ODEON Magazine September/October 2015 | Page 14

Watch the trailer

MARTIAN
LANDING
PHOTOS: Aidan Monaghan, © 2015 Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation

Legendary director Ridley Scott takes us out of this world and
strands us on Mars with Hollywood A-lister Matt Damon
idley Scott has a CV that most
directors can only dream of: American
Gangster, Gladiator, and Black Hawk
Down to name just a few hits. But of
his back catalogue, it's the sci-fi masterpieces
that have connected most indelibly with
audiences. Scott just has an innate way of telling
those stories, he makes them resonate with the
film viewing public the world over. From the
legendary Alien in 1979
and Blade Runner in
1982, all the way up to
2012's Prometheus,
Scott has shown that
he knows how to pull
fantasy worlds together
so that they feel utterly
believable. Sci-fi is in
his soul.
So it's fair to say that
our hearts soared when we heard about his
involvement with The Martian. We were over the
moon excited. Or maybe, considering, we were
over the Mars excited…?
The Martian is an adaptation of the best
selling book from scientist Andy Weir – which
itself started out as a blog looking at how science
would solve the problems of being stranded on a
hostile planet. The astronaut that finds himself

in this predicament is Mark Watney, played by
the hugely talented Matt Damon (The Bourne
Trilogy, Interstellar). Damon and Scott had
never even met in passing before they started
discussing this project, and the director's
infectious enthusiasm for the story made it so
that Damon couldn't say no to him
“This is going to be fun. Let's do this!” he said
to Damon, who happily climbed on board.
The film itself deals
with Watney being
inadvertantly left
behind by his crew on
Mars, after they believe
him to have died.
Watney is then all alone
on the red planet, with
Matt Damon
only his smarts and
positive spirit to get
him through until he is,
hopefully, rescued. It's a serious film, but still
with a wry sense of humour to the proceedings.
“Anybody I’ve met who has some kind of
occupation that’s cheating death all the time,
they tend to have that kind of gallows humour
and sarcasm,” Damon says of Watney's approach
to his situation. “So if we get it right, the movie
should be funny, without losing a sense of what
the stakes are.”

“Anybody cheating
death has gallows
humour”

14 odeon.co.uk