Everything about this movie except the storm in the beginning was all accurate the storm though wouldn't be as strong since Mars doesn't have an atmosphere
@@DarthKilaj85I mean, Mars _does_ have an atmosphere, but you're right that the air pressure is so low that the storm having that effect would be impossible. Everything else after that is completely scientifically plausible. Which is something I love about the book and the movie.
@@andreasvogler1875 Well, true, which is why he doesn't try it in the book. But I think the movie earns this. (The only thing I dislike is when they pull each other closer with the tether they slow down, which is the opposite of how that works.)
"The director is more concerned with how he looks in all of this than he is with Mark." it's not really about his image. He's responsible for all of NASA, so his biggest concern is the agency's survival. When a major tragedy happens in spaceflight, like the real life disasters with Apollo 1 or the Challenger and Columbia shuttles, America understandably freaks out about it and there's a massive public debate around space travel, with how risky it is and how much it costs. The agency has to shut down operations for a few years and do a thorough investigation of what happened so that they can take steps to prevent it from happening again, and Congress usually ties NASA up in hearings and ends up cutting their funding. If he approves a risky rescue mission and it goes wrong, they lose 6 astronauts and a multi-billion dollar vehicle that was designed to go back and forth to Mars for 8 or 9 missions. Congress would never just give them more money to build another one, so the manned Mars program is dead, and probably all human space exploration with it. There's a possibility NASA gets shut down altogether or gets its funding cut to just enough to put satellites in orbit and nothing else. If they just lose the one guy, that's a lot more recoverable. He's trying to make the best call and wants to get Mark home as much as everyone else, but the risk vs reward calculation is different for the guy in charge of all of NASA than it is for the folks who only work on this one mission. He has to consider ALL of the ramifications, including the political and public relations ones, because they make a huge difference in the big picture for NASA's ability to continue.
Agreed. I hated the very shallow take that it is all for his own hide. He clearly cares great and is doing his best. For that matter, working to bring the five home is probably even the responsible, right call here. He's the good guy, not the bad.
That's the problem with the realism of this movie - viewers don't expect a bunch of good people with differening prioitites all doing their best. They expect a fictional story with good guys and bad guys.
People accustomed to a regular story just can't help but look for a villain. The director wasn't a bad guy, it's just the responsibility of his shoulders goes beyond just one man.
Also, he'd just gone out on a limb, cancelling the safety tests on the supply rocket in order to launch it in time to do any good. That having gone badly, he's now overcorrecting.
The science is very accurate except for two notable exceptions. The books does a really good job of explaining all the science. The author admits that Mar's thin atmosphere means the storms on Mars would not be able to tip over the MAV. He just needed that plot point to force abandonment of Watney. In the book Watney jokes about puncturing his suit to go Iron Man, but he doesn't do it. There would not be anywhere enough thrust from a leaking suit to make any difference.
Yeah, the book and show get a pass for the storm to me because the author openly admits its not accurate at all and would be impossible, but he just needed to get the plot moving. Its open and honest, hard to hate that when the rest of the book is so amazing and scientifically accurate for the time. I say "for the time" because some research about Martian soil came out right after the movie I think and showed that Martian soil has high levels of perchlorates. Though, the workable fix for that is washing them out. So, it becomes a bit harder for him but still checks out.
What I like about Andy Weir’s writing is that he shows his work. All of the science and math is out there on the page. When someone figures something out, we go through the steps and figure it out with them. It’s nerdy and fun!
If Andy Weir wanted a more scientifically plausible beginning, I think a Mars quake would've worked. The strongest Mars quake we've recorded was a 4.7 in 2022. That magnitude will only cause minor damage, so perhaps the story could've had a 6.0 quake that posed a great danger to the MAV. The crew scurries towards the MAV for an emergency abort, but Mark Watney is further away than everyone else. As he's hobbling over an antenna array or some big object falls onto him pierces his suit, thereby knocking him out and causing his vitals monitor to flatline.
It was the one thing I didn't like about the movie adaptation. I understand why Ridley did that, the drama of them trying to grab each other works, but it's just silly and in a movie that's all about science it doesn't make sense to do that. Especially when we saw how fast he loses oxygen with a puncture to his helmet earlier in the movie.
@@JWFas You need something that would knock Watney out, make the rest of the crew think he's dead while also making it impossible for them to find him while not really hurting him too much and you need that emergency to be on going so they'll need to leave immediately. I don't think a quake would solve those story needs.
4:36 "This is bigger than one person." "No, it's not." "Yeah, exactly." It is *absolutely* bigger than one person. The story as told is cool and fun and heroic, but the Director was absolutely right. Astronauts sign up knowing the risks and that their lives are potentially expendable. Risking multiple other lives, billions in technology and the entire future of the space program to save one life? What if the rescue mission had failed, or the ship breached on the way out and drifted off into space? Making that kind of choice in a logical fashion, regardless of what you 'want' to do personally, is exactly what the Director is supposed to do. I hate that people think he's the 'bad guy'.
@@PaulMenden5659 I would gladly watch a movie of this that is several hours longer just to see something even closer to the book. So much amazing stuff passed over. Though, the movie is still my favorite of all time. I have watch it over 50 times and that isn't an exaggeration.
@@KerbalOnDres1 When they're doing their projects at the start of the movie, Martinez parks the rover right next to the MAV. When they're deciding what to do he's still there, so he never moved it away. It got destroyed when they launched. If the movie included even half of the preparations for the journey and the journey itself it would be 3 hours long. That part isn't even in the 2.5 hour extended edition. It wouldn't really add much to the movie and would slow it down considerably. It's the kind of thing that would get cut for pacing if they actually shot it.
@@shect1 Okay I agree with the rover preparations. But would the extended airlock scene really add that much? Or when the rover tipped entering schiaparelli?
The movie is based on a novel by Andy Weir. He had a sci-fi blog and he posted a chapter at a time. Viewers asked him to compile the chapters into a book, which he put onto Amazon for .99 The book got so many downloads that it was put into hardback. It sold so well both hardback and downloads, that he wound up with a movie deal. There are some little gems of Watney's humor that didn't make the movie. He opens one chapter by explaining that when he gets back to earth he's going to live in western Australia - because it is on the opposite side of the earth from Idaho. When they tell him that the supply probe that's coming to his rescue (the one that broke up) is called Siris - the goddess of rainbows- he responds "Right - gay probe coming to save me." It's a great read, told primarily in Watney's voice.
I've read or listened to the book at least 6 times. One of my favorites parts is when Mark says that if it was a movie the crew would all greet him in the airlock. That's exactly what they did. Their attention to detail for the book makes this the best book to movie ever. There were parts I wish they had added like the drill frying Pathfinder, the dust storm, or the rover roll over but I also understand that it's a movie and they are limited to time.
that line was good...but not as good as when they told him to watch his mouth because everything he says was being rebroadcast. "Oh yeah? Look! Boobies!! ( . )( . ) " HA HA HA HA
What they don't mention in the movie is that Whatney is also the Mission Handyman. This is why he has all the technical skills in addition to being a Botanist. Also, consider this: Matt Damon only had 3 scenes with other people - the rest he was acting against himself!
11:40 Farmers, gardeners, landscapers, etc. use livestock manure as a fertilizer to provide nutrients needed for crop production. It doesn't change the taste; I don't know where the hell you got that.
Great reaction. Jeff Daniels character of the Director of NASA gets different results from different people. He is VERY pragmatic and dispassionate, but he also makes decisions quickly. His actions and decisions can be interpreted in several ways, and I am not sure that there is any real right answer. But it is interesting to see that he is the one part of this movie that different reaction channels tend to see very differently from each other. Thanks again for the video! Glad I found your channel!
Yeah, we understand where he is coming from. But the story is about rescuing someone, and anything that gets in the way of that is seen as a hurdle that needs to be overcome
I read somewhere that one of the biggest "problems" with the movie is that storms that powerful do not happen on Mars because of the thin atmosphere. The author of the novel could not come up with any other reason for them to have to leave in such a hurry. If Mark had simply been blown away by some malfunction/explosion they should have had time to search and find him. The storm was the only way.
23:16 The answer is about 99% accurate. Engineers, Botanists AND ASTRONAUTS were consulted in the making of the movie, and the ONLY thing that was pure Hollywood license was the reason they scrubbed the mission at the beginning ... the force of the wind. The Martian atmosphere is so sparse that even a strong gale on Mars would have the force of a light breeze on Earth, but all the science in the movie is real and accurate.
And even the storm is taken straight from the book, though in the book the initial concern is that it would sandblast the MAV's sensors so it couldn't be guided up to rendevous with the Hermes.
Two things are pure Hollywood. The Iron Man flying at the end is the other. The book doesn't have it, it is immediately shot down as an option. In reality, there isn't enough air in the suit, especially at a high enough pressure, to get you moving like that. All he would have achieved in reality was drastically increasing his risk of dying from vacuum exposure by wasting oxygen and puncturing his suit. Though.. "ASTRONAUTS", this means a lot less when you have Chris Hadfield peddling misinformation about how vacuum exposure kills humans. I guess NASA doesn't train them on the specifics of how vacuum kills, just that its a really fucking bad thing to be exposed to. The following information is paraphrased from experts that actually study this and from findings of real vacuum exposure accidents. Stuff I guess the former commander of the ISS just wasn't privy to or didn't actually care about. A shame since I really respect him in every instance besides this. "You'd cook, boil, and freeze simultaneously" or something to that effect is the bullshit he spouted. The fact The Expanse was more accurate with vacuum exposure than a fucking astronaut is telling (If you know, you know. Don't spoil it for those who don't). You wouldn't freeze anytime soon, definitely not while conscious, because vacuum is an INSULATOR. And in sunlight you would heat up, shocker. Any water on you would boil and freeze but your body itself holds a lot of heat. The only heat loss then is radiative, which is slow so its definitely not going to kill you and in sunlight you'd rapidly heat up. Almost like that's why the ISS has so many fucking radiators and why good thermoses utilize a vacuum layer to keep things cold or hot. Boil? Technically, yes. Not in the "cook and boil" sense but the low pressure boiling off the liquids on your tongue, capillaries in your skin, eyes, and the gasses in your joints. This isn't what kills you though and it wouldn't "burn", it would just be very painful to recover from. Especially when you pair it with the fact you'd be getting the worst sunburn in history from unshielded rays from the sun, now that would really burn but not what would kill you. That drop in pressure is what knocks you out, your blood is also partially pressurized by your circulatory system so you get about 15 to 20 seconds before passing out and a minute or so before brain damage starts occurring before death. So, sure, you'd cook, boil, and freeze. But not simultaneously and if your body was in an orbit, it'd be a cycle more than a simple process. Every word of his in his statement basically needs a damn asterisk next to it and several paragraphs explaining the full context. Because as presented, its far more wrong than than right. Autistic rant over. Read or don't, I don't care. But I'm too committed to delete it so I won't.
@@Nyx_2142 I believe it was in 1966 when an Engineer working for NASA called Jim LeBlanc who was exposed to a high-strength vacuum by accident. He passed out very quickly but he did remark just before he passed out that the could feel the saliva boiling off of his tongue. Though it wasn't in space, therefore the temperature wasn't the same, it does raise the point that you would likely pass out very quickly from the lack of pressure first before anything else as you said. What happens to your body afterwards is almost an afterthought, because you know... you'd be dead.
@@Nyx_2142 As stated, all the SCIENCE was accurate ... the 'Iron Man' thing was not science. Saying that, if he was going to die anyway then why NOT try a 'Hail-Mary'? If it doesn't work he's just as dead as if he did nothing, but it COULD work if the tear wasn't too big. You'd want a longer period of lower thrust rather than one quick burst ... a big tear would give a high thrust quick burst that would be virtually uncontrollable and then he's screwed, whereas a small tear would give a lot longer period of thrust and you'd be able to control direction somewhat while still being able to breathe and still have some pressure in the suit.
