The Films of 2015: Jurassic World

The very best quality of Jurassic World?

This is one blockbuster movie that bites the hand that feeds it.

Certainly -- as the fourth installment of a billion dollar big studio franchise -- the obvious path would have been to play things safe, and not feature any kind of embedded social commentary in the film at all.

Instead -- and quite delightfully -- Jurassic World attempts to speak to our time, 2015, much in the way that Jurassic Park sought to speak to its historical context, circa 1993.

The substance of the commentary is entirely different, but both films possess it, and that’s quite possibly the best way to honor the source material.

Jurassic World isn’t about the irresponsible creation of life in the Age of the Human Genome Project, but rather the easy way that our species, mankind, can grow bored by that life, unwilling to treat it as anything other than a not so-exciting attraction.

There’s an old joke about this very idea. It goes something like this:

A person sees God for the first time, and is utterly wowed.

It’s God!  Amazing! Wondrous! Blinding! Fantastic! 

Then, that person sees God on a second visit.

Yeah, God is still cool. Maybe not like before.  But still very cool.

Finally, the same person visits God a third time, and you know what?  God’s no big deal.

Yeah, it’s God.  Ho-hum.

Wait, someone’s texting me….

This is precisely the philosophical terrain that Jurassic World contends with: our constant quest, our ubiquitous desire to find something new, to see something shiny. We can get bored with anything after a short time, even the Divine.

And dinosaurs too.

Yet in Jurassic World, the so-called attractions (or “assets”) bite back, and demand attention for what they truly are: miraculous, living, individual things. They aren’t just there for our amusement. They have lives, destinies, and desires too.

It's so easy to forget that.

In the era of cookie-cutter, generic blockbusters (see: Avengers 2: Age of Ultron), Jurassic World’s dedicated attempt to focus on this facet of the human race’s genome -- let’s call it a collective “meh” in the face of the wondrous -- renders the film both unique and worthwhile. 

Perhaps not on the same gonzo, jaw-dropping scale as Mad Max: Fury Road, but certainly enough for this reviewer to state the obvious; that a lot of fresh blood has been injected into this particular franchise.

Don’t believe, either, the critics who claim that this genre film is misogynistic. You shouldn't believe that any more than you should believe the sour puss male critics who said that Mad Max: Fury Road was anti-male.

Here’s the context for Jurassic World that the “misogyny” crowd doesn’t provide. 

Every single Jurassic Park film in history has concerned adults learning to parent children in their custody (if not their actual, biological progeny). The character who undertakes that journey in Jurassic World happens to be a woman.  Her name is Claire Dearing, and she is played by Bryce Dallas Howard.

Some critics would like you to see this development as deeply sexist in nature, noting that it is biased and sexist to assume a career woman like Claire must yearn deep down to be a mother. Yet the movie features no such yearning.

Instead, Claire steps up to take responsibility -- a key philosophical touchstone of the franchise -- in a pressure cooker situation. She takes responsibility for the children she must protect, and for the park that has gotten out of control.

She undertakes her parental responsibilities, just as Dr. Alan Grant (Sam Neill), Ian Malcolm (Jeff Goldblum), and even the Kirbys (Tea Leoni, William H. Macy) all undertook the same journey in their respective dino adventures.

This is not a coincidence. This is by design.  

So why repeat the kids, parents and dinosaur mix?

Well, in the Jurassic Park franchise they all go to together in a very specific algebraic equation. 

In the face of cravenly irresponsible scientists, business-men, and military man, other people -- good people like the ones I tagged above -- get a first-hand lesson in the most important and immediate responsibility any of us will ever face: becoming a decent parent.  

Those who can become good, responsible parents are then ready to take on genetically-engineered dinosaurs.

The skill-sets are, in some way, one in the same.

Treat each “beast” (kid or dino…) according to its gifts or nature -- and with care -- and they won’t eat you for lunch.

Jurassic World reiterates the same theme to good effect and is absolutely not sexist “in a seventies” or 2015 way if you actually consider the context of all the Jurassic films.  

Yet I would recommend the film not the basis of how it remixes the old favorites, but rather how Jurassic World makes a trenchant point about the iPhone Era.  

This is a span in which something on our personal screens is always more interesting than what is actually in front of our noses in the real world.

The chaotic events that occur in Jurassic World are a wake-up call, then, for people to unplug -- or log-off -- and look up at the world before their eyes. In doing so, they might see things they haven’t tended to, like out-of-control children...or rampaging prehistoric animals.

“Extinct species have no rights.”

A fully functioning Jurassic World Theme Park will soon debut its new attraction: a genetically-engineered hybrid predator called Indominus Rex.

Meanwhile, a trainer, Owen Grady (Chris Pratt) has been wrangling a team of velociraptors, teaching the pack to respond to his commands. He is their “alpha.”

