Ridley Scott explained how studios didn’t realize ‘The Martian’ was a comedy.
“Mark Watney: Space Pirate”
Like Iron Man!
The reasoning he went through on that was hilarious. It’s definitely something that a person stuck on Mars would think about.
How did no one realise this? Like half the movie at least is black humour
[Insert standard explanation about the worldwide decline in media literacy here]
It’s a farce: “a light dramatic composition marked by broadly satirical comedy and improbable plot”. It’s played straight. The stakes are serious. It should be a tragedy. But then there’s a literal turning point when they turn around to rescue Watney, and it’s ridiculous.
The book makes it make a lot more sense. He actually reasons through what he is doing, and why. The line “I’m going g to science the shit out of it” is practically the mantra, and demonstrated again and again.
The film basically takes this and strips out all the ‘boring science’ stuff. What’s left, while still a good film, is a shadow of the source material.
I’m hopeful they’ll do Project Hail Mary justice.
The book is hard sci-fi and excellent.
The movie is dumb shit and screwy. The only way this change of tone and content is justified is by realizing that they switched genres and turned it into a movie.
