña), System Operator Beth Johanssen (Kate Mara), Flight Surgeon Dr. Chris Beck (Sebastian Stan), or Dr. Alex Vogel (Aksel Hennie). They truly thought he was dead, and had to make a decision while in fight-or-flight mode.
Stranded and injured, Mark immediately assesses the situation and gets to work. Luckily, he’s a mechanical engineer and a botanist, which makes him the perfect combination of clever and calm. Even when he’s fertilizing his potato crops with his crew’s discarded feces, he never loses focus. With every new setback in The Martian, whether it’s a storm, power failure, starvation, or creeping loneliness, he keeps pushing forward.
As his problems grow more complex, he tackles them head-on, figuring he’ll die anyway if he does nothing. I respect that. If it were me, I’d stub my toe once and just wander off into a canyon after ten minutes of angrily punching the air, yelling F-word after F-word.
The Martian Stresses The Importance Of Common Goals
What I love most about The Martian is its lack of drama when it comes to accountability. When Mark reconnects with the crew who left him behind, there’s no resentment, just friendly banter. They tease each other about music, joke about their jobs, and fall right back into rhythm. It feels like catching up with an old friend you haven’t seen in a year, picking up exactly where you left off because you’re so glad to reconnect.
From there, they refocus, crunch numbers, and strategize how to bring him home. There’s no grudges or passive aggression. Just a collective mission echoing the same sentiment: “Good to see you again, man. I’d have done the same thing. Now let’s get me off this rock.”
The real takeaway from The Martian is that logic beats emotion when it comes to solving big problems. If Mark wasted time being bitter instead of trying to make water out of rocket fuel, he’d just be “that guy” everyone tolerates until he dies of pettiness.
Streaming The Martian
The Martian’s premise is simple, effective, and gorgeous to look at. Just when you think our hero’s finished, he comes up with another clever solution, as Mark maths and logics his way through every challenge, earning his self-proclaimed title of space pirate. Everyone could stand to be a little more like Dr. Mark Watney.
If you want a masterclass in keeping calm through chaos, you can stream The Martian on Netflix as of this writing.
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