**** Spoiler alert! This review reveals major plot elements of the film The Martian.

The Martian (released October, 2015. Directed by Ridley Scott)

Synopsis:  Matt Damon played American astronaut/botanist Mark Watney on a third manned American mission to Mars happening many years in our future. The crew of six had established a pressurized habitat on Mars where they could remove their space-suits and do research. Outside the habitat, they wore pressure-suits and helmets. Their research site was equipped with a large van-like driving rover vehicle that could carry several astronauts, and a return-to-orbit rocket vessel for the astronauts' eventual return home.

The researchers were outside on the Martian surface collecting samples when a sudden sand-storm hit them. The storm was so violent that a heavy metallic object was thrown into the air, and it pushed Watney far away from the other five astronauts. The telemetry radio in his pressure-suit showed loss-of-pressure, so the other five astronauts presumed him dead. Suddenly, their rocket ship tilted heavily, so the commander ordered the remaining five crew members to get into their rocket, blast off from Mars, reunite with the mother ship in Martian orbit, and return to Earth, leaving behind Watney's body.

     With the food problem solved for a long time, he now had to find a way to tell Earth that he was alive. He remembered that there was an old American robotic rover several kilometers away, and he used his Martian van to drive there, and return the rover to his habitat. He got the rover to communicate with Earth, and the NASA people communicated with him in a rudimentary way by pointing the rover's pivoting head toward signs that Watney had placed on the soil.

Many months had passed, and NASA tried to send a re-supply ship toward Watney on Mars, but the rocket exploded during launch. Now the only alternative was to use the five Mars-mission astronauts that were almost at Earth. They disobeyed NASA orders to land on Earth, and shot their spacecraft around Earth orbit, scooping up a Chinese-donated food supply craft along the way. Once they reached Mars, they reunited with Watney, who had blasted into orbit using another rocket that had been pre-placed by NASA before the crew had first landed. All six of the original mission astronauts returned to Earth alive.

Review
The Martian was fantastic early on in the film. The action sequences were well-directed, and the viewer was enthralled as the film went along. Anyone who saw the film Cast Away would have found similarities in the protagonist's struggle for survival with limited food supplies.

Some things stand out in the film as technically incorrect. Such as, why is there an LED light, and an electronic beeper on a 1990's Martian robotic rover if such rovers are optimized for mass, and there were no humans around for the need to hear and see cues that the rover was powered up? Inside his Martian habitat, Watney used electricity everywhere to power up video monitors and lights. If he was trying to conserve every last bit of battery life to survive for over one year, and using solar panels to generate electricity, why would he be wasting so much electricity?

The music was adequate and professionally-made, but not Academy Award material, and had no theme that one could hum after coming out of the theater.

Special Effects
The digital special effects were quite well-done, although there was the usual issue with digital 'rezzyness,' especially when we see the first Martian landscape images. However, once the viewer got used to the digital effects, the rezzyness became less noticeable and more acceptable.

A better ending
The film's ending was too kumbaya, sappy, and went on for too long. The credits started rolling over top of scenes that were still happening, so many people in the theater weren't sure whether it was time to exit the theater or just watch the ending parts. A perfect way to end the movie might have been using the scene where Watney sat on a park bench outside of an astronaut training center on Earth. He bent over and caressed with his hand a tiny budding plant, just as he did earlier in the film when he saw the first budding plant growing in Martian soil inside his pressurized habitat. Ending on that scene would have foretold a future where Man might return to Mars, and showed Watney's recent events coming full-circle. Then, cut to credits. In some ways, such an ending would have been like the feather that was seen at both the start and finish of the film Forrest Gump, symbolizing Forrest's life journey in a nice neat story-arc.

Apollo 13 echoes
Many scenes in the film reminded the viewer of Apollo 13, a film that is in recent cultural memory. Both films use the line "steely-eyed missile man" to describe an engineer. Anyone who saw Apollo 13 would have internally groaned a mite at the lack of originality of re-using the exact same line in The Martian. Both films had crowds gathered outside of Times Square in New York and other global cities watching giant televisions showing the astronaut rescue. This crowd stuff seemed over-used in The Martian.

Summary
Compared to Ridley Scott's other fine films, Alien and Blade Runner, The Martian was not nearly as good. However, The Martian was an entertaining ride, and one worth re-watching. The survival story on Mars was an original one, and the film added to the body of science fiction films. Cutting out some of the superfluous scenes, and re-writing some others, would have made the film more compact and stylish, instead of a Hollywood-style film targeted for everyone. The film was less of a film for sci-fi fans than it was a broadly-targeted space adventure with some realism thrown in. The Martian is perfectly suited for one of those You-Tube 'fan-edits.' The early parts of the film could be rated 8 or 9 out of 10. If not for the ending, the film might have garnered an overall 8/10, but let's say The Martian was an overall 7/10.

                            (Note: this film was released in both 2D and 3D versions.  The 3D version was not reviewed here.)

Rating: 7/10

(Rating system: '10' is best, '1' is worst)

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This video was shot on a nice sunny summer day of 2007 in southern California, USA
It shows mostly longboarders.