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Baronash
Feb 29, 2012

So what do you want to be called?

Raxivace posted:

A lot of the movie is played for laughs, so I don't think classifying The Martian as a comedy is completely absurd.

Don't you get it? The movie where Matt Damon is blown clear across the room by a fireball and sustains no injuries other than a couple of insignificant burns is a depressing case study in isolation. If you felt anything other than grief when Damon addresses the audience to say that he blew himself up while literally smoking, you are a monster.

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Firstborn
Oct 14, 2012

i'm the heckin best
yeah
yeah
yeah
frig all the rest
I hated Donald Glover in this. I think his character is supposed to be the tech nerd, but he is still playing at suave Childish Gambino. When he is acting a certain way to his boss and all, it doesn't read like "wow, look at this savant, so unconcerned with social behavior, he doesn't get why this would upset his boss because he is thinking about space", instead it's like "wow, this guy thinks his boss is a dick and he wants to have sex with that woman there".

gohmak
Feb 12, 2004
cookies need love

Firstborn posted:

I hated Donald Glover in this. I think his character is supposed to be the tech nerd, but he is still playing at suave Childish Gambino. When he is acting a certain way to his boss and all, it doesn't read like "wow, look at this savant, so unconcerned with social behavior, he doesn't get why this would upset his boss because he is thinking about space", instead it's like "wow, this guy thinks his boss is a dick and he wants to have sex with that woman there".

No, I thought the first thing.

teagone
Jun 10, 2003

That was pretty intense, huh?

Donald Glover is overhyped/rated imo.

Terrible Horse
Apr 27, 2004
:I

Firstborn posted:

I hated Donald Glover in this. I think his character is supposed to be the tech nerd, but he is still playing at suave Childish Gambino. When he is acting a certain way to his boss and all, it doesn't read like "wow, look at this savant, so unconcerned with social behavior, he doesn't get why this would upset his boss because he is thinking about space", instead it's like "wow, this guy thinks his boss is a dick and he wants to have sex with that woman there".

To me it read as a (failed) attempt at the magical autistic genius type.

gohmak
Feb 12, 2004
cookies need love

Terrible Horse posted:

To me it read as a (failed) attempt at the magical autistic genius type.

With a tinge of racism.

Some Pinko Commie
Jun 9, 2009

CNC! Easy as 1️⃣2️⃣3️⃣!

Firstborn posted:

I hated Donald Glover in this. I think his character is supposed to be the tech nerd, but he is still playing at suave Childish Gambino. When he is acting a certain way to his boss and all, it doesn't read like "wow, look at this savant, so unconcerned with social behavior, he doesn't get why this would upset his boss because he is thinking about space", instead it's like "wow, this guy thinks his boss is a dick and he wants to have sex with that woman there".

I didn't care very much for his character in the movie either, but I made the mistake of reading the book first and that always makes me hate how the movie changes various characters to make things run better or whatever.

Timeless Appeal
May 28, 2006

Firstborn posted:

I hated Donald Glover in this. I think his character is supposed to be the tech nerd, but he is still playing at suave Childish Gambino. When he is acting a certain way to his boss and all, it doesn't read like "wow, look at this savant, so unconcerned with social behavior, he doesn't get why this would upset his boss because he is thinking about space", instead it's like "wow, this guy thinks his boss is a dick and he wants to have sex with that woman there".
Nah, it's the first thing. He is kind of a dick though so I get what you're saying. The whole demonstration of the flyby stuff was completely unnecessary though.

I watched it last night, and it's interesting how it acts as a more accessible companion to Interstellar. Both are essentially championing a reigniting a brave frontiersman philosophy towards space. Both also deal with man's capability to feel empathy towards their fellow men. The actually offer completely different PoVs from a Matt Damon character.

The one thing I really liked though is that while Interstellar can be misconstrued as anti-Environmentalist, The Martian isn't. The shot of the little sprout that Damon touches reminds us that some of the problems Damon faced on Mars might be problems we one day face here. Life is a fragile thing on Earth. The "SO LET'S FIGURE IT OUT" philosophy of the film is being applied to Earth as much as it is space.

