I wanted to give a review on the Blu-Ray that is out right now for the Martian. If there is a movie you need to watch this year on DVD or Blu-ray it will have to be the Martian, so get up right now and pick up a copy either at Redbox or just buy it because you will thank me later. I wanted to review the actual disc content and of course the movie itself, and if you are anything like me, I like watching the special features and extra footage they add. I have noticed that recently more and more movies are coming out on disc to watch at home, but the additional content isn’t as great and I will write about those later on.
The Martian is a very entertaining and fun movie to watch, don’t think of it as another “Cast Away” or “Gravity” type movie, where it drags and is slow and you wish you were somewhere else instead of watching the movie. The Martian is able to make the stranded person movie finally worth watching, and very entertaining. The things I liked about the movie was the setup of the story, this is a movie based on a bestselling book and there is going to a be a lot lost when going from book to movie, here they manage to get it going and I attribute that to the screen writers. The movie does not take long to get going and we are moving along the stranded man on mars right away. We got some intros to the characters but moved onto the action and suspense of the movie at the very beginning.
The way it was shot using real locations and sound stages, you will not know the difference, I caught myself thinking where is this location, it looks like real landscape and it wasn’t. Matt Damon is a great actor and his movie are a success because of it. I don’t care much about the “art” of an actor or movie, I just like if it is entertaining and He does a great job making you like his character and moving the story along. Sure we have not been to Mars and still a ways out before that is even possible, but I love how they use real science and mixed in with fiction to make you believe this is possible. The movie did not feel like it was long even though it clocks in at 2 hours and 14 minutes, the biggest reason was Matt Damon. I love his comic relief, his emotional scenes and how I feel I would act if I was the only man on a planet where I might just not live to see another person. There was some language that was present, I believe the F-bomb was dropped twice and then your standard S-words, just a few times. Then there was the bare backside scene to show a transformation of the astronaut. The other thing to keep in mind is an injury that Matt Damon’s character gets, that might be a little too much for the younger viewer.
Aside from the story and how it was presented on screen the Blu-Ray disc has some great behind the scenes clips where they talk about the making of the movie, the story and some additional videos talking more about the events of the movie, like an interview with the characters after the mission to save Matt Damon’s character. That was an interesting piece and how they would take the time to make a documentary interview style show. But fun stuff.
I watched this with my family and my kids came out loving the science they learned and recognized a lot of it from what was taught in school. Yes, they actually loved a movie about a stranded Man on Mars, imagine that. I loved the effects, the acting, the story and how we can keep bringing humanity together through tough situations.