If you're in IT, you know AscII code. It's basically hexadecimal (16 digits) converting to characters. For example, a 2 digit AscII code of '41' is a capital 'A'. That's how they communicated initially.
EXCEPT for the strength of the storm.. Which was unrealistic, but he let that slide because the rest was really good, and without the storm there was no story lol
@@DB-zp9un The initial storm was deliberately unrealistic and was done so by the author of the novel knowing it was unrealistic. It had to be as it was the only way of having the crew leave Watney behind still alive. Any realistic scenario would either kill the whole crew or allow the whole crew including Watney to survive and leave together. There was a second highly realistic storm in the Novel during his trip to the Ares IV landing site but was cut from the film for time.
The reason he wasn't tethered was because the tether would've been caught up in the spinning parts of the ship. If you go back, you can see him passing between rotating parts of the ship. He would've been either pulled in and crushed, or the tether could snap and he'd be sent off into a random direction. Anything can happen if the tether gets stuck
the director is really not the villain you think he is. his decision not to use the hermes is really not about how he looks, but the legitimate concern of killing all 6 crew members instead of at least getting 5 of them home safely. Also, if he were only concerned about the looks, he wouldnt have taken the blame for the unsuccesful first launch attempt. The only looks he is concerned about is the looks of nasa as a whole, which is arguably right, bc as he said himself at the beginning: if there is a dead astronaut (let alone 6 dead astronauts) all over the news, nasa wouldnt even get the budget for a paperclip and would probably almost cease to exist.
The NASA director in the movie gets a bad rap. He's being asked to make a decision that would risk the lives of the returning crew. Those that are returning have a much greater chance of survival than the one stranded on Mars. So the decision he makes, though hard, is actually the right decision.
Yeah, it’s a bit frustrating how almost everyone immediately assumes he’s being self important and making bad decisions. They say his priority is how he looks, but as a director his priorities have to be the safety of all 7 crew (so putting 6 at very real risk even if they want to for a chance to help 1 is for good reason) and also an organization of thousands trying to keep a mission of exploration going. The last time NASA lost a whole crew like they would if a nothing went wrong it was all but shut down for years, all crew flights suspended, and it made it even harder to get funding to continue anything. It’s not just money, exploration is important and NASA already struggles to get funds. I don’t know if I would make the decisions he does, but I also would never want to be the director of such a huge (and important) organization.. and even though things work out I do think he makes the right decisions. His job is balancing risks and risk mitigation, every manned mission he is responsible for has real risk.
Yup, basically the director has the mentality of "the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few" and in this specific case, the needs of one. There is nothing wrong with trying to uphold that logic to try to preserve the "many" over one person.
you have to remember the people on earth are basically only receiving the transmission 15-20 minutes after it happened. so everyone is basically waiting for the signal to get to earth and its been done. he could have died 20 minutes previously before anyone on earth knew.
I get the frustration with the director, but you have to remember that his job is to protect first the mission (both the specific one and the larger general endeavour of space science as a whole) and then the team, as a group. It helps, I think, to remember that astronauts are, in a sense, like soldiers (sometimes literally), or even special-forces operators; they know that what they do carries a relatively-high risk of death. Accepting the job means accepting that, if necessary, you will die to achieve your directive and to protect your crew. That doesn't mean they want to die, of course, but it's not like the more-usual employment where "sacrifice your life" is about as far from your job description as you can get. NASA came pretty close to shutting any kind of crewed missions down for the foreseeable future after the PR disasters of the Challenger and the Columbia. NASA's funding is always on a lot more of a knife-edge than you might think, especially with such strong and increasing anti-intellectual and anti-science sentiments running through the nation's right-wing (indeed, many right-wingers have made entire careers in the last 50 years out of attacking government public-interest science in bad-faith as "ivory-tower eggheads wasting your tax dollars", despite the fact that science funding is a drop in the bucket, especially compared to the near-trillion-a-year military budget). And once projects are shut-down, it's often incredibly hard and expensive to restart them, as teams dissipate and take-on other jobs and relevant expertise is lost. If you can't get NASA maintenance funding, good luck securing cash for the much-steeper start-up costs, and private firms are very unlikely to take-on the kind of not-immediately-monetizable experimentation that is vital to science but that only governments seem able to fund. So, like it or not, there's a lot of science riding on NASA's ability to make itself look good to the average voter (and we all know what George Carlin said about the "average" voter; "think of how stupid the "average voter" is, and then remember that, statistically, half of all voters are dumber than that"), so the NASA director's apparently-frivolous concerns are really anything but.
In a story about rescuing someone, anything that gets in the way of that is seen as a hindrance. If the story was about saving NASA you would do what you need to do to accomplish that goal. It's just a perspective thing.
Something that they also kind of left out but I understand why, is the time delay between transmissions. It would take greater than 40 minutes to send and receive a message depending on where Earth and Mars are in their orbit. So whenever he asked a question he would probably have longer than an hour to wait to get an answer and or instructions because they would have to decipher what he's saying and then formulate an answer that takes time.
Hey guys. Normal rockets/ships burn engines for a short time to generate thrust then coast at that speed so only have limited fuel to thrust and glide so can’t turn around. The Hermes in the book has an ion engine which is so of in use in real world. They trickle gas like argon or neon which generates a tiny bit of thrust but over a long period, this makes you go real quick. Short version, no, they can’t turn around and go back!
Distances in space are literally impossible for humans to comprehend at first. There are a bunch of RUclips videos which try to show this. Here is one: Solar System Model From a Drone's View Each time I watch one of these presentations, I am still blown away. But remember, these models show the planets in a line, the SHORTEST distance they would be. In actuality, say, Mars and Earth are at different parts of their orbits which tremendously increases the distances. Hence why they have to wait for the two to be at their closest.
Yup. In space travel, where there is no air resistance (or resistance of any kind, really), inertia is king. You get yourself to a certain speed and direction (a "vector"), and you'll keep moving that way until something acts on you to change things, which, in a vacuum, can be an exceptionally-long wait. Also, boosting anything up out of Earth's gravity-well is incredibly expensive (don't know the latest numbers, but I recall estimates of $10 000/kg, and that was decades ago), so if you can do without additional fuel for your orbiting ship, you do. That's all to say that having a "turn around" capacity on that ship, even if possible, would come at a truly astronomical price-point, and it's already hard enough to get tax dollars for science.
6:52 - *“Now, did they mention his background at all? Like, is he a doctor or an engineer?”* I don't think they mentioned his specialisation at this point in the movie, but _any_ astronaut has extensive training in _both_ medicine and engineering, including doing an actual medical rotation in a working hospital. While the movie mostly talks about his botanist specialisation, in the book he was a dual specialist in engineering and botany, and he ended up doing *_a lot_* of engineering over the course of the story. 7:53 - *“What's he doing?”* He's checking that the main piece and the bit he just fished out fit together - if they didn't fit, that would have meant there was still another piece left inside him he would have to get out, before he could close up the wound. 17:18 - *“Could they…” - “turn the one around?”* A lot of people ask this, when watching this movie. While the exact engine technology of the _Hermes_ is not explained in the movie, like in the book, it is clearly implied that they are still subject to orbital mechanics - no far-future, sci-fi, super-powerful engines like they have in _Star Trek,_ that can just power through to any point in space they like, on sheer brute force alone. Since they still have to follow orbital mechanics, once the _Hermes_ broke from Mars orbit and went on a trajectory back to earth, they were _fully committed!_ They could no more turn around and go back to Mars than a parachute jumper could change his mind halfway down to the ground, pull his chute back into the backpack, and fly back up into the plane. It is quite possible that we will _never_ have engines that could skip out of orbital mechanics, unless we somehow discover a completely new set of physics. There is nothing currently known to theoretical physics that is at the same time *small* enough, *powerful* enough, and *_safe_* enough to install in a space vehicle meant for humans to ride. 19:57 - *“Boromir!” - “Uh oh… Sean Bean's in this movie. Hope he makes it to the end.”* The movie is so _relentlessly_ positive and optimistic that, even though Sean Bean is in it, only his character's _career_ dies. 😁 34:20 - *“Can that hold?”* The short answer is "no". The long answer is "No fucking way! That's so far beyond plausible, it's not just ridiculous, it's _fucking STUPID!"_ They expect us to believe _at the same time_ that the pressure inside the Hab is so high that it can somehow _launch_ that gigantic, incredibly heavy airlock high into the air, flipping end over end… and yet so low that it can't escape past a visibly flimsy layer of plastic wrap and duct tape. The decision to replace the book's sturdy, high-tech "hab canvas" with a sheet of cheap see-through plastic wrap (and in the later scene with a bit of parachute silk) is one that simply _baffles_ me to this day. It completely undermines the suspension of disbelief. Most of the compromises and pieces of artistic license the movie takes are perfectly understandable, made necessary by the constraints of time, money, and the medium itself. But this mindboggling decision cannot be explained by _any_ of those factors. I love this movie to bits, but I'll never understand why they did this. Thank you for sharing your reaction with us, it was fun seeing this movie again, through your eyes!
You forgot to mention that Mars's atmosphere wouldn't have wind strong enough to flap the plastic around like that. Not even mentioning that the plastic would be ballooned out from the pressure inside and not able to flap at all, assuming the plastic was able to hold at all. Also, the explosive decompression of the HAB airlock is unrealistic. The HAB isn't big enough nor does it have enough air in it to explosively decompress like that, especially with what is possibly only 1 atmosphere of air at most. But, even then, its likely not 1 atmosphere but a lot lower like the suits would be (their reason is mobility, among others). So it would likely be 0.5 or even 0.3 atmospheres of pressure. Way too low for that kind of explosive decompression. You can find people way better at the science and math than me breaking down the forces on the HAB airlock and the hole that caused it to decompress on Reddit, even at 1 atmosphere its an incredibly unrealistic depiction (as basically every explosive decompression scene is in film). Honestly, if I have to dig that deep and nitpick that fucking much, the author did a really good fucking job of getting his science correct. I may bitch and nitpick at 5% or less of the movie but adore the other 95%. Guess you can say I bitch and nitpick at the 5% because of how high a standard the other 95% sets.
@@Nyx_2142 100% agreed. In most other movies I wouldn't have cared about the duct tape or plastic wrap, because the entire rest of it would already have set such a low bar - but it's the sudden incongruity _for no reason_ that gets me. I know that Mars' atmosphere is too thin to have a brutal sandstorm like the one that kicks things off; that's an acknowledged break from reality that the book author admitted to, in order to get things going. I completely understand that the movie doesn't try to simulate Mars Gravity; that would be ridiculous to try with real actors within a sane budget and time limit. I'm fine that everything from the Hab to the airlock to the Hermes to Mission Control is _ridiculously, _*_unfathomably_* spacious, because shooting a movie inside realistically cramped sets would be a nightmare, both for the actors and for the crew, and it would make the audience uncomfortable and distract them from the story. All of that is perfectly understandable for reasons of the medium or the budget, etc. It doesn't put the slightest scratch in my willing suspension of disbelief. But the plastic wrap was an unforced error for no reason I can think of. That's why it irks me so.
@@SebastianWeinbergin the book, repairing the HAB is explained much better. Also love the quote- 'I hear hissing. Either the airlock has a leak, or there are snakes in here.' The cover with tape bothered me too. In the book, it was much better explained
Teddy isn't a villain. He's not making decisions based on how he'll look. He's the director of NASA and has to make hard decisions, and being optimistic isn't part of his job description. He has to think about saving the most lives, and saving not only the mission, but future missions. NASA has had a history of struggling against budget cuts to be able to continue doing the science they are there to do. This movie really doesn't have a villain... unless you want to include Mars itself (and outer space).
