We saw The Martian today, and I was impressed with how well it was adapted from the book. It's a credit to Jeff Daniels that it took me until the very end to think "Hey, that's the Dumb and Dumber guy!"
Also, I secretly think the only reason the movie got made was so that they could use
"I Will Survive"
over the closing credits. (I laughed a lot throughout the movie, but that probably got the biggest laugh from me. Well played, movie. Well played.)
I did miss a lot of the scenes that they cut from the book, but a lot of those scenes were also the reason I was thinking, "I don't see how they can make a movie out of this," so it makes sense. They made the movie with the scenes that made good movie.
I saw The Martian today. I have not read the book.
I was amazed that I only had small nitpicks.
The gravity on Mars is shown as Earth normal. Nuh-uh. should be about 40% of Earth.
The second one is really minor, and came from the gardener in me. f you are trying to stretch what you have, you only need one potato eye per mound, not a whole small potato.
All said, one only has to scrape residue off the lid of Handwavium to watch.
As usual, I give sound in near-vacuum a pass. I don't need Handwavium to understand the usefulness of it.
Plus? Troy from Community!
Now, we need to get Community back to have a referential, "Troy and Abed watch The Martian!"
The second one is really minor, and came from the gardener in me. f you are trying to stretch what you have, you only need one potato eye per mound, not a whole small potato.
That surprised me, too, because he did it the right way in the book, with explanation for why.
Troy-and-Abed-in-a-Rover!
I loved the movie. Smart people being smart is one of my favorite things to watch, so it hit my sweet spot (same reason I love the Buffistas, come to think of it). Also Matt Damon was hella charming without being smarmy.
Probably my favorite role of Matt Damon's after Good Will Hunting. (And I say that as a HUGE fan of Dogma.)
Last night Anne and I watched
Testament,
an '83 movie about the aftermath of a nuclear war. It was good but very grim, as you can imagine. Reminded us a lot of
On the Beach
with the people in a small California town that wasn't nuked gradually dying of radiation poisoning.
A movie far superior to
The Day After.
I'd rank it above
Fail Safe
too. Also, it was a TV version so it looked like they edited out some of the gross effect of radiation poisoning. It's the kind of movie that sticks in your mind....