Gadgetory

let's do the math our service mission here was supposed to last 31 Sol's for redundancy they sent 68 Sol's worth of food that's 46 people so for just me that's gonna last 300 Sol's which I figure I can stretch to 400 if I ration so I got to figure out a way to grow three years worth of food here on a planet where nothing grows luckily I'm a botanist the Martian a new interplanetary sci-fi film from director Ridley Scott is blasting into cinemas soon with me as someone who's seen the film it's my colleague rich trenholm hello now rich this movie is based on a very very popular book by Andy weir so the first thing to ask for fans of that novel is how close is it to the source material it's very very faithful to the source material and this is a book that sir beloved of fans for it's nerdy attention to detail it's all about this very smart capable guy in a very very difficult situation but using his smarts to overcome every obstacle that that is that is put in front of him as he faces this long long wait to be rescued from where he's been marooned on Mars it's really enjoyable watching like a smart guy in teams of smart people pulling together and solving this problem so in that sense it's really really faithful to the book we know that a great book doesn't always translate to a great movie so as a standalone cultural artifacts yes how does the Martian stand up it doesn't really introduce enough of a sense of threat I mean compared to gravity for example which is this kind of white-knuckle ride where there's constantly three things going wrong at once and it's a you feel that you've kind of gone through it got over a roller coaster when you come out of it the Martian is very sedate so I think it could have done with i'm not talking about manufacturing xed near drama and i think what i'm talking about is it's maybe kind of emphasizing what a hostile environment space really is for human beings so speaking of space as a hostile environment this is a movie that's directed by ridley scott's who is probably most famous perhaps for alien and Blade Runner and is a huge historical sci-fi presence so exact that was the direction here it's it's good i mean he he did completely invent a new language for science fiction and i think this is it's a bit more comfortable there's lots of sci-fi tropes that we've seen before like for example the text is all spelt out and like bleeping letters across the bottom the names and character locations and we see a lot of shots of worried looking scientists we're thinking what how we possibly going to solve this question we might as well just and then they tail off in mid-sentence and they run to a computer they go I've got it and I've cracked it and they've cracked it yeah in terms of you know smart people doing smart things and you know a character you can really root for it is so it is really really good fun the book is quite a love letter to space travel to written with a real fondness for the endeavor to to travel into space exactly i'm across in the movie as well yeah very much so there's kind of a subplot of humanity uniting to get this one guy back and it it's very much about you know people solving these problems and there's look there's a huge cast and those are stars it as chua tellegio for and there's Sean Bean Kristen Wiig and Donald Glover and loads and loads of big names jeff daniels and it is great to see them kind of working together and you do find yourself rooting for these rooting for these people to solve this kind of big problem and and just to continue to to like enjoy the the majesty of space i guess so it sounds like it doesn't maybe break much new ground in terms of sci-fi on screen but from what you described a fun blockbuster especially for fans of the book does that sound like a fair assessment yes absolutely okay well we've got a full written review of the Martian available on cnet com so do be sure to check that out in the meantime let us know what you think and stay tuned