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The Martian: There’s space for greater things

Director Ridley Scott pays tribute to human ingenuity in The Martian.

On location in Jordan, director Ridley Scott reviews a scene with Matt Damon, for THE MARTIAN. Published Credit: Aidan Monaghan
On location in Jordan, director Ridley Scott reviews a scene with Matt Damon, for THE MARTIAN. Published Credit: Aidan Monaghan

Ridley Scott is over the moon and may be heading Down Under.

His new film, The Martian,has hit the cultural zeitgeist with its global release fortuitously coinciding with NASA’s confirmation last week there is water and salt on Mars.

Subsequently, the film, starring Matt Damon as an astronaut stranded on the red planet, opened strongly in its first weekend, earning more than $US100 million ($141.2m) globally accompanied by strong reviews and the expectation its director would receive another Academy Award nomination (he has yet to win in the category).

The step closer to discovering life beyond Earth validates, in some way, Scott’s ongoing narrative hope for other life forms, expressed in films from Alien through to Prometheus.

The latter film, in which astronauts search for the origins of mankind beyond this planet, suddenly looks a touch more prescient than two years ago.

“Hey, I always do it. I try to do prescient all the time,” he says with a laugh. “I think abso-bloody-lutely. Who would make such a motherf..ker of one of those aliens and why? That’s what the story was about.”

Prescience to a point, though. Scott dismisses the conspiracy theory that NASA delayed its announcement to tie in with the film’s release. But he says he was told of the discovery of salt and water by NASA three months ago, too late to make changes to his scientifically solid film. Perhaps fortuitously so because the process by which Damon’s Mark Watney creates water and sustains himself on Mars leads to one of the film’s key moments.

Scott says the curiosity among NASA scientists about Mars and future ventures has “risen dramatically”.

“I asked them three months ago (if) there were glaciers of freshwater up there — now they know it’s salt — are we looking at a planet that once had life on it three billion years ago and was the planet not similar to this one?” Scott says. “They shrugged, winked and said, ‘Who knows but when we get up there we’ll soon know.’ ”

Scott has always been hopeful of something being out there.

“I’m absolutely of the firm belief that you take the number of balls of earth that are within an approximate distance around the sun and therefore enjoying the benefits of this sun, or another sun, or another heat source, and have atmosphere, then without question there are chances there is life in some form or other,” he says. “Definitely. It’s silly to believe we are it. Come on! Look at the sky at night and think are we it? No, I don’t think so.”

That said, The Martian is a tribute to human ingenuity and courage rather than the unknowns of intergalactic life.

Damon’s character learns to survive after being unwittingly abandoned by his team (played by a strong cast including Jessica Chastain, Kate Mara and Michael Pena in space and Jeff Daniels, Kristen Wiig, Sean Bean and Chiwetel Ejiofor on the ground).

Drew Goddard’s screenplay, adapted from Andy Weir’s popular book of the same name, displays NASA scientists testing their mettle, astronauts making courageous and ingenious decisions, and even the Chinese and American space agencies collaborating in a matter-of-fact manner without any politicking.

I ask Scott whether it is a fair to view The Martian as an optimistic film. The director of Gladiator, Black Hawk Down and Thelma and Louise agrees quickly.

“Yes,” he says. “I can be accused of being dark sometimes. But in this instance I thought, you know what, this is really quite comedic. His attitude about his perilous, really perilous situation is kind of so cool that it’s actually funny.”

He mentions the lessons learned from the seminal Tom Wolfe book, and subsequent film, The Right Stuff, particularly the courage and attitude of pilots and astronauts with “the right stuff”. Damon’s Watney has it, as do most astronauts who Scott and his cast discovered tend to have an unnatural enthusiasm for, and positivity about, their roles.

“So we witness the evolution of courage that leads into humour and then ‘I’m not going to die here’ and then into ‘what am I going to do about it?’­  Then everyone kicks in,” he adds. “Really everybody has to help everybody else. That’s a lesson for life, really.”

Hollywood’s reaction to the film will be instructive.

After the success of best picture Academy Award winner Gravity, The Martian follows with a space adventure that has its perils yet is uplifting rather than terrifying. Space is not so much an unknown where the worst can happen; rather it is an extension of our world where the best can happen.

The Martian feels like a reaction, or an antidote, to a decade of big, dark Hollywood films epitomised by Christopher Nolan’s Dark Knight series, in which even our superheroes needed to have foreboding backstories or chips on their shoulder. Even the lighter Marvel films, led by The Avengers, all end with a city or planet being pulverised with no thought of how to clean up the mess.

Scott agrees there has been a cinematic obsession with apocalypse that has been overtaken by real life.

“We’re obsessed with the end of the world,” he says. “Yeah, I think so, although not to take anything away from (those filmmakers) either, but if we don’t bloody watch it we will be facing the end of the world.

“That’s why (it was) ridiculous the other day with the Chinese saying they were willing to cut emissions by 30 per cent by 2027,” he argues. “There’ll be nothing left by 2027. We’ve got to get bloody real and no one’s getting real.”

Scott, who turns 78 next month, remains a whirlwind of ideas and proficiency. As a director, he has averaged one film a year for the past decade and only two of them (A Good Year and The Counselor) would be considered small films.

He’s preparing production of two films: the Blade Runner sequel, which he will co-produce in June — “I’ve spent 2½ years writing the bugger with Hampton Fancher and Michael Green” — and the Prometheus sequel, Alien: Paradise Lost.

He hopes to direct the latter at Sydney’s Fox Studios Australia from the end of February. The film is awaiting confirmation of what tax rebate and other incentives it may receive from the federal and state governments.

“It’s really about the tax rebate and I know how difficult that is now,” he says, noting The Martian filmed in Hungary because of its generous rebate. “The exchange for that (rebate) is we’d employ all Australians, which on a unit like this could be 500-600 technicians, artisans, etcetera.

“It’s a nice exchange but it also generates business. In London now, because of the generous tax rebate, you can’t get a studio, and that’s from five or six studios, and you can’t get a film crew because they’re all busy.

“We’re ready,” he adds. “It’s up to the powers that be to help me out. Besides, I need to have a drink with Russell (Crowe) in Sydney; I haven’t seen him for a while!”

Original URL: https://www.theaustralian.com.au/arts/film/the-martian-theres-space-for-greater-things/news-story/1f48c3904986da7e91a156b922f1e44b