\n\n\n\n\n\n\nHad to watch The Martian today and discovered I liked it quite a bit. You couldn\u2019t make it today: it\u2019s very optimistic-early-2010s, premised as it is on the idea of civilization and progress as anything but a hateful, maddening farce etc etc. But I liked it.
\nI can tell I would\u2019ve liked the book more; the video-log device was illogical compared to a text journal, and a lot of the macgyvery scenes felt more perfunctory than fun.
\nFeatures Donald Glover giving the most convincing imitation of an actual physicist-nerd I\u2019ve seen on film \u2013 which is to say, very realistic in mannerisms and so forth but hobbled by a script that demands a bunch of embarassing Dr. House nonsense.
\nAlso grading on a Hollywood curve it did a pretty good job of not looking like a Vanity Fair photoshoot, apart from Kate Mara sticking out like a sore thumb as one of the astronauts.
\nVisually moving. Conveyed a feeling, which is all you can really ask of a movie. Watch this instead of Interstellar.
\nI had a slightly different take on it. To me The Martian is less \u201cnaive sci-fi optimism\u201d and more \u201cwish-fulfillment competence porn\u201d a la House or Sherlock: smart people being good at their jobs, as escapism from the clusterfuck of idiocy that is the real world. Except that Watney is merely a smart normal person, instead of an insufferable genius, so it\u2019s actually enjoyable to watch. That\u2019s why I was at first a little confused by your \u201cyou couldn\u2019t make it today\u201d\u2026 it only came out three years ago! But competence porn, although taking some well-deserved beatings, is still alive and kicking (viz. Rick and Morty) more so than Arthur C. Clarke-esque optimism, and I think that explains it.
\n(Where I absolutely agree with you is that it\u2019s a much better film than Interstellar)
\nThe book is a breezy read though, so I would recommend it even if you can\u2019t sink a huge time investment into a novel right now. Watney is not at all introspective or meditative, which might be a strike against the book\u2019s literary merits but definitely makes it move fast. It\u2019s definitely not going to be placed on a pedestal of \u201cliterary sci-fi\u201d, but it\u2019s a fun way to kill an afternoon.
\nI think competence porn is absolutely compatible with techno-optimism. The dated-feeling optimism in the movie is its fundamentally positive (almost naive) worldview: that space travel is a noble and worthy endeavor, that we should root for an iconic individual to be rescued at great cost, that powerful countries would work together towards a common goal, that the world would be transfixed in empathy for a powerful person\u2019s suffering, that civilization as we know at will continue into the indefinite future and that that could be a good thing, etc.
\nLet\u2019s put it this way: to make a movie like this is incompatible with loathing Elon Musk. Hence, its moment is in the past.
\nThe book sounds good and I\u2019ll probably check it out.
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y\u2019all onto things, it\u2019s weird I never saw anyone drawing the obvious comparison between The Martian and earlier colonialist competence porn like Robinson Crusoe or Swiss Family Robinson
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