The Martian 2015
TheLiteraryBrain
The second golden age of the space travel genre was consolidated thanks to Mars, a film adaptation of a best-seller: the novel The Martian, written in 2011 by software programmer Andy Weir. The author had adjusted the action to the technology available or in development at the time of writing —except for exceptional licenses—, for which he used updated documentation on orbital mechanics, astronomy, and the history of manned space flight. Steve Fox, the agency's research and development expert, pointed out in 2015 up to nine outstanding technological aspects that were plausibly represented in the novel: among them, the use of a housing module on the ground of Mars, the recovery systems of water and generation of oxygen, the design of space suits and operational surface vehicles, the use of an ion propulsion engine in the Hermes interplanetary ship, or the possibility of establishing farms on the planet. The plot of the book —faithfully adapted later for the film— was situated around the year 2035 and started with the cancellation of the Ares III mission, whose crew was forced to evacuate Mars due to an unexpected sandstorm in Acidalia Planitia. During the perilous retreat, Mark Watney suddenly disappears in the whirlwind and is presumed dead by his companions. Hours later, as Hermes travels back to Earth, the astronaut wakes up on a dusty surface. From that moment on, he will be forced to face his survival in a hostile scenario, alone and without the possibility of communicating with anyone. Thank you to his knowledge of botany and engineering, Watney begins to grow potatoes in the habitat or room —the complex for astronauts' work, maintenance, and rest activities— in order to solve the feeding problem, and will take advantage of the remaining rocket fuel, based on of hydrazine, to generate water. In addition to the Martian location, the novel included two more settings: the Houston space center, headquarters of mission control, and the Hermes ship, captained by Commander Lewis. After learning from satellite images that Watney is alive, NASA personnel in Houston and at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena begin planning a rescue operation that ends in failure. It is then that the crew of the Hermes will decide to force a definitive and risky plan to recover their partner, who in total will be forced to survive on the red planet for a year and seven months. Weir had begun writing the story of astronaut Mark Watney in 2009. After receiving rejection from several publishers, the programmer published the first chapters of the novel on his private website. Encouraged by his readers, he later designed a version in Amazon Kindle format for the lowest price —99 cents— and, after selling 35,000 copies in three months, the writer ceded the rights to Crown publishing in 2013 for distribution. A year later, The New York Times included The Martian on its private best-seller list.
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As in Weir's novel, Mars also tried to stay within the limits of believable science fiction, making no concessions to fantastic elements or agents. In fact, the film unfolds in a realistic and familiar tone for the spectator, present both in the didactic moments in which Watney (Matt Damon) speaks on camera (one), as well as in the references to popular culture or the episodes of tension maintained with the Houston and Pasadena staff. In keeping with this realistic premise, the production sought to reconstruct a mission to the planet twenty years from now according to the agency's plans, and this also entailed an implicit compendium of the history and technology of space travel up to the Orion program, while playing with a hypothetical third mission to Mars.
The fact that an astronaut had to survive on the planet for a period twenty times longer than expected meant, on the one hand, verifying the technological operability of the premise itself and, on the other, drawing the possibilities of a true Martian colonization: something that exceeded the primitive plans of the agency for a human presence on the planet. Still, Lee Billings argued in Scientific American that the film, despite its accuracy, projected a distorted image of the future NASA: far more powerful than the expectations of a meager 0.4 percent of the federal budget in 2015 might allow, NASA would be unable to send one astronaut mission to Mars by 2035. The adapted script by Drew Goddard and Andy Weir is based, from the outset, on a Martian colonization design according to the classic proposal that the president of the Mars Society had exposed in his Mars Direct theory and in his bedside book The Case for Mars. (Zubrin 1996). At the time of the Mars premiere, twenty years after Zubrin laid out his plan, there were three hypothetical models of travel to the red planet. The first two, proposed by NASA and SpaceX respectively, agreed that the landing of a ship was not an end in itself, but rather the first step in a premeditated repopulation process. Finally, the Apollo 11 astronaut Buzz Aldrin had proposed in 2013 a third travel model in accordance with the Mars to Stay theory, which involved the establishment of a Martian colony as the first part of the process, already on the first trip to Mars.
