The Martian Rant

⚠️ There will be spoilers for both the novel and the movie on this page

Andy Weir's The Martian is an amazing novel about an astronaut being stranded on Mars and has recieved great commercial success, eventually leading to a film adaptation. It is this adaptation that I want to talk about here, as I think it missed the mark for adapting such a wonderful piece of literature.

While there are certain obvious differences in the movie to the novel, most of them aren't truly important. Yes I could talk about how we are robbed of the best character in the book, sheet AL102, but, sarcasm aside, these explanations the book offers by telling the reader what Mark does not yet know are truly unimportant. What is however important is the difference in what happens to Pathfinder and how that affects the story. In the book, Pathfinder dies to a short caused by Mark's own error, and cuts off communication to NASA. In the movie, this does not happen. What at first appears an understandable cut for brevity or otherwise becomes a tragedy in the face of what it robs the movie of. In the novel, communication is cut off leading Watney designing and building more than a bit of his his own rover, which is an understandable cut given that the movie simply doesn't have the same time the book has to explain his designs, but the working communication during his travels to Schiaparelli really cuts down on the, for lack of a better word, vibe of the journey and its ending. Him being in contact with NASA leads to it being a merry journey, from what I remember it is even cut down into a montage of him chatting with NASA, whereas in the book was one filled with uncertainty and doubt. This becomes especially obvious as Watney unknowingly drives into a sandstorm that NASA thinks will kill him if he doesn't detect it early enough, leading to plenty of suspense for the reader as we watch Mark figure it out for himself. In the movie, this sandstorm doesn't exist - can't exist because NASA would simply inform Mark of it. Also the space pirate lines make no sense as he got or at least could get the go-ahead from NASA to board the MAV, whereas in the book he needed to board it without permission.

And that concludes the rant about The Martian movie, but I might add to it over time. And just so you know I do not dislike the movie, it is a good movie, it just could have done more.

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