Movie Review: The Martian (2015)

The Martian (2015)

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Survive until….

There is Gravity on Mars, no really, it’s exactly that.

Well okay, I’ve always had that problem with my imagination, where I mix movies together when I see actors…er…acting the same way in multiple roles. So when I see The Bourne Legacy [2012] (starring Jeremy Renner as a skilled super agent) and then Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation [2015] (starring Jeremy Renner as a skilled super agent) I can’t help but think ‘that’s the same guy’.

And so, for Matt Damon, my first thought was Interstellar (where he plays Dr. Mann) ….yeah, that’s the back-story to what he experienced being stranded on an alien planet and figuring out how to survive. Swap the red rocks and sand for blue and you have the same planet….sorta. At any rate, there is the feel of Gravity [2013] where it is one mishap and near miss after another. There is the singular (mostly) focus on one character and their thoughts being our true guide through the story.

What do you think? Is this too similar?

Matt Damon, Matt Damon. Man, we wanted to bring him home in Saving Private Ryan. We wanted him to find us a new home in Interstellar and now as the poster commits…

Saving private…Watney

Story wise, we are seeing the book written Andy Weir translated by screenwriter Drew Goddard (World War Z, Cloverfield) and directed by Ridley Scott (Blade Runner, Alien, Black Hawk Down). The visuals and vistas are top notch as are all the effects. Matt Damon is engaging as astronaut/biologist Mark Watney who is mistakenly presumed dead and left behind when his team must abort their Mars mission due to a severe storm. From there, it’s a race to extend his supplies until help arrives.

There aren’t too many surprises as NASA is cast as a life-loving organization and spares no effort in getting their man home. The world population is cast as a caring mass-entity that actually cares about a single US astronaut. There are lots of live broadcasts and streaming (worldwide) moments that NASA would NEVER let happen, but hey…   There’s China (I think) that comes to the rescue which also gives us a happy world where politics is forgotten for the sake of this one man’s life. Interstellar showed us a very dark side of humanity and space exploration as a desperate option. The Martian has an optimistic angle, where space travel and colonization is dangerous, but worth doing when human life retains its value. Watch the trailer. You’ll get exactly what you expect.

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Prometheus Movie Review (2012)

Mission To Mars meets…um…Alien….

 I’m not sure where to start with this review. Ridley Scott, the visionary engine of Gladiator and top movie Blade Runner, is one of my favorite directors. He returns to the sci-fi genre after a 30 year absence to create a prequel to the first Alien movie. That’s good and bad for a lot of reasons. Let’s start where we left off, after where we started…

The plot of Alien deals with the fate of a mining crew awakened early from cryo-sleep to respond to an unknown signal. They land on a remote planet and things go really bad. Among all of the great moments is an iconic shot of the exploratory group discovering “the space jockey” which is the fossilized remains of a GIANT alien, possibly a navigator or last survivor, sitting in a chair with his chest burst outward. It’s a foreshadowing point in Alien and creates the premise or unanswered question that the prequel, Prometheus hopes to answer.

In Alien, he was bigger.

Well, the question is: Who was that giant alien and what was he doing before the monster (Alien) got him? That scene also spoke volumes about the universe Alien was happening in. Apparently, a first contact with an alien civilization is no big deal. They boldly go to find the source of the beacon without any meeting-extraterrestrial-neighbor concerns. They see a dead alien and have no pause. In any other movie, a GIANT ALIEN SITTING IN A CHAIR might be a big deal. Nope, not in this universe. In Prometheus, the possibility of meeting the architects of humanity is the big deal. And so the company we all know and hate Weyland (before the Yutani corporate merger) sends out a group of scientists to pursue the riddle of our origin on a far off planet (yes, that one).

Everything begins with a trailer because that’s where the promises start. Noomi Rapace plays scientist or cultural archaeologist Dr Elizabeth Shaw, Michael Fassbender plays the ship’s cyborg David. Charlize Theron plays the corporate heavy Meredith Vickers and Idris Elba steals some shine as captain Janek. Everyone else is pretty much extra characters and Red Shirts. So far, so good. We have some really good actors, a legendary director and a monstrous (sorry) franchise. We have the visuals to match. Plus, an awesome ship as cool and Sci-fi functional as the Nostromo, a panicked crew running for their lives, a (finally seen) horseshoe-shaped alien ship being smashed out of the sky and [gasp!] the space jockey guy alive and kicking- even menacing our heroes! Whoa!

Sounds like a classic in the making until we remember that a director doesn’t make a movie, he films a script. The writers are Jon Spaihts (the TV-movie turned movie; The Darkest Hour) and Damon Lindelof ( the mighta worked better as a TV special Cowboys & Aliens) who together, have managed to saddle one of the greatest film directors of our time with a script full of dead ends, plot holes and maybe some of the worst characterizations I’ve seen in a long time. We have scientists that don’t act like scientists…specialists that don’t do anything special and crew members that no one would pick for this mission or any other. And, I’m not even referring to the silly BIOLOGIST who wants to play Steve Irwin in a scary and dark tomb, on a scary alien planet, with similar results. No offense meant.

Who could relax in there? Those aint Grecian Urns….

Oh the trailer got me. I watched it a dozen times and even watched the one where a fanboy slows it down so much- you can study every sequence and analyze every frame. Certainly a trailer is supposed to tease us about what’s to come. Clocking in at just over 2 minutes, the Prometheus trailers shows us damn near everything. It’s not that all the best scenes are shown; it’s that EVERY scene is shown. That trailer has exposed the meat AND the potatoes of every twists and turn- or at least the ones that matter. You can tell the movie was written to include all those moments as shocks- moments when you are supposed to be surprised or awed and basically taken someplace you didn’t see coming. But wow, the alien ship trying to fly away and Prometheus crashing into it???? How much better would it have been if we didn’t know that was coming? Going on more would bring out the spoilers so I’ll stop here.