Nail Rat
Dec 29, 2000

You maniacs! You blew it up! God damn you! God damn you all to hell!!
He should have been fired on the spot for explaining a gravity assist to the director of NASA as though he were a child.

I know in reality that was for people in the audience who don't know anything about space travel, but maybe they could have had him have a kid at home and done that dumb explanation to them, at least, or something. Not the director of NASA :wtc:

I'm personally finally reading the book after having seen the movie again, and there are a lot of things the book does better, but I still enjoy the movie. Except Childish Gambino. Also it would've been nice if they had found Indian and Korean actors to play Kapoor and Park but that's been done to death and I guess with Hollywood it's just a step up that Kapoor didn't end up being white.

Nail Rat fucked around with this message at 20:45 on Jan 19, 2016

Zero One
Dec 30, 2004

HAIL TO THE VICTORS!
That scene was worth it for the Lord of the Rings joke.

Some Pinko Commie
Jun 9, 2009

CNC! Easy as 1️⃣2️⃣3️⃣!
At least Jeff Daniels acted properly irritated at the autistic sad-sack explaining his plan to everyone.

:getout:

Bates
Jun 15, 2006

Nail Rat posted:

He should have been fired on the spot for explaining a gravity assist to the director of NASA as though he were a child.

I know in reality that was for people in the audience who don't know anything about space travel, but maybe they could have had him have a kid at home and done that dumb explanation to them, at least, or something. Not the director of NASA :wtc:

Instead of Donald sperging out on his computer they should have done something like the scene in Apollo 13 when the engineers had to figure out how to build a filter but with a group of mission planners (or whatever) instead. "There's 90 billion miles to Mars, he has 12 days of food and 3 gallons of water. Nobody leaves this room until we have a plan!!!!" The audience friendly explanation would just be Jeff Daniels explaining it to the press.

M_Gargantua
Oct 16, 2006

STOMP'N ON INTO THE POWERLINES

Exciting Lemon
That whole moment could have been saved if the plan was given a sentence of technical explanation before Annie just said "So how do I explain that to the press?" and teddy just begrudgingly went along with it. The Project Elrond pun was still amazing and could have only been approved in my opinion of Sean bean struck the famous "one does not simply walk into mordor" pose while delivering the line about it being the secret meeting where they decided to destroy the one ring.

E;
"Hermes can pull an Earth-Mars double slingshot, Martian flyby on sol XXX and they have a quick trip home inside the orbit of Venus..."
"So how do I explain that to the press?"

M_Gargantua fucked around with this message at 03:59 on Jan 20, 2016

precision
May 7, 2006

by VideoGames

Raxivace posted:

A lot of the movie is played for laughs, so I don't think classifying The Martian as a comedy is completely absurd.

And there are certainly enough disco songs to count it as a musical. :v:

I said come in!
Jun 22, 2004

As much as I love this movie, something I really don't understand; how com the Martian got a free pass for being painfully unrealistic while Gravity was poo poo on nonstop for its lack of realism? At least Gravity was believable if you didn't know better. The scenario that happens in the Martian is physically impossible, it cant take place.

Luneshot
Mar 10, 2014

Aside from the initial dust-storm scenario, (which was specifically chosen because it was an event that wasn't the fault of anyone in particular,and Andy Weir has acknowledged that it was purely a plot device)The Martian is very plausible- small details may differ, but everything from the math of potato farming and heat production of the RTG to the exact orbital trajectories and dates of everything in the book are very much within the realm of realism. Andy Weir spent a lot of time fixing mistakes to make it as technically accurate as possible.

Nothing about Gravity was plausible at all except maybe how it looked. There's a billion and a half plot holes in that movie obvious to anyone who's spent more than five minutes on Wikipedia reading about spaceflight. Good movie, lovely science.

GORDON
Jan 1, 2006

by Fluffdaddy
Yeah Gravity was contradicting itself every other scene with how "gravity," conversation of momentum, and poo poo like that worked. It was an enjoyable movie but was actually a little jarring in some parts, for me. "Wait a second, five minutes ago that worked a different way..." kind of stuff.