In his essay on America's imagined frontiers, Abbott refers to terraforming narratives as a specific subgenre, rooted in the cultural and mythological tradition of frontier farms. Beyond science fiction or a specific genre, the author acknowledges that this type of story presents an identical pattern of sociocultural conflicts reduced, ultimately, to individual or domestic conflicts: Terraforming narratives range from the general to the particular, from huge technological and organizational problems to the roles and conflicts between individuals involved in the big scene. In short, these narratives are about power and politics. Along the lines indicated by the expert, the script for Mars also establishes a political tension between the pioneering individual transformed into a Martian farmer, on the one hand, and the US space agency, on the other, as a state representative and promoter of an expansion on behalf of the national home. For the agency, Watney has become a hero and a scientific challenge, but also a political problem with complex administrative ramifications. Mars also offers an image of NASA subjected to a conflict between its administrator, Teddy Sanders (Jeff Daniels), and scientists (two) like Mitch Henderson (Sean Bean) and Vincent Kapoor (Chiwetel Ejiofor), director of the Ares III mission and director of the Martian program respectively. From the beginning of the film, the administrator's interest in protecting NASA's efficient image is evident. In short, it is a dilemma between the space company and a single citizen, literally alone and at a distance of 225 million kilometers from the operational political centers. Faced with the position of the administrator, who defends the space policy of a single country, the situation of Watney himself, supported by scientists and by a humanity involved in his rescue.
As it happens in Gravity with the return of Dr. Ryan, Mark Watney is another witness to marvelous events who returns home in the name of humanity, in a live televised operation that brings the world's population to the giant screens of Times Square and Trafalgar Square and the space centers of Houston and Beijing, and that visualizes the cosmic ecumenism discussed pages before: a concept that goes beyond the nationalist vision of space exploration to extend it to the entire world. For NASA, space exploration has always been related to science. For a scientist, the appeal of Mars comes from its similarities to Earth, and from all that these similarities can teach us about geological, chemical, and biological processes here and elsewhere in the universe.
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For private entrepreneurs, on the other hand, space exploration is related to people, to the need for Homo sapiens to expand beyond our home. Throughout the film, this dilemma between knowledge and exploration is transferred to the agency in the form of a struggle between science and the space dream. Thus, in the characters linked to the NASA establishment, such as the administrator Sanders or the director of public relations, there is a submission to schemes, budgets and protocols that collides with the adventurous spirit, embodied by the lone astronaut and the crew of the Hermes. In this sense, the bureaucrats of the agency distance themselves from scientists such as the JPL engineer Bruce Ng or the mission directors Kapoor and Henderson, who increasingly show empathy with Watney and the other astronauts. The attitude of the technicians from Houston and Pasadena, who come to support the Hermes mutiny, expresses in a way the final triumph of the explorer spirit over the scientific bureaucracy.
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On Mars, the historical imaginaries of space exploration corresponding to various decades come together, from the years of the cold war to the interplanetary probes of the 21st century.
Watney's use of the Pathfinder to communicate with NASA (three), are some historical reminders of the space enterprise throughout the film. Through these imaginaries of the American adventure in the cosmos, the film establishes an intergenerational link to value an effort of several decades that is projected into the future through the fiction of the Ares missions.
The intergenerational link is also manifested through the abundant referents of popular culture from different eras, a good part of them related to space icons from comics, literature, cinema, music or video games.
If in 1929 Fritz Lang included a teenage stowaway who never leaves his space comics in The Woman on the Moon, Mark Watney decides to emulate Iron Man at the climax of the film to make a final flight and reunite with his companions aboard the Hermes.
Adventure of exploration, home search and rescue Goddard's script and Weir's novel are based on the references of the classic adventure trip: exploration of an unknown and dangerous territory, heroism put to the test and friendly bond with the adventure companions. Watney is forced to face loneliness and the risk of death for more than a year and a half, and for this reason Scott viewed the planet as both a villain in the story and a paradise of exotic beauty (four): "Mars is the monster (five) that could kill you in the blink of an eye. He wouldn't care at all. Still, he wanted to show Mars in all its beauty, if only because we don't yet understand what it would mean to him." human being".
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This mixed feeling between the beauty and the hostility of the space scene, which appeared for the first time in Apollo 13 and in Contact, is another of the characteristic notes of space exploration cinema of the new century. Cuarón warns him from the first moment in Gravity: "Life in space is not possible." The same thing happens in Nolan's film, whose protagonist is invaded in space by a bittersweet feeling, caused by the distance from his children. On Mars, Watney travels through valleys, plains and canals after assuming that he could die at any moment, in an enterprise of colonization and survival that is reminiscent of that of explorers.
According to Weir's novel, it is Beck who goes out to meet the astronaut in Mars orbit to pick him up. However, Goddard modified the ending of the novel to magnify its dramatic intensity and gave more prominence to Watney, who finally decides to walk the few meters that separate him from Hermes, putting into practice his plan to ascend as Iron Man. Commander Melissa Lewis is also the first woman placed by NASA in charge of a space mission. This recognition of female leadership represents a milestone in the access of the woman to the space dream and, by extension, to the American dream. The improvisation of both heroes, Lewis and Watney, is ultimately key to the vitality of the space dream, in contrast to the dynamics of the agency's programs, weighed down by slow development plans and high budgets (six).
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Translations: Italian - Spanish
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