I recommend watching the two extra scenes they used to promote the movie: - Ares 3 The Right Stuff (crew psychological interviews after isolation training) - Ares 3 Farewell (Mark Watney vlog on the Hermes orbiting Earth right before leaving for Mars) Also another inaccuracy which I didn't see mentioned in the comments: Martian soil is actually toxic to plant life, so Mark would not have been able to grow his crops. But this piece of data was only discovered after the book had been published, Andy Weir could not have known.
7:57 "What's he doing?" He was checking if he got everything, as if the piece he retrieved didn't match up with the length he'd pulled out then there was more left in there to find (more PAIN).
No-one else seems to have said it so i will, the Mars scenes were filmed in the Waddi Rum in Jordan. I was lucky enough to visit before covid and it's breath-takingly beautiful, you truly feel like you are on another world.
Between Interstellar, Saving Private Ryan, and The Martian ,the U.S. Govt has spent a ton of money rescuing Matt Damon. Tess' unrestrained laughter at the funny parts is most enjoyable.
The mission was to take longer, that's why he wanted to stay and wait it out in the habitat. And if you watch during the movie he's finishing up things that they were supposed to do but didn't because they left early.
You can see at least one star in the daytime, it's called the sun lol great reaction though, just found y'all about a week ago and loving all the content 😁🤘
In the novel, he's both a botanist and an electrical engineer. It explains why he's so capable when it comes to hooking up the different electronics. Not sure why it was left out of the film.
16:54 the director of nasa is not giving up on him so fast, he’s just being realistic if he spread out his food, nasa doesn’t know he’s growing potatoes, so the director is playing every bad card so everyone in his team can play the good card to figure out the situation.
I'm not sure, but I think Matt Damon's line about "solve enough problems and you get to go home" might have been inspired by Col. Chris Hadfield (you might remember him from a famous rendition of, IIRC, "Space Oddity", performed on the ISS, that did big RUclips numbers a few years ago). I recall an interview with him in which he said (paraphrase) that being in space is about being surrounded by forces that are trying to kill you, and that you just have to keep solving the problem that's going to cause you to die next until you're back in the environment for which billions of years of evolution have adapted us (a context you don't appreciate until you're outside it). I'm sure it's not the first time the idea has been expressed regarding space, but it's a memorable one.
CHRIS HADFIELD: "Study every system on the spaceship {holds up thick manual}, and then boil it down to what I call a 'one pager'. You have to solve your problem in one breath" From his "Master Class"
Fun fact: When Watney recieves the first verbal communication in years and he begins to cry, that wasn't on the script. Matt Damon did his side of the movie alone, guiding himself with just recordings of other parts already filmed, so it was a surprise for him when he heard the other actos at the launch scene. His crying was real.
They did a similar thing for "Saving Private Ryan", IIRC. The rest of the "rescue squad" actors did a couple weeks of grueling military basic training before Damon was brought-in for the last of it, and that was done deliberately to create the sense of resentment and "why is he so special?" envy that would naturally have occurred in a bunch of grunts being tasked with an impossible mission to rescue just some guy.
@@michaelccozens In United 93, the actors playing the terrorists were kept separate from the actors playing the passengers for the same reason, to give a very real palpable unease between them. It was also done with the Somali actors playing the pirates from the actors playing the crew on Captain Phillips.
6:45 -- he's not non-chalant, he's prioritizing survival above emotion. That's how you survive. The brain has a way of helping you do that in emergencies. 12:15 -- "If you can smell it, it's already in your mouth."
First time watching your channel ❤ As a huge science fiction fan you guys did a great reaction. Most people don't understand that Mars and Earth change positions And it makes a big difference in how long it takes to get there. So very astute observation. I would love to see you guys react to Dune. It is a beautiful movie with a great plot I think you guys would love it.
Ppl with no farming experience are so cute when they thing 💩is gross. You know what a potato smells like if you were to dig it up mid germination.... it smells worse than 💩, it smells like 💀😂
"It smells like death." Very literally if you leave them in your basement too long. Though, I'm sure if solanine actually has a smell. It'll still kill you in high quantity though.
I don't know if someone's already mentioned this but the storms on Mars don't have enough Force to do what you see here in the movie. Yes, Martian sandstorms can kick up a lot of dust, even enough to cloud the planet, but that's because of the Martian soil. The Martian atmosphere is extremely thin and there's just not enough force behind it to do anything close to do what you see in the movie. They needed something to get him stranded so that's what they went with.
To put it in relation: The Martian atmosphere, at ground level, has around 1% the pressure we have on Earth at ground level. So a storm with the (down here devastating) speed of 200 mph would feel like a 2 mph summer breeze (at Earth). You can get pretty dusty, though...
@@JessAndTess Its not a plot hole. The author openly admits he had to fudge the science for a plot device because he couldn't think of how to force them to abandon Watney otherwise.
I’ve seen this movie a couple times before and this is the first time I notice: At 52:07 Sebastian Stan’s character talks about jumping onto a moving train and that he “might miss”. Anyone else seeing what I’m seeing? 😂
one thing they left out of the movie that was in the book was that if something went wrong with the Hermes picking up the extra supplies they wouldn't be able to stop. they would slingshot back towards Mars without food and they would starve. So the crew decide who should survive and it is inferred to that the young woman would have to eat the others bodies in order to make it back to earth.
It’s not that difficult to travel to Mars, I mean it is hard, incredibly, but this shows what it all boils down to: math and science. The cost is sort of astounding, but with enough support (financial) and time, we engineers and scientists can solve nearly any problem. My inner engineer smiled when they showed hacking the machine by modifying a few bits, hex being one way to represent machine code. FF being decimal 255 AKA 11111111 in binary (all 8 bits are flipped on, 255 resulting).
The Audible book (RC Bray narration is best!), is a MUST! An 11 hour movie of the mind, with many more "incidents"... The author consulted with NASA on keeping the science real. The only blatant inaccuracy was the storm that caused the accident, which the author needed to force the launch without him. A "storm" in the thin atmosphere of Mars would not be strong enough to fly a kite!
the book is amazing Andy also wrote 2 other books.. "Project Hail Mary" and "Artemis" First time I listened to them they were ok.. 2nd time I enjoyed them much more.
this for me is probably one of Matt Damon's best films/role.. i love the movie as a whole but i think damon Really get's across the sheer impact of being totally Alone the only living thing of an entire planet....
I love how technology improves and as movies reflect the latest, older movies look so funny. I remember movies before the space program began, and they thought of rocket ships as actual ships in the sense you get in and steer and go this way and that way at will. The ships were always streamlined, even though we knew it wasn't needed to be for vacuum in deep space. Viewers in the '50's would be blown away by the appearance of the Hermes. I do remember back then reading that space flight was impossible because it would take a rocket ship the size of the Statue of Liberty to put a human into orbit. Well, it did. (Hope you get a chance to watch Apollo 13 based extremely close on the actual sequence of events.) Also hard to think it makes sense to jettison the first and second stage rockets because all that intricate expensive machinery is cheaper than the cost of the extra relatively-cheap fuel to keep these attached. One thing I find interesting is that the terrain in this looks plausible, even though it was shot on earth in areas of extreme dessert. Yet the views of the Martian terrain being beamed back to earth now show a landscape that is very rocky but with rounded features of a completely water-eroded geology. (Probably there ARE regions on Mars that look like those in the movie but at the time it was filmed, it seemed to be thought ALL of Mars looks as portrayed.)
they already know mars was fairly rocky but it would make sense that they would choose relativly flat part like certien sections of acidalia planitia. (of course its important to note that area of acidalia planitia this is supposed to happen is actually fairly rocky but there are parts realy flat as well) and how do i know they already knew becasue they mostly targeted those areas for their rovers they just thought that there were far less with mostly river inflows like one Perseverance is in right now(perseverance landed in one of the inflows to Jezero crater) the ball landing system of pathfinder spirit and Opportunity was designed to get around having need for extremly precise landing systems with parachutes and sky cranes like they use now while still protecting landing craft from rocks
9:36 Not cynaide no. (in the book it is morphine) 18:12 They can redirect where it lands remotly. 27:55 The extended cut actually says what the word is. They give the warning not to google it. Do not ignore this and google is.(it is stronger then the F word)
31:14 Aparently the nasa certified duct tape for space is the exact same stuff you buy in the hardware store. 37:45 that is the Delta 178 from 1986 52:48 this might be the friction from the space suit.
He was putting the pieces together to determine the length to make sure he got it all out. FYI most farmers in this country use manure as fertilizer. We buy and eat those vegetables.
as to "when" this takes place, there is no year listed on the movie or in the book, but Andy Wier wanted to only use technology that exists today, so there are no "sci-fi" gadgets etc, this is how it would go IF we decided to start a project like this today.
Modulo the hab canvas' ability to block radiation without being an inch thick and weighing a ton, that we don't have today. (He's given interviews about the science, which he researched extensively and had reviewed by various professionals. Also the estimate of what it would cost to build Hermes was over a trillion dollars.)
@@myphone4590 estimates i read were in few 10 bilion to few 100 billion depending on contractors, but reality is cost is very much a besides thing as it is supposed to be used for multiple back and forth trips plus for some supply runs which would make price of it kinda unimportant
"Just launch it into space and wait for Mars to hit it." That's more accurate than you might think. You launch the probe from Earth into a ballistic solar orbit that intercepts Mars' orbit and wait for Mars and the probe to be at the same place at the same time.
I REALLY enjoyed the book. Most of the science is sound. Actually, probably the biggest inaccuracy pertains to the initial emergency. The Mars atmosphere is so thin, the wind would have to blow ridiculously fast - several hundred mph - to exert enough force to tip over something as massive as the MAV (and it would invalidate the premise to send the MAV a year or more in advance if it could just be blown over in a bad storm). I think they did a pretty good job adapting it for the movie, with one exception: the stupid Iron Man thing at the end. That was total Hollywood crap, and not in the book. I mean, they have an MMU that is designed to facilitate moving around in space!
If yall like reading, I LOVE Andy Weir's writing! Artemis is another good one if you want something different from this, and Hail Mary is also great if you want another survivor sort of story, but it's much different than The Martian. The book of this is well-adapted, but the original is great if you want to dive deeper into this story and it's science!
The time/distance between Terra and Mars is not constant. They both have different sized orbits around the sun, and travel them at different rates, so a lot of the wait between missions is to capitalize on the shortest possible route between them, which is referred to as a 'launch window'. So, strange as it sounds, to send something immediately means that it may arrive long after something sent a year or two later
Even with a number of inaccuracies and the wildly stupid punctured glove flight, it's still a great movie. Well, and Rich explaining a basic gravity assist manoeuvre to a roomful of NASA directors using a stapler is, yeah... =)
TIP: not sure if all the microphones work the same way so you might need to check the specifications for the ones you have... but I think your voice enter through the side, and you have them pointing at you. I think the idea is that you can place one of those mics on a table and it will capture the voice from everyone around a table. You probably need just one.
No, it's a front facing dynamic microphone designed to be inches from your mouth. Mics like the Blue Yeti are condenser that are side facing. So they can pick up audio from farther away, from multiple sources and designed to be perpendicular to your mouth.
They needed Mars i guess to be the baddy in the beginning of the movie, as there is no way such storms can happen on Mars, the worst wind you can get there is a very light breeze. I understand however that they needed a way for things to go wrong.