I've still watched it about 5 times. Story-wise, it's a fun movie.

Nail Rat
Dec 29, 2000

You maniacs! You blew it up! God damn you! God damn you all to hell!!
Much in Gravity is physically impossible, and lots of people who don't "know better" don't know that the Martian sandstorm is completely impossible.

speshl guy
Dec 11, 2012
Well wasn't Matt Damon's method of creating water totally impossible, or at least portrayed incorrectly, consequently rendering the rest of the movie impossible?

Luneshot
Mar 10, 2014

I think someone showed that there was a more efficient way of doing it? I'm not entirely sure about that, all I know about hydrazine is that it's toxic as gently caress and a good monopropellant. I'm not a chemist.

Although it'd be kinda moot though, since we've found that Martian soil is way more loaded with water ice than we thought. Watney would have mud just from bringing it into the hab.

Luneshot fucked around with this message at 17:57 on Jan 22, 2016

Tunicate
May 15, 2012

speshl guy posted:

Well wasn't Matt Damon's method of creating water totally impossible, or at least portrayed incorrectly, consequently rendering the rest of the movie impossible?

It was overcomplicated, since he could have just burned the rocket fuel directly with far less risk.


Or he could have just dug a little and pulled ice from a few inches under under the martian surface and melted it. But that was discovered after it was written so...

MadDogMike
Apr 9, 2008

Cute but fanged

Luneshot posted:

I think someone showed that there was a more efficient way of doing it? I'm not entirely sure about that, all I know about hydrazine is that it's toxic as gently caress and a good monopropellant. I'm not a chemist.

Although it'd be kinda moot though, since we've found that Martian soil is way more loaded with water ice than we thought. Watney would have mud just from bringing it into the hab.

I swear I heard somewhere that Martian soil was toxic enough (perchlorates, I think?) that growing things in it would be problematic at best. Again, something found out after the book was written though.

speshl guy
Dec 11, 2012
I also heard somewhere that the toxicity of the soil was negligible enough that he would have had to be pouring the soil directly into his mouth by the gallon in order for it to be enough to poison him.

Demiurge4
Aug 10, 2011

speshl guy posted:

I also heard somewhere that the toxicity of the soil was negligible enough that he would have had to be pouring the soil directly into his mouth by the gallon in order for it to be enough to poison him.

It could be toxic to the potatoes though.

I've re-watched the movie a bunch and it's still eminently enjoyable. I still hate EVA guy bouncing off a spaceship with no tether but I skip past it.

Abugadu
Jul 12, 2004

1st Sgt. Matthews and the men have Procured for me a cummerbund from a traveling gypsy, who screeched Victory shall come at a Terrible price. i am Honored.

Demiurge4 posted:

It could be toxic to the potatoes though.

I've re-watched the movie a bunch and it's still eminently enjoyable. I still hate EVA guy bouncing off a spaceship with no tether but I skip past it.

Oddly enough that part almost endeared the movie to me. Like, every other space movie, if someone goes out without a tether, it's Hubris and they're p much dead. Here, it's a risky move made due to the haste of the situation, and it happens to work out. Maybe I'm just super jaded by plot gimmicks/structure lately, this was like a breath of fresh air.

Overall, I think I liked the movie better than the book, just because Damon made the main character so, so much less annoying.

euphronius
Feb 18, 2009

I just saw this movie on ondemand.

This visuals were amazing. The movie was not.

Raxivace
Sep 9, 2014

What aspect of the visuals did you find amazing? I thought it was kind of stylistically bland personally, especially compared to Prometheus.

Cry Havoc
May 10, 2004

This cyberpunk cartoon avatar is pretty dang ol' good, I tell you what.
didn't see this mentioned earlier in the thread, but the part about the mav being too heavy and needing to be stripped seemed contrived, like wouldn't they have taken that into consideration before going ahead with the plan

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MikeJF
Dec 20, 2003




Cry Havoc posted:

didn't see this mentioned earlier in the thread, but the part about the mav being too heavy and needing to be stripped seemed contrived, like wouldn't they have taken that into consideration before going ahead with the plan

They did? Mark stripping it was always the plan.

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