You nailed it. Your review is almost exactly what I was thinking as the movie progressed. Contrived social engineering and manipulation. So Progressive…White males (except for Watney, cause he’s Matt Damon their poster boy) are at best competent, at least at the lower levels. If it wasn’t for women and minorities all would be lost. Thank goodness we have them to save us!!!

And your observation about the genius (Purnell) who comes up with the brilliant plan all by himself is right on. They work in teams. Nothing would be even considered without multiple reviews and checks. That’s another falsehood sold to gullible viewers.

Excellent post!

First of all is the nonsensical politically correct social engineering being foisted upon the viewer. Even though a white man is in charge of NASA, he’s cold and unfeeling — the bottom line for the agency is all that matters. Who is in charge? The Hermes is commanded by a young white female who ultimately takes the biggest risk of all near the conclusion and emerges the heroine for her bravery to compensate for her decision to leave the planet without astronaut Watney in the first place. This commander and the other woman on the crew were the brainchild of the ship and the poor idiotic white male buffoons who accompanied them surely could never have accomplished the ultimate feat of plucking an astronaut out of Mars orbit without being bossed around by these women. Give me a break.

Next are the two main black characters in the movie. The mission supervisor was the one with the heart and feelings to initiate a rescue, which never would have been done by the heartless white NASA chief. Then you’ve got the genius black astrophysicist, who, living in squalor, is the behind the scenes hero of the movie for calculating the Hermes-Earth slingshot tactic. Sorry. These characters — all of them — were poorly conceived and developed during the movie — and none convinced me of authenticity.

Then finally, the whole China involvement. Again, this is telling the audience, see, those communists, they’re not so bad after all. Of course America can’t get a rocket launched on its own and no mission could be successful without the commies. Again, please. I see clearly the subtle and not so subtle manner in which the director attempts to bring about 21st century political correctness, and I resent it.

Then there’s the science. With Mars’ atmosphere being equivalent to only 1% of earth’s, the storm that forced vacation from the planet would be impossible. And those large chunks flying through the air? What was that. There are dust storms on Mars, but they are DUST storms. Good grief. Then the scene of tornadic like activity from thick clouds — never would happen. The small amount of atmosphere permit only cirrus-like cloudiness. And while there are dust devils that form on the surface, they look nothing like what was presented to us. And what is that planet we keep seeing in the sky exhibiting moon- like phases? Is that supposed to be earth? Sorry, it doesn’t look like that from Mars. Oh yes, I could talk cosmic radiation, planetary rotation, and so on, but I won’t. A tarp on top of the capsule and removal of windows? For Pete’s sake.

Finally was all the levity — the stupid disco music, though I enjoyed Abba’s ‘Waterloo’ as a teenager. Then why all the four letter words by supposedly intelligent scientists? Does this just not give dirtbags the stamp of approval to commonly use this language? Again, the message is — it’s perfectly fine and “everybody does it.” Sorry, but when you’re fighting for your survival, the nonsensical humor and cavalier approach to problems just simply would not happen. Of course then, this wouldn’t appeal to the masses immersed in pop culture, either. And what was that stupid kiss by gallant #2 woman in charge on the Hermes on the helmet of one of her buffoonish male contemporaries? Was that supposed to indicate something far more serious between these two — again never developed and gratuitously inserted, serving no purpose other than throwing more candy to the audience.

And why the long hair and beard on Watney only towards the end? Wouldn’t that have been something that manifested itself from the beginning if he were letting personal grooming be a low priority?

This could have been a GREAT movie, but I came away feeling like this was a huge waste of $22 and change and 2 1/2 hours of my time. My wife, bless her little emotional heart, loved it. While I enjoyed the well done special effects and 3D imagery, I absolutely hated the movie, thoroughly seeing that it was simply aimed at your typical “man on the street” who knows very little scientifically and is easily entertained. The plot was good, but the politically correct social engineering, the unbelievable science inaccuracies, and the lack of character development just didn’t connect and ruined it for me. In fact, I barely connected with Watney. Though I have Everest and the new 007 movies on my “to see” list, if “The Martian” is what passes in today’s culture as “incredible,” maybe I’ll rethink returning to the cinema for a long time. I do not recommend it unless you like flushing your money down the toilet and wasting precious time. Just awful.

As an intellectual exercise, he designed a mission to Mars. Then he looked for flaws in his plan, and either modified the plan to remove the vulnerability, or worked out how to cope with the problem.

At some point he started to write short stories about these problems, and later, he turned the stories into a book.

No romance. No character development. Just a conga line of disasters, with some humor (Swearing publicly at NASA bureaucracy! Pirates!) injected into what would otherwise be a relentlessly grim tale.

It’s a pity the movie was a parody of problem solving for you, since the book is itself a consequence of problem solving.

The movie, it left out or otherwise compressed a lot of the book. In the book, A happens which causes B. In the movie, they didn’t show A, so why did B happen?

To be fair, I don’t think the author spent as much time plotting realistic international diplomacy as he did working out the continuous acceleration course to Mars (I don’t think ion drives were feasible when the Mars Direct plan was written) that would put them on the surface during Thanksgiving.

The author is a computer programmer. The film directory (I’ve liked all work) is a film director.

The cinematography was great. (Not as great as Fury Road though.)