All things considered, this movie was an amazing adaptation of the book and included a lot of pretty good details. Of course having Sean Bean present for the LOTR reference was quite meta and not something that could have been done in the book! 😂
Teddy is not evil, but he cares more about NASA and the future of spaceflight. In the movie he's made to look selfish but he just tries to see a bigger picture.
A martian day (a sol) however is surprisingly similiar to a day on earth. On mars: It is 24 hours and 39 minutes long. And this is merely a product of coincidence.
so many people say oh they gave up on him know the crew did not give up on him when they left him the commander had to think of the lives of the rest of her crew
I've seen this movie several times and watched several reactions but while watching your reaction, realized one thing. In a sense, they stayed true to form while Sean Bean lived, his career died in this movie.
U guys are not alone in suggesting to turn around but its not that simple in space. Weight and fuel efficency is everything in space and to limit weight u dont wanna carry more then u really need. Becouse there isent anything that can slow u down in space to change velocity or anything u have to use fuel so just turning around is not an option. First they have to cancel out any forward momentum they already have and then speed up back to Mars. Once they reach Mars they have to slow down again to pick him up and once again speed up to Earth and still have enough fuel left to slow down once they reach Earth. Everyone of those manuevers are using alot of fuel that was never expected to be needed when they calculated how mutch the whole mission would need. Ofc they have extra fuel for emergencys but nowhere near enough to be able to make all those unplanned manuevers.
@@JessAndTess Mars has less than 1 atmosphere of pressure, like less than 1%, something like .08 or .09 psi. We measure by the base atmospheric pressure from earth, so the measurement of 1 atmosphere is around 14.7 psi. It is crazy to think about but if you were in the international space station and it were to get a leak, if the leak is small enough to not compromise structural integrity of the capsule, lets say its the size of a quarter, you could actually just place your hand over the hole to stop the leak. You'd get a real bad hickey but you can think of it like stopping a drain in a sink, with about 14lb of pressure you wouldn't get sucked out through a pinhole like the movies and TV show. Honestly if you want some real physics and good storytelling, I highly recommend The Expanse, 6 seasons, about 10 to 14 or so eps a season, and season 6 is 6 eps that are slighly longer. Everything in that show is true to physics bar a couple things like the efficient fusion drives that allowed the setting to happen and other stuff I won't spoil just in case because it's WILD. I could go on about the science in that show, everything down to the way they generate gravity is ingenious and I have never seen it portrayed in media. One thing just in case you watch it, it follows a book series and only covers the first 6 books, that messes with the pacing a bit due to production issues and stuff, book 1 ends partway though season 2 so that I would say is the real ending of season 1, same thing for season 2 partway into season 3, it normalizes after that because Amazon took it away from the Scifi network. When the book endings happen YOU'LL KNOW, so best not to treat the end of season 1 like the actual end. But it just kinda drops you in and you gotta pay attention for the first 8 or so eps because Scifi didn't handle it well, so worldbuilding galore, again it normalizes after that, people are usually hooked by ep 4 and in for the whole thing by 8 on average. Easily the best Scifi in the last decade, never seen that era of space travel, humanity is only as far as the belt and sprinkled in the outer planets, no hyper space, etc, like the age of sailing in space, taking weeks to months depending on how far out it is, like a week from Earth to Mars type speeds. Sorry for the novel, you guys just seemed into the science of it so figured you might like a show where when you look at it you can be confident it's all real, with some damn good cold war politics and character writing lol. Either way that stuff is kinda important to know going in, as well as the first season being a slow burn mystery so you aren't spoon fed info right away. No pun intended but it really do be acting like The Great Filter out here with people expecting it to be immediately crazy out the gate only to be met with a mystery and odd pacing they weren't ready for Again sorry for the novel, I can imagine you weren't expecting it but I will shill the shit out of that show, it isn't talked about enough. Books are insane too.
@@JessAndTess It is definitely not for everyone, I can respect that, I am just in love with it due to it's accuracy and their ability to use physics to add to the drama, mostly in season 3. But again if you decide to give it another shot I won't spoil, hopefully it will grab you more. The writing is so tight and they have so many blink and you'll miss it moments. Also the last prop auction is happening right now and I am so pissed I am too broke to buy something lmao
The storm is enough to destroy their spacecraft. So they have to abort, and Mark gets hit in the face with a radio station. For the record, Mars has the worst, fastest storms in all the inner Solar system.
Christ, I hate when people that have science literacy levels below elementary school try to peddle their bullshit. The strongest wind speeds on Mars top out around 60mph. The weakest tornadoes on Earth exceed that while having an atmosphere over 100 times denser. A 200mph storm on Mars (something completely impossible) would feel like a very light 2mph breeze on Earth due to how thin the atmosphere is. It doesn't have the worst storms in the inner planets, it doesn't have anywhere near the fastest. The lightest breeze on Earth has more force than Mars's worst storm. The very dusty soil of Mars simply makes it look worse than it is. Venus is consistently more windy than Earth as the entire atmosphere spins around the planet at very high speed (changes depending on altitude) but tops out at about 100m/s. Earth has burst speeds that are a bit higher than that with the highest recorded 113m/s. So, if you want highest measured in the inner planets, Earth has the highest. If you want the highest average, Venus likely takes it, especially considering its atmosphere is denser than Earth's so the wind is stronger.. Mars get the bronze simply because there isn't a 4th player in the inner planets with an atmosphere worth measuring (and Mars barely makes the cut there).
One of my most proud moments was a decade ago on a mailing list someone said they were reconfiguring their email client and asking if we were getting the email, and I saw it the moment it came in and said no, so double-check your settings, and they replied and said "huh, I could've sworn it was set up correctly, I guess I'll keep working on it" and two other people rushed in to say "I think he was joking" and I'm sad I can't find that email, lol.
actually Jess, NASA accepts people from all backgrounds and specialities- you don't have to be a scientist or a genius these days, so you COULD be NASA material. Tess, I think your reaction was great and you had lots of great things to say x
The Martian is one of the greatest books ever written. Sci-Fi ? This is barely Fiction, mostly science. The amount of research Andy Weir put into this is insane. A lot of this is currently true, possible, or will soon be, or just makes sense. Sure, it's not the most complicated plot, story, danger, adventure, whatever, but it is damn near perfect still, and probably should be used in schools to show what science, sound reasoning, knowledge can do, why it is important. The story is nerd shit, and it's cool, and it keeps you entertained. There are many good writers, i wonder how many would even try something like this to be honest. Then tack it onto we NEED to do this shit, we need a self sustaining base on Mars ASAP. One giant rock hits us, bye bye humanity. Not that we're too great, we're fucking up this planet and each other like crazy, but we have potential, but as long as we stay on one planet we have a bunch of ways we can fuck up and all die and zero backups. And just a self sustaining base on the Moon does not cut it, it's not solving the problem, for some things Earth and the Moon's fate might be tied. And this story has another thing, humanity coming together with one single goal, leave no man behind. Just get it fucking done. And honestly, showing it can be done will make us proud, put our minds together and solve the problem, cost be damned, we can rebuild, losing faith, drive, is FAR more dangerous. We can do just about anything if we want it bad enough, cost be damned. If everything was about cost, we might have gotten nowhere, because we had no guarantees anything would work because we were figuring shit out. We might have never gotten to the damn industrial revolution, to space. What has it brought us so far ? A shitload of technology we use for all kinds of stuff we had no inkling of beforehand. What if we slowed the whole thing down by 50 years, and at year 49 a big rock hits us. Bye bye.
Totally random comment, but I also follow a music reaction channel called "Soul Singer Discovers". I think she might be Tess's doppelganger. Maybe it's just me... Great reaction, btw!
45:38 "I was not expecting the Chinese to be the heroes" The studio wanted to release the movie in China and make a lot of money there. Wait you say... China is authoritarian, welded people's apartment doors shut during the pandemic, has an Orwellian social credit system, and operates concentrat--n camps where they do forced breed--g and org-n harvesting! Yes but... the studio wanted to release the movie in China and make a lot of money there. 😐
That wasn't a studio decision, it was in the book. A dozen years ago when the book was written there weren't many other space programs making boosters that big, japan and india and so on were mostly launching small satellites into near Earth orbit at the time. That may have helped the movie studio's decision to option the book though...
Time stamp it if you caught the silent cry for attention from our super secret 3rd reactor!
48:37?
Everything about this movie except the storm in the beginning was all accurate the storm though wouldn't be as strong since Mars doesn't have an atmosphere
@@DarthKilaj85I mean, Mars _does_ have an atmosphere, but you're right that the air pressure is so low that the storm having that effect would be impossible. Everything else after that is completely scientifically plausible. Which is something I love about the book and the movie.
@@thenathanhaines Except for the Iron Man scene. The way he held out his arm, he would just have spun around uncontrollably.
@@andreasvogler1875 Well, true, which is why he doesn't try it in the book. But I think the movie earns this. (The only thing I dislike is when they pull each other closer with the tether they slow down, which is the opposite of how that works.)
"The director is more concerned with how he looks in all of this than he is with Mark."
it's not really about his image. He's responsible for all of NASA, so his biggest concern is the agency's survival. When a major tragedy happens in spaceflight, like the real life disasters with Apollo 1 or the Challenger and Columbia shuttles, America understandably freaks out about it and there's a massive public debate around space travel, with how risky it is and how much it costs. The agency has to shut down operations for a few years and do a thorough investigation of what happened so that they can take steps to prevent it from happening again, and Congress usually ties NASA up in hearings and ends up cutting their funding.
If he approves a risky rescue mission and it goes wrong, they lose 6 astronauts and a multi-billion dollar vehicle that was designed to go back and forth to Mars for 8 or 9 missions. Congress would never just give them more money to build another one, so the manned Mars program is dead, and probably all human space exploration with it. There's a possibility NASA gets shut down altogether or gets its funding cut to just enough to put satellites in orbit and nothing else. If they just lose the one guy, that's a lot more recoverable. He's trying to make the best call and wants to get Mark home as much as everyone else, but the risk vs reward calculation is different for the guy in charge of all of NASA than it is for the folks who only work on this one mission. He has to consider ALL of the ramifications, including the political and public relations ones, because they make a huge difference in the big picture for NASA's ability to continue.
Exactly!
Agreed. I hated the very shallow take that it is all for his own hide. He clearly cares great and is doing his best. For that matter, working to bring the five home is probably even the responsible, right call here. He's the good guy, not the bad.
That's the problem with the realism of this movie - viewers don't expect a bunch of good people with differening prioitites all doing their best. They expect a fictional story with good guys and bad guys.
People accustomed to a regular story just can't help but look for a villain. The director wasn't a bad guy, it's just the responsibility of his shoulders goes beyond just one man.
Also, he'd just gone out on a limb, cancelling the safety tests on the supply rocket in order to launch it in time to do any good. That having gone badly, he's now overcorrecting.
Fun fact, all the scenes on Mars were actually filmed on Earth
Not true, Ridley Scott insisted on filming on location
Can't even film on location. That's why it lacked immersion.
Duh !🤦
Really? Did you know they did land on the moon too. Only probes and remotes have landed on Mars. I assume you are being sarcastic.
Hah!!
"Potatoes gonna taste like crap"
That isn't how fertilizer works. lol
They've never grown food with natural fertilizer (or even learned about it in the slightest) and it shows.
When he pulled the knob out of his stomach he was matching up the pieces to know if he got it all out.
Smart!
The science is very accurate except for two notable exceptions. The books does a really good job of explaining all the science. The author admits that Mar's thin atmosphere means the storms on Mars would not be able to tip over the MAV. He just needed that plot point to force abandonment of Watney. In the book Watney jokes about puncturing his suit to go Iron Man, but he doesn't do it. There would not be anywhere enough thrust from a leaking suit to make any difference.
