On Screen, When Watney Wakes up Alone, Injured, and Without Any

FRIDAY 16 OCTOBER, 2015 On screen, when Watney wakes up alone, injured, and movie’s setting. In Paul M. Sammon’s book Future Noir: The The essential difference is that Weir is an optimist - and without any means of communicating with Earth, it’s an Making of Blade Runner (one of the greatest books ever writ- Scott is definitely not. Indeed, Scott recently said that he incredibly harrowing moment of human weakness. In both ten about the making of a movie), Scott defends Alien from thinks humanity is probably doomed in the near future. That’s the book and the movie, Watney says basically the same thing critics who saw it as little more than elevated schlock horror not entirely surprising from the director of some of the darkest when that happens: “I’m pretty much fucked.” In the book (it’s by saying that the movie’s “environment was a statement. movies ever made; it’s not an accident that his previous film, the opening line), it comes off almost as gallows humor; in the And, I think, a great piece of artwork,” and similarly says that The Counselor, was a collaboration with Cormac McCarthy, movie, the same line is shot through with a deep sense of Blade Runner’s quasi-apocalyptic urban production design another storyteller whose work evinces a deep pessimism despair that’s rarely, if ever, on display in the novel. was its “statement.” For Scott, essentially, a movie’s design - its about human nature. But it does point to a tension in his work, Part of the reason the movie is so much more intense is that look and sense of place - is often its reason for being. which is often bleak in tone but tends to end in individual tri- it’s, by nature, a much more visual experience. Weir’s prose Scott’s chilly but beautiful visual sensibility is a big part of umph. emphasizes technical explanation much more than visual what makes the movie version of The Martian feel so much Ultimately, Scott is both a nihilist and a humanist, someone description; in an interview with Adam Savage, Weir said that bleaker than its novel counterpart. Along with cinematogra- who has little hope in humanity but a surprising amount of when the book was published commercially, his editor had to pher Dariusz Wolski, the director emphasizes Watney’s loneli- faith in the abilities of individual humans to survive. The ten- ask him to insert basic location descriptors for several scenes, ness with gorgeously rendered vistas of the Martian desert, a sion between Scott’s broad pessimism and his narrow opti- which tended to rush into the engineering challenge at hand. rocky and yet stunning place where tornadoes swirl gracefully, mism is a big part of what makes his best movies - and The Scott, on the other hand, is one of modern cinema’s great and dangerously, in the background. Watney is often framed Martian is one of them - so great. (www.thevox.com) visualists; he was a painter as a young man, and has long been as a tiny creature struggling to make his way across the plan- known for his perfectionist’s eye as a director - and in particu- et’s surface in shots that emphasize the planet’s utter indiffer- lar for his emphasis on the intricate physical details of a ence to his plight..

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