My Cultural Diet

I read and enjoyed Andy Weir’s The Martian several years ago. I described it as a novel that makes you feel smarter as you read it thanks to all of the technical and scientific detail that Weir packs into his pages. Thus, it only makes sense for a director of Ridley Scott’s caliber to tackle the movie adaptation, which stars Matt Damon as an astronaut who must somehow survive alone on Mars after he’s inadvertently left for dead. No spoilers here, but you know he’s going to survive, the only question is how; watching The Martian is more about the journey than the destination. This is really Damon’s movie, as his smart-ass character reacts to seemingly insurmountable situations with pluck and dark humor. Meanwhile, all of NASA, as well as his crew, scramble to figure out how to bring him home. Scott’s film, like Weir’s novel, is deeply optimistic about the human spirit, and the grandeur of space exploration. (The film does a fine job of communicating Mars’ grandeur, with gorgeous shots of the planet’s barren landscape.) For what it’s worth, The Martian evoked similar feelings to what I experienced watching space documentaries like Good Night Oppy and the “Cassini” episode of Netflix’s 7 Days Out.

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