Yeah, the book and show get a pass for the storm to me because the author openly admits its not accurate at all and would be impossible, but he just needed to get the plot moving. Its open and honest, hard to hate that when the rest of the book is so amazing and scientifically accurate for the time.
I say "for the time" because some research about Martian soil came out right after the movie I think and showed that Martian soil has high levels of perchlorates. Though, the workable fix for that is washing them out. So, it becomes a bit harder for him but still checks out.
What I like about Andy Weir’s writing is that he shows his work. All of the science and math is out there on the page. When someone figures something out, we go through the steps and figure it out with them. It’s nerdy and fun!
If Andy Weir wanted a more scientifically plausible beginning, I think a Mars quake would've worked. The strongest Mars quake we've recorded was a 4.7 in 2022. That magnitude will only cause minor damage, so perhaps the story could've had a 6.0 quake that posed a great danger to the MAV. The crew scurries towards the MAV for an emergency abort, but Mark Watney is further away than everyone else. As he's hobbling over an antenna array or some big object falls onto him pierces his suit, thereby knocking him out and causing his vitals monitor to flatline.
It was the one thing I didn't like about the movie adaptation. I understand why Ridley did that, the drama of them trying to grab each other works, but it's just silly and in a movie that's all about science it doesn't make sense to do that. Especially when we saw how fast he loses oxygen with a puncture to his helmet earlier in the movie.
@@JWFas You need something that would knock Watney out, make the rest of the crew think he's dead while also making it impossible for them to find him while not really hurting him too much and you need that emergency to be on going so they'll need to leave immediately. I don't think a quake would solve those story needs.
4:36 "This is bigger than one person."
"No, it's not." "Yeah, exactly."
It is *absolutely* bigger than one person. The story as told is cool and fun and heroic, but the Director was absolutely right. Astronauts sign up knowing the risks and that their lives are potentially expendable. Risking multiple other lives, billions in technology and the entire future of the space program to save one life? What if the rescue mission had failed, or the ship breached on the way out and drifted off into space?
Making that kind of choice in a logical fashion, regardless of what you 'want' to do personally, is exactly what the Director is supposed to do. I hate that people think he's the 'bad guy'.
If you found the movie funny, the book is flat out hilarious.
The opening line: "I'm pretty much fucked. That's my considered opinion. Fucked."
The book is amazing and goes into more depth on everything. Especially him driving to his launch site, which was just glossed over in the movie.
@@PaulMenden5659 I would gladly watch a movie of this that is several hours longer just to see something even closer to the book. So much amazing stuff passed over. Though, the movie is still my favorite of all time. I have watch it over 50 times and that isn't an exaggeration.
I also don't like how only Rover 2 was functional in the movie. And also the whole airlock scene was really stripped down. But I still like the movie.
@@KerbalOnDres1 When they're doing their projects at the start of the movie, Martinez parks the rover right next to the MAV. When they're deciding what to do he's still there, so he never moved it away. It got destroyed when they launched.
If the movie included even half of the preparations for the journey and the journey itself it would be 3 hours long. That part isn't even in the 2.5 hour extended edition. It wouldn't really add much to the movie and would slow it down considerably. It's the kind of thing that would get cut for pacing if they actually shot it.
@@shect1 Okay I agree with the rover preparations. But would the extended airlock scene really add that much? Or when the rover tipped entering schiaparelli?
The movie is based on a novel by Andy Weir. He had a sci-fi blog and he posted a chapter at a time. Viewers asked him to compile the chapters into a book, which he put onto Amazon for .99 The book got so many downloads that it was put into hardback. It sold so well both hardback and downloads, that he wound up with a movie deal. There are some little gems of Watney's humor that didn't make the movie. He opens one chapter by explaining that when he gets back to earth he's going to live in western Australia - because it is on the opposite side of the earth from Idaho. When they tell him that the supply probe that's coming to his rescue (the one that broke up) is called Siris - the goddess of rainbows- he responds "Right - gay probe coming to save me." It's a great read, told primarily in Watney's voice.
I've read or listened to the book at least 6 times. One of my favorites parts is when Mark says that if it was a movie the crew would all greet him in the airlock. That's exactly what they did. Their attention to detail for the book makes this the best book to movie ever. There were parts I wish they had added like the drill frying Pathfinder, the dust storm, or the rover roll over but I also understand that it's a movie and they are limited to time.
We also get to find out what Watney actually said in response to being told to watch his language.
"Look, Boobies! ( . )( . )"
And they're making his book, Project Hail Mary into a movie as well for 2026
that line was good...but not as good as when they told him to watch his mouth because everything he says was being rebroadcast. "Oh yeah? Look! Boobies!! ( . )( . ) " HA HA HA HA
What they don't mention in the movie is that Whatney is also the Mission Handyman. This is why he has all the technical skills in addition to being a Botanist.
Also, consider this: Matt Damon only had 3 scenes with other people - the rest he was acting against himself!
That makes more sense. He McGyvered the hello out of that place
'Surprise! How do you like them apples?' Excellent call back, and call-forward!
11:40 Farmers, gardeners, landscapers, etc. use livestock manure as a fertilizer to provide nutrients needed for crop production. It doesn't change the taste; I don't know where the hell you got that.
And in a lot of places in the world, they use human sh*t as well.
Absolutely! It's coming soon!
@@donsample1002That’s what I came here to say. If you eat rice, it was probably grown in a paddy full of manure. In the East likely human manure.
Great reaction. Jeff Daniels character of the Director of NASA gets different results from different people. He is VERY pragmatic and dispassionate, but he also makes decisions quickly. His actions and decisions can be interpreted in several ways, and I am not sure that there is any real right answer. But it is interesting to see that he is the one part of this movie that different reaction channels tend to see very differently from each other. Thanks again for the video! Glad I found your channel!
Yeah, we understand where he is coming from. But the story is about rescuing someone, and anything that gets in the way of that is seen as a hurdle that needs to be overcome
I read somewhere that one of the biggest "problems" with the movie is that storms that powerful do not happen on Mars because of the thin atmosphere. The author of the novel could not come up with any other reason for them to have to leave in such a hurry. If Mark had simply been blown away by some malfunction/explosion they should have had time to search and find him. The storm was the only way.
The shouted 'Boromir!' gives me hope for Tess getting the 'Project Elrond' joke. Update: the squeal, priceless!
Oh, Tess gets it! In fact, she has a soft spot for Glorfindel. If she had a codename, that's what it would be.
23:16 The answer is about 99% accurate. Engineers, Botanists AND ASTRONAUTS were consulted in the making of the movie, and the ONLY thing that was pure Hollywood license was the reason they scrubbed the mission at the beginning ... the force of the wind. The Martian atmosphere is so sparse that even a strong gale on Mars would have the force of a light breeze on Earth, but all the science in the movie is real and accurate.
And even the storm is taken straight from the book, though in the book the initial concern is that it would sandblast the MAV's sensors so it couldn't be guided up to rendevous with the Hermes.
Two things are pure Hollywood. The Iron Man flying at the end is the other. The book doesn't have it, it is immediately shot down as an option. In reality, there isn't enough air in the suit, especially at a high enough pressure, to get you moving like that. All he would have achieved in reality was drastically increasing his risk of dying from vacuum exposure by wasting oxygen and puncturing his suit.
Though.. "ASTRONAUTS", this means a lot less when you have Chris Hadfield peddling misinformation about how vacuum exposure kills humans. I guess NASA doesn't train them on the specifics of how vacuum kills, just that its a really fucking bad thing to be exposed to. The following information is paraphrased from experts that actually study this and from findings of real vacuum exposure accidents. Stuff I guess the former commander of the ISS just wasn't privy to or didn't actually care about. A shame since I really respect him in every instance besides this.
"You'd cook, boil, and freeze simultaneously" or something to that effect is the bullshit he spouted. The fact The Expanse was more accurate with vacuum exposure than a fucking astronaut is telling (If you know, you know. Don't spoil it for those who don't). You wouldn't freeze anytime soon, definitely not while conscious, because vacuum is an INSULATOR. And in sunlight you would heat up, shocker. Any water on you would boil and freeze but your body itself holds a lot of heat. The only heat loss then is radiative, which is slow so its definitely not going to kill you and in sunlight you'd rapidly heat up. Almost like that's why the ISS has so many fucking radiators and why good thermoses utilize a vacuum layer to keep things cold or hot.
Boil? Technically, yes. Not in the "cook and boil" sense but the low pressure boiling off the liquids on your tongue, capillaries in your skin, eyes, and the gasses in your joints. This isn't what kills you though and it wouldn't "burn", it would just be very painful to recover from. Especially when you pair it with the fact you'd be getting the worst sunburn in history from unshielded rays from the sun, now that would really burn but not what would kill you. That drop in pressure is what knocks you out, your blood is also partially pressurized by your circulatory system so you get about 15 to 20 seconds before passing out and a minute or so before brain damage starts occurring before death.
So, sure, you'd cook, boil, and freeze. But not simultaneously and if your body was in an orbit, it'd be a cycle more than a simple process. Every word of his in his statement basically needs a damn asterisk next to it and several paragraphs explaining the full context. Because as presented, its far more wrong than than right.
Autistic rant over. Read or don't, I don't care. But I'm too committed to delete it so I won't.
@@Nyx_2142 I believe it was in 1966 when an Engineer working for NASA called Jim LeBlanc who was exposed to a high-strength vacuum by accident. He passed out very quickly but he did remark just before he passed out that the could feel the saliva boiling off of his tongue.
Though it wasn't in space, therefore the temperature wasn't the same, it does raise the point that you would likely pass out very quickly from the lack of pressure first before anything else as you said. What happens to your body afterwards is almost an afterthought, because you know... you'd be dead.
@@Nyx_2142 As stated, all the SCIENCE was accurate ... the 'Iron Man' thing was not science. Saying that, if he was going to die anyway then why NOT try a 'Hail-Mary'? If it doesn't work he's just as dead as if he did nothing, but it COULD work if the tear wasn't too big. You'd want a longer period of lower thrust rather than one quick burst ... a big tear would give a high thrust quick burst that would be virtually uncontrollable and then he's screwed, whereas a small tear would give a lot longer period of thrust and you'd be able to control direction somewhat while still being able to breathe and still have some pressure in the suit.
If you're in IT, you know AscII code. It's basically hexadecimal (16 digits) converting to characters. For example, a 2 digit AscII code of '41' is a capital 'A'. That's how they communicated initially.
I saw Neil Degrasse Tyson say this was the most scientifically accurate space movie ever made.
EXCEPT for the strength of the storm.. Which was unrealistic, but he let that slide because the rest was really good, and without the storm there was no story lol
@@DB-zp9un doy, they were referring to the movie as a whole, not one aspect of it.
@@adamskeans2515 Just giving the rest of the story.. slow your roll..
@@DB-zp9un just sayin'
@@DB-zp9un
The initial storm was deliberately unrealistic and was done so by the author of the novel knowing it was unrealistic. It had to be as it was the only way of having the crew leave Watney behind still alive. Any realistic scenario would either kill the whole crew or allow the whole crew including Watney to survive and leave together.
There was a second highly realistic storm in the Novel during his trip to the Ares IV landing site but was cut from the film for time.
The reason he wasn't tethered was because the tether would've been caught up in the spinning parts of the ship. If you go back, you can see him passing between rotating parts of the ship. He would've been either pulled in and crushed, or the tether could snap and he'd be sent off into a random direction. Anything can happen if the tether gets stuck
Good point!
I'm so happy you reacted to this!!!!! Such a good movie!
We loved it!
the director is really not the villain you think he is. his decision not to use the hermes is really not about how he looks, but the legitimate concern of killing all 6 crew members instead of at least getting 5 of them home safely. Also, if he were only concerned about the looks, he wouldnt have taken the blame for the unsuccesful first launch attempt.