In Greek Mythology Prometheus is the god who brought man the secret of fire and was punished for it. The movie Prometheus promised to bring us the secret of the alien before Alien and a tease that humanity might be punished for accepting that knowledge. After the 2 hours running time, I didn’t feel like I knew any more than I did after watching Alien. I heard there’s already a Prometheus II in the works. I hope the gods come down and give us the secret of good script writing before we try and answer any more questions surrounding the Alien franchise. I’m not a movie critic; I’m just critiquing a movie.

Blade Runner 1982 Movie Review

Blade Runner 1982 Movie Review

Blade Runner Poster

Harrison Ford (Star Wars Han Solo and Indiana Jones) plays Deckard; a burnt-out detective on a mission to hunt down and eliminate a dangerous group of androids (called Replicants) in a futuristic society that’s rendered in a hauntingly realistic way. I assume you’ve seen this movie by now, so expect spoilers to be found throughout this review. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.

Whenever I talk to my friends about movies, the question always comes up, what’s your favorite movie? -or at least what’s on your top ten list? Blade Runner has held a top position for many years, along with movies like 2001, Excalibur, Alien and of course Empire Strikes Back and Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan. I can pick many technical reasons for Blade Runner to hold the top position, from the way the special effects hold up decades later, the classic story or even the total believability of the world the characters inhabit.

Creating a story is more than developing characters or building tension to a satisfying climax. Those elements are important, but we cannot overlook the importance of creating a living and breathing universe for the story to evolve in. Mad Max and its sequel The Road Warrior gave us a post-apocalyptic world that would influence countless films and honestly speaking, let many writers off the hook from the responsibility of creating any kind of world to surround their stage. You see the dessert, a few junked cars and you know what happened before the first day of the story. It’s accepted that we’ll all wear rags and sport Mohawk haircuts.

Blade Runner did the same but in the opposite direction. Director Ridley Scott took the Phillip K Dick story and created a technically advanced society that was shiny at the top corporate level and yet dirty and depraved at the bottom. It feels like a proper translation of the 80s and it still feels right 30 years later. It’s real to us because we can imagine ourselves living and operating in that world. It’s real to us because we feel like if we live long enough we will live in that world.

Sci-fi as a genre tends to be crippled by the weight of its gadgets, gimmicks and gizmos. Many writers rely on the tech/hardware to draw us in instead of our human flaws, emotions and inner drives. Most of these heroes did, well, nothing before the first day of filming. Blade Runner has many props- from the flying police car, zeppelin-sized flying billboards to androids that can pass themselves off as human-better than Arnuuld the Terminator. All of this nerd-candy does not take the place of good story-telling and characters that change and evolve as the story progresses.

The music and soundtrack are flawless as Vangelis uses his synth-wizardry to merge the music and sound effects into a wonderful backdrop that never resorts to laser zaps to let us know we’re in the future. The musical score reflects and reacts with each scene perfectly and always matches the on-screen tone.

Romance works in movies when we all want the couple together by the end of the flick. Most movies simply throw them together enough and boom, you assume after all that adventuring, they just have to hook up. Cue the big kiss and roll the credits. Chemistry is easy to create when there is only one hot chick and one hero in the movie. Star Wars was faced with a crisis as fans were split between Luke and Han for Leia. Lucas chickened out and reached way too far and suddenly decided to make Luke and Leia brother and sister ->add another yuck for the kiss in Empire. When Deckard (Ford) meets Rachael, she is stunning and also way above his level of sophistication. When he sees her next, she is vulnerable and he blows it. Later, he reaches out to her and she blows him off. Boy loses girl. BUT! She comes to the rescue and now you can’t imagine them NOT together. The chemistry works for me. I would want Rachael. Hell, I want Sean Young. While all of this is happening, you are not aware that their relationship is developing, no, you are too busy worrying about robots, guns and how this whole mess will get fixed.

Bad guys are important too. Blade Runner uses the tried and true formula of a super-smart boss surrounded by not-so-smart henchmen. Certainly as simple as some of these extra characters are concerned, there are hints of additional history and relationships. If you note that Replicants are given false memories to create a cushion, Leon is carrying pictures of Zhora. Deckard found Zhora’s snake’s skin cell clue in the shower of  Leon’s apartment. What does that tell you about the relationship between Leon and Zhora? And during her show, right before Deckard meets Zhora, you hear the host say “Watch her take the pleasure from the snake.” Which explains why she’s tickled when Deckard questions if she’s even been asked to do anything offensive by the management. Very funny. Rutger Hauer is at his best playing the leader and supremely dangerous Roy Batty. It adds more tension when you believe the bad guy can beat the good guy. He is also given the wonderful privilege of delivering the best lines/monologue in the entire movie.

 Is Dekard a robot too?

Ridley Scott assured Harrison Ford that he would not be playing an android since Ford thought a robot chasing a robot wouldn’t be interesting to him. In subsequent versions of the movie, deleted scenes (the infamous unicorn running in the forest dream sequence) were added that left that question a mystery and open to debate.

In conclusion, this is my favorite movie because it works for me on every level. It’s a fine story wrapped in the fabric of Science Fiction. I  am not a movie critic; I am simply critiquing a movie.

– Dynamics Plus