The only looks he is concerned about is the looks of nasa as a whole, which is arguably right, bc as he said himself at the beginning: if there is a dead astronaut (let alone 6 dead astronauts) all over the news, nasa wouldnt even get the budget for a paperclip and would probably almost cease to exist.
The NASA director in the movie gets a bad rap. He's being asked to make a decision that would risk the lives of the returning crew. Those that are returning have a much greater chance of survival than the one stranded on Mars. So the decision he makes, though hard, is actually the right decision.
Yeah, it’s a bit frustrating how almost everyone immediately assumes he’s being self important and making bad decisions. They say his priority is how he looks, but as a director his priorities have to be the safety of all 7 crew (so putting 6 at very real risk even if they want to for a chance to help 1 is for good reason) and also an organization of thousands trying to keep a mission of exploration going. The last time NASA lost a whole crew like they would if a nothing went wrong it was all but shut down for years, all crew flights suspended, and it made it even harder to get funding to continue anything. It’s not just money, exploration is important and NASA already struggles to get funds. I don’t know if I would make the decisions he does, but I also would never want to be the director of such a huge (and important) organization.. and even though things work out I do think he makes the right decisions. His job is balancing risks and risk mitigation, every manned mission he is responsible for has real risk.
It's a product of Hollywood storytelling. All stories must have a 'bad guy', so if there isn't an obvious one, then people make one up.
Yup, basically the director has the mentality of "the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few" and in this specific case, the needs of one. There is nothing wrong with trying to uphold that logic to try to preserve the "many" over one person.
you have to remember the people on earth are basically only receiving the transmission 15-20 minutes after it happened. so everyone is basically waiting for the signal to get to earth and its been done. he could have died 20 minutes previously before anyone on earth knew.
When he got back on the Hermes I bet food any food tasted like pure joy
😋🍔
I get the frustration with the director, but you have to remember that his job is to protect first the mission (both the specific one and the larger general endeavour of space science as a whole) and then the team, as a group. It helps, I think, to remember that astronauts are, in a sense, like soldiers (sometimes literally), or even special-forces operators; they know that what they do carries a relatively-high risk of death. Accepting the job means accepting that, if necessary, you will die to achieve your directive and to protect your crew. That doesn't mean they want to die, of course, but it's not like the more-usual employment where "sacrifice your life" is about as far from your job description as you can get.
NASA came pretty close to shutting any kind of crewed missions down for the foreseeable future after the PR disasters of the Challenger and the Columbia. NASA's funding is always on a lot more of a knife-edge than you might think, especially with such strong and increasing anti-intellectual and anti-science sentiments running through the nation's right-wing (indeed, many right-wingers have made entire careers in the last 50 years out of attacking government public-interest science in bad-faith as "ivory-tower eggheads wasting your tax dollars", despite the fact that science funding is a drop in the bucket, especially compared to the near-trillion-a-year military budget). And once projects are shut-down, it's often incredibly hard and expensive to restart them, as teams dissipate and take-on other jobs and relevant expertise is lost. If you can't get NASA maintenance funding, good luck securing cash for the much-steeper start-up costs, and private firms are very unlikely to take-on the kind of not-immediately-monetizable experimentation that is vital to science but that only governments seem able to fund. So, like it or not, there's a lot of science riding on NASA's ability to make itself look good to the average voter (and we all know what George Carlin said about the "average" voter; "think of how stupid the "average voter" is, and then remember that, statistically, half of all voters are dumber than that"), so the NASA director's apparently-frivolous concerns are really anything but.
In a story about rescuing someone, anything that gets in the way of that is seen as a hindrance.
If the story was about saving NASA you would do what you need to do to accomplish that goal.
It's just a perspective thing.
Such a good film, the book is even better.
RC Bray's version of the audiobook is even better!!!
"Bucky was in some Iron Man movies" -- Almost every actor in this movie has been in a Marvel movie
💯
Something that they also kind of left out but I understand why, is the time delay between transmissions. It would take greater than 40 minutes to send and receive a message depending on where Earth and Mars are in their orbit. So whenever he asked a question he would probably have longer than an hour to wait to get an answer and or instructions because they would have to decipher what he's saying and then formulate an answer that takes time.
Hey guys. Normal rockets/ships burn engines for a short time to generate thrust then coast at that speed so only have limited fuel to thrust and glide so can’t turn around. The Hermes in the book has an ion engine which is so of in use in real world. They trickle gas like argon or neon which generates a tiny bit of thrust but over a long period, this makes you go real quick. Short version, no, they can’t turn around and go back!
Distances in space are literally impossible for humans to comprehend at first. There are a bunch of RUclips videos which try to show this. Here is one:
Solar System Model From a Drone's View
Each time I watch one of these presentations, I am still blown away. But remember, these models show the planets in a line, the SHORTEST distance they would be. In actuality, say, Mars and Earth are at different parts of their orbits which tremendously increases the distances. Hence why they have to wait for the two to be at their closest.
Yup. In space travel, where there is no air resistance (or resistance of any kind, really), inertia is king. You get yourself to a certain speed and direction (a "vector"), and you'll keep moving that way until something acts on you to change things, which, in a vacuum, can be an exceptionally-long wait. Also, boosting anything up out of Earth's gravity-well is incredibly expensive (don't know the latest numbers, but I recall estimates of $10 000/kg, and that was decades ago), so if you can do without additional fuel for your orbiting ship, you do. That's all to say that having a "turn around" capacity on that ship, even if possible, would come at a truly astronomical price-point, and it's already hard enough to get tax dollars for science.
yes, they can, using Earth's gravity to slingshot
6:52 - *“Now, did they mention his background at all? Like, is he a doctor or an engineer?”*
I don't think they mentioned his specialisation at this point in the movie, but _any_ astronaut has extensive training in _both_ medicine and engineering, including doing an actual medical rotation in a working hospital.
While the movie mostly talks about his botanist specialisation, in the book he was a dual specialist in engineering and botany, and he ended up doing *_a lot_* of engineering over the course of the story.
7:53 - *“What's he doing?”*
He's checking that the main piece and the bit he just fished out fit together - if they didn't fit, that would have meant there was still another piece left inside him he would have to get out, before he could close up the wound.
17:18 - *“Could they…” - “turn the one around?”*
A lot of people ask this, when watching this movie. While the exact engine technology of the _Hermes_ is not explained in the movie, like in the book, it is clearly implied that they are still subject to orbital mechanics - no far-future, sci-fi, super-powerful engines like they have in _Star Trek,_ that can just power through to any point in space they like, on sheer brute force alone. Since they still have to follow orbital mechanics, once the _Hermes_ broke from Mars orbit and went on a trajectory back to earth, they were _fully committed!_ They could no more turn around and go back to Mars than a parachute jumper could change his mind halfway down to the ground, pull his chute back into the backpack, and fly back up into the plane.
It is quite possible that we will _never_ have engines that could skip out of orbital mechanics, unless we somehow discover a completely new set of physics. There is nothing currently known to theoretical physics that is at the same time *small* enough, *powerful* enough, and *_safe_* enough to install in a space vehicle meant for humans to ride.
19:57 - *“Boromir!” - “Uh oh… Sean Bean's in this movie. Hope he makes it to the end.”*
The movie is so _relentlessly_ positive and optimistic that, even though Sean Bean is in it, only his character's _career_ dies. 😁
34:20 - *“Can that hold?”*
The short answer is "no".
The long answer is "No fucking way! That's so far beyond plausible, it's not just ridiculous, it's _fucking STUPID!"_
They expect us to believe _at the same time_ that the pressure inside the Hab is so high that it can somehow _launch_ that gigantic, incredibly heavy airlock high into the air, flipping end over end… and yet so low that it can't escape past a visibly flimsy layer of plastic wrap and duct tape. The decision to replace the book's sturdy, high-tech "hab canvas" with a sheet of cheap see-through plastic wrap (and in the later scene with a bit of parachute silk) is one that simply _baffles_ me to this day. It completely undermines the suspension of disbelief.
Most of the compromises and pieces of artistic license the movie takes are perfectly understandable, made necessary by the constraints of time, money, and the medium itself. But this mindboggling decision cannot be explained by _any_ of those factors. I love this movie to bits, but I'll never understand why they did this.
Thank you for sharing your reaction with us, it was fun seeing this movie again, through your eyes!
Thanks! Appreciate the writeup, and your kind tone!
You forgot to mention that Mars's atmosphere wouldn't have wind strong enough to flap the plastic around like that. Not even mentioning that the plastic would be ballooned out from the pressure inside and not able to flap at all, assuming the plastic was able to hold at all.
Also, the explosive decompression of the HAB airlock is unrealistic. The HAB isn't big enough nor does it have enough air in it to explosively decompress like that, especially with what is possibly only 1 atmosphere of air at most. But, even then, its likely not 1 atmosphere but a lot lower like the suits would be (their reason is mobility, among others). So it would likely be 0.5 or even 0.3 atmospheres of pressure. Way too low for that kind of explosive decompression. You can find people way better at the science and math than me breaking down the forces on the HAB airlock and the hole that caused it to decompress on Reddit, even at 1 atmosphere its an incredibly unrealistic depiction (as basically every explosive decompression scene is in film).
Honestly, if I have to dig that deep and nitpick that fucking much, the author did a really good fucking job of getting his science correct. I may bitch and nitpick at 5% or less of the movie but adore the other 95%. Guess you can say I bitch and nitpick at the 5% because of how high a standard the other 95% sets.
@@Nyx_2142 100% agreed. In most other movies I wouldn't have cared about the duct tape or plastic wrap, because the entire rest of it would already have set such a low bar - but it's the sudden incongruity _for no reason_ that gets me.
I know that Mars' atmosphere is too thin to have a brutal sandstorm like the one that kicks things off; that's an acknowledged break from reality that the book author admitted to, in order to get things going. I completely understand that the movie doesn't try to simulate Mars Gravity; that would be ridiculous to try with real actors within a sane budget and time limit. I'm fine that everything from the Hab to the airlock to the Hermes to Mission Control is _ridiculously, _*_unfathomably_* spacious, because shooting a movie inside realistically cramped sets would be a nightmare, both for the actors and for the crew, and it would make the audience uncomfortable and distract them from the story.
All of that is perfectly understandable for reasons of the medium or the budget, etc. It doesn't put the slightest scratch in my willing suspension of disbelief. But the plastic wrap was an unforced error for no reason I can think of. That's why it irks me so.
@@SebastianWeinbergin the book, repairing the HAB is explained much better.
Also love the quote- 'I hear hissing. Either the airlock has a leak, or there are snakes in here.'
The cover with tape bothered me too. In the book, it was much better explained
The director said it best, "people wonder why we fly", when things go wrong. I don't think he was worried about his own image, but about NASAs' image.
Teddy isn't a villain. He's not making decisions based on how he'll look. He's the director of NASA and has to make hard decisions, and being optimistic isn't part of his job description. He has to think about saving the most lives, and saving not only the mission, but future missions. NASA has had a history of struggling against budget cuts to be able to continue doing the science they are there to do.
This movie really doesn't have a villain... unless you want to include Mars itself (and outer space).
You guys really need to visit a farm someday and learn how your food is grown.
Sometimes ignorance is bliss.
You mean it doesn't just magically appear on grocery store shelves? Preposterous.
I recommend watching the two extra scenes they used to promote the movie:
- Ares 3 The Right Stuff (crew psychological interviews after isolation training)
- Ares 3 Farewell (Mark Watney vlog on the Hermes orbiting Earth right before leaving for Mars)
Also another inaccuracy which I didn't see mentioned in the comments: Martian soil is actually toxic to plant life, so Mark would not have been able to grow his crops. But this piece of data was only discovered after the book had been published, Andy Weir could not have known.
Wonder if there is a way around the toxicity. If the author had known, it could have been another hurdle to clear
7:57 "What's he doing?" He was checking if he got everything, as if the piece he retrieved didn't match up with the length he'd pulled out then there was more left in there to find (more PAIN).
No-one else seems to have said it so i will, the Mars scenes were filmed in the Waddi Rum in Jordan. I was lucky enough to visit before covid and it's breath-takingly beautiful, you truly feel like you are on another world.
Nice! Really captured the look of Mars (or at least what we imagine Mars to look like)
Between Interstellar, Saving Private Ryan, and The Martian ,the U.S. Govt has spent a ton of money rescuing Matt Damon. Tess' unrestrained laughter at the funny parts is most enjoyable.
He was also rescued in Courage Under Fire, Titan AE, Syriana, Green Zone, and Elysium.
🤣 When will us tax payers demand he be placed under home arrest.
The mission was to take longer, that's why he wanted to stay and wait it out in the habitat. And if you watch during the movie he's finishing up things that they were supposed to do but didn't because they left early.
You can see at least one star in the daytime, it's called the sun lol great reaction though, just found y'all about a week ago and loving all the content 😁🤘
Appreciate it!
In the novel, he's both a botanist and an electrical engineer. It explains why he's so capable when it comes to hooking up the different electronics. Not sure why it was left out of the film.
If we only had a fully funded NASA.
16:54 the director of nasa is not giving up on him so fast, he’s just being realistic if he spread out his food, nasa doesn’t know he’s growing potatoes, so the director is playing every bad card so everyone in his team can play the good card to figure out the situation.
I'm not sure, but I think Matt Damon's line about "solve enough problems and you get to go home" might have been inspired by Col. Chris Hadfield (you might remember him from a famous rendition of, IIRC, "Space Oddity", performed on the ISS, that did big RUclips numbers a few years ago). I recall an interview with him in which he said (paraphrase) that being in space is about being surrounded by forces that are trying to kill you, and that you just have to keep solving the problem that's going to cause you to die next until you're back in the environment for which billions of years of evolution have adapted us (a context you don't appreciate until you're outside it).
I'm sure it's not the first time the idea has been expressed regarding space, but it's a memorable one.
CHRIS HADFIELD: "Study every system on the spaceship {holds up thick manual}, and then boil it down to what I call a 'one pager'. You have to solve your problem in one breath"
From his "Master Class"
Fun fact: When Watney recieves the first verbal communication in years and he begins to cry, that wasn't on the script. Matt Damon did his side of the movie alone, guiding himself with just recordings of other parts already filmed, so it was a surprise for him when he heard the other actos at the launch scene. His crying was real.
Very cool! great acting too
They did a similar thing for "Saving Private Ryan", IIRC. The rest of the "rescue squad" actors did a couple weeks of grueling military basic training before Damon was brought-in for the last of it, and that was done deliberately to create the sense of resentment and "why is he so special?" envy that would naturally have occurred in a bunch of grunts being tasked with an impossible mission to rescue just some guy.
@@michaelccozens In United 93, the actors playing the terrorists were kept separate from the actors playing the passengers for the same reason, to give a very real palpable unease between them.
It was also done with the Somali actors playing the pirates from the actors playing the crew on Captain Phillips.
6:45 -- he's not non-chalant, he's prioritizing survival above emotion. That's how you survive.
The brain has a way of helping you do that in emergencies.
12:15 -- "If you can smell it, it's already in your mouth."
How you didn't slap him when he said "honey i don't think your nasa material" is beyond me
Tess isn't slapping material either.
Those students jogging by paused out of respect for the most famous person on the planet. An actual American hero.
First time watching your channel ❤
As a huge science fiction fan you guys did a great reaction. Most people don't understand that Mars and Earth change positions And it makes a big difference in how long it takes to get there. So very astute observation.
I would love to see you guys react to Dune. It is a beautiful movie with a great plot I think you guys would love it.
We've both seen Dune, but we haven't checked out the sequel yet!
52:08 Hol'up, was that a sneaky "Captain America: The First Avenger" reference?
5/5 reaction! Loved it and subbed it!
Thank you!!!
I describe this movie as "Apollo 13 meets Cast Away".
Perfect lol
Ppl with no farming experience are so cute when they thing 💩is gross. You know what a potato smells like if you were to dig it up mid germination.... it smells worse than 💩, it smells like 💀😂
"It smells like death." Very literally if you leave them in your basement too long. Though, I'm sure if solanine actually has a smell. It'll still kill you in high quantity though.
I don't know if someone's already mentioned this but the storms on Mars don't have enough Force to do what you see here in the movie. Yes, Martian sandstorms can kick up a lot of dust, even enough to cloud the planet, but that's because of the Martian soil. The Martian atmosphere is extremely thin and there's just not enough force behind it to do anything close to do what you see in the movie. They needed something to get him stranded so that's what they went with.
To put it in relation: The Martian atmosphere, at ground level, has around 1% the pressure we have on Earth at ground level. So a storm with the (down here devastating) speed of 200 mph would feel like a 2 mph summer breeze (at Earth).
You can get pretty dusty, though...
They talked about the thin air when discussing him launching out of the atmosphere at the end, so kind of a plot hole here.
@@JessAndTessYeah, but nobody cares because every other single thing in the book/film is scientifically plausible. So we just forgive that part. 😂
@@JessAndTess Its not a plot hole. The author openly admits he had to fudge the science for a plot device because he couldn't think of how to force them to abandon Watney otherwise.
I’ve seen this movie a couple times before and this is the first time I notice: At 52:07 Sebastian Stan’s character talks about jumping onto a moving train and that he “might miss”. Anyone else seeing what I’m seeing? 😂
one thing they left out of the movie that was in the book was that if something went wrong with the Hermes picking up the extra supplies they wouldn't be able to stop. they would slingshot back towards Mars without food and they would starve. So the crew decide who should survive and it is inferred to that the young woman would have to eat the others bodies in order to make it back to earth.
Glad you guys like this movie. It's one of my favorites. You really should check the movie 'Deep Impact'; you'll love it.
Haven't seen it since I was a kid!
It’s not that difficult to travel to Mars, I mean it is hard, incredibly, but this shows what it all boils down to: math and science. The cost is sort of astounding, but with enough support (financial) and time, we engineers and scientists can solve nearly any problem.
My inner engineer smiled when they showed hacking the machine by modifying a few bits, hex being one way to represent machine code. FF being decimal 255 AKA 11111111 in binary (all 8 bits are flipped on, 255 resulting).
The Audible book (RC Bray narration is best!), is a MUST! An 11 hour movie of the mind, with many more "incidents"... The author consulted with NASA on keeping the science real. The only blatant inaccuracy was the storm that caused the accident, which the author needed to force the launch without him. A "storm" in the thin atmosphere of Mars would not be strong enough to fly a kite!
RC Bray - ruclips.net/video/5J66ctHayQk/видео.html
Hard to come up with another disaster that would force everyone to leave in such a hurry. Maybe a solar flare or something...
the book is amazing
Andy also wrote 2 other books.. "Project Hail Mary" and "Artemis" First time I listened to them they were ok.. 2nd time I enjoyed them much more.
this for me is probably one of Matt Damon's best films/role.. i love the movie as a whole but i think damon Really get's across the sheer impact of being totally Alone the only living thing of an entire planet....
For us it's probably this or Saving Private Ryan
I love how technology improves and as movies reflect the latest, older movies look so funny. I remember movies before the space program began, and they thought of rocket ships as actual ships in the sense you get in and steer and go this way and that way at will. The ships were always streamlined, even though we knew it wasn't needed to be for vacuum in deep space. Viewers in the '50's would be blown away by the appearance of the Hermes.
I do remember back then reading that space flight was impossible because it would take a rocket ship the size of the Statue of Liberty to put a human into orbit. Well, it did. (Hope you get a chance to watch Apollo 13 based extremely close on the actual sequence of events.) Also hard to think it makes sense to jettison the first and second stage rockets because all that intricate expensive machinery is cheaper than the cost of the extra relatively-cheap fuel to keep these attached.
One thing I find interesting is that the terrain in this looks plausible, even though it was shot on earth in areas of extreme dessert. Yet the views of the Martian terrain being beamed back to earth now show a landscape that is very rocky but with rounded features of a completely water-eroded geology. (Probably there ARE regions on Mars that look like those in the movie but at the time it was filmed, it seemed to be thought ALL of Mars looks as portrayed.)
they already know mars was fairly rocky but it would make sense that they would choose relativly flat part like certien sections of acidalia planitia. (of course its important to note that area of acidalia planitia this is supposed to happen is actually fairly rocky but there are parts realy flat as well)
and how do i know they already knew becasue they mostly targeted those areas for their rovers they just thought that there were far less with mostly river inflows like one Perseverance is in right now(perseverance landed in one of the inflows to Jezero crater) the ball landing system of pathfinder spirit and Opportunity was designed to get around having need for extremly precise landing systems with parachutes and sky cranes like they use now while still protecting landing craft from rocks
9:36 Not cynaide no. (in the book it is morphine)
18:12 They can redirect where it lands remotly.
27:55 The extended cut actually says what the word is. They give the warning not to google it. Do not ignore this and google is.(it is stronger then the F word)
31:14 Aparently the nasa certified duct tape for space is the exact same stuff you buy in the hardware store.
37:45 that is the Delta 178 from 1986
52:48 this might be the friction from the space suit.
He was putting the pieces together to determine the length to make sure he got it all out. FYI most farmers in this country use manure as fertilizer. We buy and eat those vegetables.
as to "when" this takes place, there is no year listed on the movie or in the book, but Andy Wier wanted to only use technology that exists today, so there are no "sci-fi" gadgets etc, this is how it would go IF we decided to start a project like this today.
I think that makes it more interesting. Instead of just sci fi magic from the future. I like this better.
Modulo the hab canvas' ability to block radiation without being an inch thick and weighing a ton, that we don't have today. (He's given interviews about the science, which he researched extensively and had reviewed by various professionals. Also the estimate of what it would cost to build Hermes was over a trillion dollars.)
@@myphone4590 estimates i read were in few 10 bilion to few 100 billion depending on contractors, but reality is cost is very much a besides thing as it is supposed to be used for multiple back and forth trips plus for some supply runs which would make price of it kinda unimportant
One of the greatest books I've ever read, and a fantastic adaption by Ridley Scott 🔥
We loved it!
im happy you finally saw this movie.
It was great!
0:55 slow it down at 0.25...what is that behind the couch???
lol! you saw it! Great eye. That's Ori the cat. He was playing around back there
"Just launch it into space and wait for Mars to hit it." That's more accurate than you might think. You launch the probe from Earth into a ballistic solar orbit that intercepts Mars' orbit and wait for Mars and the probe to be at the same place at the same time.
I REALLY enjoyed the book. Most of the science is sound. Actually, probably the biggest inaccuracy pertains to the initial emergency. The Mars atmosphere is so thin, the wind would have to blow ridiculously fast - several hundred mph - to exert enough force to tip over something as massive as the MAV (and it would invalidate the premise to send the MAV a year or more in advance if it could just be blown over in a bad storm). I think they did a pretty good job adapting it for the movie, with one exception: the stupid Iron Man thing at the end. That was total Hollywood crap, and not in the book. I mean, they have an MMU that is designed to facilitate moving around in space!
He was pointing the receiver towards Earth, which you can faintly see in the sky. And only Captain Lewis and Martinez are in the military.
If yall like reading, I LOVE Andy Weir's writing! Artemis is another good one if you want something different from this, and Hail Mary is also great if you want another survivor sort of story, but it's much different than The Martian. The book of this is well-adapted, but the original is great if you want to dive deeper into this story and it's science!
The time/distance between Terra and Mars is not constant. They both have different sized orbits around the sun, and travel them at different rates, so a lot of the wait between missions is to capitalize on the shortest possible route between them, which is referred to as a 'launch window'. So, strange as it sounds, to send something immediately means that it may arrive long after something sent a year or two later
Jess mentions this around 30:00
Even with a number of inaccuracies and the wildly stupid punctured glove flight, it's still a great movie.
Well, and Rich explaining a basic gravity assist manoeuvre to a roomful of NASA directors using a stapler is, yeah... =)
"OK, but what's the _water_ situation?" You are smarter than you think!
TIP: not sure if all the microphones work the same way so you might need to check the specifications for the ones you have... but I think your voice enter through the side, and you have them pointing at you. I think the idea is that you can place one of those mics on a table and it will capture the voice from everyone around a table. You probably need just one.
No, it's a front facing dynamic microphone designed to be inches from your mouth. Mics like the Blue Yeti are condenser that are side facing. So they can pick up audio from farther away, from multiple sources and designed to be perpendicular to your mouth.
Great reaction 👍🏻
Thanks! Appreciate it! ❤️
I like when they both say “pathfinder”
Pathfinder
That guy also played a drag queen named Lola in the movie “Kinky Boots”. Cheers
They needed Mars i guess to be the baddy in the beginning of the movie, as there is no way such storms can happen on Mars, the worst wind you can get there is a very light breeze. I understand however that they needed a way for things to go wrong.
All things considered, this movie was an amazing adaptation of the book and included a lot of pretty good details. Of course having Sean Bean present for the LOTR reference was quite meta and not something that could have been done in the book! 😂
Wonder if it was written in the script before or after Sean Bean was cast.
@@JessAndTessit's in the book!
32:34. The Sun; Am I a joke to you?
23:32 There is one star you could see during the day on Mars.
Earth.
42:40: even if everything went wrong, there would be a survivor for the return journey. I'll let you read the book to know the answers.
🤔
People, the other other white meat
Wow, you guys sure are oblivious to the whole grow food with poop thing!
Nah, just making jokes while watching a movie.
@@JessAndTess Nice cope.
One of the few movies that is as good as the book.
We loved it!
Great reaction. thank you for putting the time and effort. i hope you watch Tarantino Movies in the future. love and peace.
Thanks! Which Tarantino movie are you thinking?
Teddy is not evil, but he cares more about NASA and the future of spaceflight. In the movie he's made to look selfish but he just tries to see a bigger picture.
And just an FYI a Martian year is equivalent to around 687 Earth days.
A martian day (a sol) however is surprisingly similiar to a day on earth. On mars: It is 24 hours and 39 minutes long.
And this is merely a product of coincidence.
so many people say oh they gave up on him know the crew did not give up on him when they left him the commander had to think of the lives of the rest of her crew
I've seen this movie several times and watched several reactions but while watching your reaction, realized one thing. In a sense, they stayed true to form while Sean Bean lived, his career died in this movie.
Sean Bean never gets out unscathed.
47:01 it was filmed on location, duh😉
🤣
U guys are not alone in suggesting to turn around but its not that simple in space. Weight and fuel efficency is everything in space and to limit weight u dont wanna carry more then u really need. Becouse there isent anything that can slow u down in space to change velocity or anything u have to use fuel so just turning around is not an option. First they have to cancel out any forward momentum they already have and then speed up back to Mars. Once they reach Mars they have to slow down again to pick him up and once again speed up to Earth and still have enough fuel left to slow down once they reach Earth. Everyone of those manuevers are using alot of fuel that was never expected to be needed when they calculated how mutch the whole mission would need. Ofc they have extra fuel for emergencys but nowhere near enough to be able to make all those unplanned manuevers.
Regarding the questions about whether the plastic and duct tape atmosphere seal would hold, atmospheric pressure for 1 atmosphere is around 14lbs.
is that on Mars or Earth?
@@JessAndTess Mars has less than 1 atmosphere of pressure, like less than 1%, something like .08 or .09 psi. We measure by the base atmospheric pressure from earth, so the measurement of 1 atmosphere is around 14.7 psi. It is crazy to think about but if you were in the international space station and it were to get a leak, if the leak is small enough to not compromise structural integrity of the capsule, lets say its the size of a quarter, you could actually just place your hand over the hole to stop the leak. You'd get a real bad hickey but you can think of it like stopping a drain in a sink, with about 14lb of pressure you wouldn't get sucked out through a pinhole like the movies and TV show.
Honestly if you want some real physics and good storytelling, I highly recommend The Expanse, 6 seasons, about 10 to 14 or so eps a season, and season 6 is 6 eps that are slighly longer. Everything in that show is true to physics bar a couple things like the efficient fusion drives that allowed the setting to happen and other stuff I won't spoil just in case because it's WILD. I could go on about the science in that show, everything down to the way they generate gravity is ingenious and I have never seen it portrayed in media. One thing just in case you watch it, it follows a book series and only covers the first 6 books, that messes with the pacing a bit due to production issues and stuff, book 1 ends partway though season 2 so that I would say is the real ending of season 1, same thing for season 2 partway into season 3, it normalizes after that because Amazon took it away from the Scifi network. When the book endings happen YOU'LL KNOW, so best not to treat the end of season 1 like the actual end. But it just kinda drops you in and you gotta pay attention for the first 8 or so eps because Scifi didn't handle it well, so worldbuilding galore, again it normalizes after that, people are usually hooked by ep 4 and in for the whole thing by 8 on average. Easily the best Scifi in the last decade, never seen that era of space travel, humanity is only as far as the belt and sprinkled in the outer planets, no hyper space, etc, like the age of sailing in space, taking weeks to months depending on how far out it is, like a week from Earth to Mars type speeds.
Sorry for the novel, you guys just seemed into the science of it so figured you might like a show where when you look at it you can be confident it's all real, with some damn good cold war politics and character writing lol. Either way that stuff is kinda important to know going in, as well as the first season being a slow burn mystery so you aren't spoon fed info right away. No pun intended but it really do be acting like The Great Filter out here with people expecting it to be immediately crazy out the gate only to be met with a mystery and odd pacing they weren't ready for
Again sorry for the novel, I can imagine you weren't expecting it but I will shill the shit out of that show, it isn't talked about enough. Books are insane too.
We watched a couple of seasons of The Expanse before falling off. We enjoyed it... not sure what happened. Maybe it's time to check it out again.
@@JessAndTess It is definitely not for everyone, I can respect that, I am just in love with it due to it's accuracy and their ability to use physics to add to the drama, mostly in season 3. But again if you decide to give it another shot I won't spoil, hopefully it will grab you more. The writing is so tight and they have so many blink and you'll miss it moments. Also the last prop auction is happening right now and I am so pissed I am too broke to buy something lmao
The storm is enough to destroy their spacecraft. So they have to abort, and Mark gets hit in the face with a radio station. For the record, Mars has the worst, fastest storms in all the inner Solar system.
Christ, I hate when people that have science literacy levels below elementary school try to peddle their bullshit.
The strongest wind speeds on Mars top out around 60mph. The weakest tornadoes on Earth exceed that while having an atmosphere over 100 times denser. A 200mph storm on Mars (something completely impossible) would feel like a very light 2mph breeze on Earth due to how thin the atmosphere is. It doesn't have the worst storms in the inner planets, it doesn't have anywhere near the fastest. The lightest breeze on Earth has more force than Mars's worst storm. The very dusty soil of Mars simply makes it look worse than it is.
Venus is consistently more windy than Earth as the entire atmosphere spins around the planet at very high speed (changes depending on altitude) but tops out at about 100m/s. Earth has burst speeds that are a bit higher than that with the highest recorded 113m/s. So, if you want highest measured in the inner planets, Earth has the highest. If you want the highest average, Venus likely takes it, especially considering its atmosphere is denser than Earth's so the wind is stronger.. Mars get the bronze simply because there isn't a 4th player in the inner planets with an atmosphere worth measuring (and Mars barely makes the cut there).
"Are your receiving me? Yes No" I would have pointed at No.
Jess does this in his zoom calls. "Can you hear me?" "No, I can't"
One of my most proud moments was a decade ago on a mailing list someone said they were reconfiguring their email client and asking if we were getting the email, and I saw it the moment it came in and said no, so double-check your settings, and they replied and said "huh, I could've sworn it was set up correctly, I guess I'll keep working on it" and two other people rushed in to say "I think he was joking" and I'm sad I can't find that email, lol.
actually Jess, NASA accepts people from all backgrounds and specialities- you don't have to be a scientist or a genius these days, so you COULD be NASA material. Tess, I think your reaction was great and you had lots of great things to say x
Very fun.................Off topic. A great older movie which is fun. The Sting (1973 I think)
The Martian is one of the greatest books ever written.
Sci-Fi ? This is barely Fiction, mostly science. The amount of research Andy Weir put into this is insane. A lot of this is currently true, possible, or will soon be, or just makes sense.
Sure, it's not the most complicated plot, story, danger, adventure, whatever, but it is damn near perfect still, and probably should be used in schools to show what science, sound reasoning, knowledge can do, why it is important. The story is nerd shit, and it's cool, and it keeps you entertained. There are many good writers, i wonder how many would even try something like this to be honest.
Then tack it onto we NEED to do this shit, we need a self sustaining base on Mars ASAP. One giant rock hits us, bye bye humanity.
Not that we're too great, we're fucking up this planet and each other like crazy, but we have potential, but as long as we stay on one planet we have a bunch of ways we can fuck up and all die and zero backups. And just a self sustaining base on the Moon does not cut it, it's not solving the problem, for some things Earth and the Moon's fate might be tied.
And this story has another thing, humanity coming together with one single goal, leave no man behind. Just get it fucking done. And honestly, showing it can be done will make us proud, put our minds together and solve the problem, cost be damned, we can rebuild, losing faith, drive, is FAR more dangerous.
We can do just about anything if we want it bad enough, cost be damned.
If everything was about cost, we might have gotten nowhere, because we had no guarantees anything would work because we were figuring shit out. We might have never gotten to the damn industrial revolution, to space. What has it brought us so far ? A shitload of technology we use for all kinds of stuff we had no inkling of beforehand. What if we slowed the whole thing down by 50 years, and at year 49 a big rock hits us. Bye bye.
Yeah, all of our eggs are in 1 basket on earth. Got to get out there!
Totally random comment, but I also follow a music reaction channel called "Soul Singer Discovers". I think she might be Tess's doppelganger. Maybe it's just me...
Great reaction, btw!
Jess & Tess
NASA calculated Mars' Day aka SOL equals to 24 hours, 39 minutes and 35 seconds. Martian Year is 686.98 Earth Days or nearly 2 years.
Tess
MAV, where Mark is about to launch back to the ship has supplies there ahead of next mission. Mark ate food to get strength back.
45:38 "I was not expecting the Chinese to be the heroes"
The studio wanted to release the movie in China and make a lot of money there.
Wait you say... China is authoritarian, welded people's apartment doors shut during the pandemic, has an Orwellian social credit system, and operates concentrat--n camps where they do forced breed--g and org-n harvesting!
Yes but... the studio wanted to release the movie in China and make a lot of money there.
😐
Actually not quite true. Andy Weirs' book also used China in the same way.
That wasn't a studio decision, it was in the book. A dozen years ago when the book was written there weren't many other space programs making boosters that big, japan and india and so on were mostly launching small satellites into near Earth orbit at the time.
That may have helped the movie studio's decision to option the book though...