The park’s harried administrator, Claire Dearing (Bryce Dallas 0Howard), meanwhile, must play babysitter to her sister’s two teen boys, Zach (Nick Robinson) and Gray (Ty Simpkins), who are visiting the theme park.

When the Indominus Rex escapes from captivity, an InGen military adviser, Vic Hoskins (Vincent D’Onofrio) believes he can use the trained velociraptors to take down the predator in what amounts to a field study.  

If successful, he believes velociraptors can be utilized in combat situations.

Owen and Claire team up to save Zach and Gray when the boys are reported lost in a gyroscope.   

Meanwhile, the boys stumble upon the old park, from twenty years earlier…

“You made them and you think you own them.”

The line of dialogue excerpted above marries the two key letimotifs of Jurassic World: parenting kids, and herding dinosaurs, essentially. 

In both cases, we have made “children,” and believe it is our right to control their destinies. They (dinosaurs and human children) are extensions of us, here for our pleasure and happiness, and governed by the rules we lay down. 

But if you’ve ever met a velociraptor, or a teenager, for that matter, you understand that -- in the words of Owen Grady -- this equation is not about control, but about honoring the relationship.

As Jurassic World starts, it’s pretty clear that the relationship between man and dinosaur has not been honored, save by Grady and his cohorts.  

For example, the Indominus Rex has been raised in isolation, without socialization, and Owen points this fact out to Claire. She replies sarcastically that the dino “needs a friend” and that maybe the park should “schedule a play date.”

What we have here is a total lack of honoring important relationships.

This idea is mirrored in the Mitchell family. Gray and Zach have not been told by their parents that they are planning to get divorced. Instead, Mom and Dad have retained lawyers and are taking steps to dissolve the family, but they have not informed the ones most impacted by their decision; their own progeny.

Again, is that any way to parent?  

It is, but it's abundantly selfish.

The theme park under Claire's command, Jurassic World is similarly selfish. The park's runners care more about product placement and profits than they do about the welfare of the animals in the park. 

Those animals, as noted above, are termed “assets.”  

That sure makes them sound like things, not living creatures, doesn’t it?

And it's easier to control a thing, than a person, or an animal.

And indeed, this is why the movie is not in any way sexist.  Claire -- at the start of the movie -- is already a bad mother or parent (like Victor Frankenstein, to provide a prominent literary example). Her children, however, are not human, but dinosaurs. She treats them no better than her sister treats Zach and Gray.  She moves assets around, but she takes no responsibility for the "life" under her authority.

So one can't claim that Claire yearns to be a mother in the movie, as she undertakes her journey with her sister's kids.  On the contrary, she is a mother from the word go. 

Instead, Claire learns to be responsible in her motherhood as she undertakes her journey. See the difference, and why it is significant?

In short order, we see just how empty Claire's world is, in terms of respecting the relationships with the wards. Jurassic World shows us the Samsung Innovation Center, a Starbucks, and reveals the promise that Verizon Wireless will present the Indominus Rex.  Every business worth its salt wants a piece of the dinosaur profits.  

But when those profits falls, the dinosaurs are blamed. Claire notes, for instance, that “nobody’s impressed with a dinosaur anymore.”  

The message?  

That the children are not good enough.  That the assets have somehow failed their parents.

Only a new child, one better than the old children, can fill the void.

And so irresponsible business joins with irresponsible science to engineer a new dinosaur that will spike profits.  Even the name “Indominus Rex” has been audience-tested. And the beast has been engineered to be “cooler,” with more teeth, with more awesome abilities (like natural camouflage) and a bigger “wow” factor.  

The whole idea is that a “normal” dinosaur no longer does it for park visitors.  They're bored.

They need the next fix, the next “cool” thing that can go viral on the Internet. What's the next product? The next thing to consume?

This is a tragic impulse in the human animal, but especially so for children, who lose the love and attention of their parents to siblings, or simply to the next "big" thing.

And don't make the mistake of believing this only happens in science fiction blockbusters. 

I can tell you for a fact that there are many parents out there who believe that by having another child, a new child, they will repair all that's wrong in the family. 

This idea of grasping for new, shiny objects, runs rampant in the film's scenes set at the theme park. For example, there’s a hologram in the Hammond Creation Center, another cool thing to ooh and aah over and draw the eye.

Or consider the stadium seating that can descend to the aquarium level.

But, once again, life finds a way, and before long, there is chaos in the theme park. The forgotten children take back by force the attention they've lost.

The only way to defeat the isolated monster child (I-Rex), in this case, is by pitting it against Grady’s velociraptors, whom he has treated with respect, and -- for the most part -- raised well.  

And -- to audience cheers -- the movie also trots out another old friend from Jurassic Park, one scarred and old, but still gorgeous as hell and ready to go to the mat against the pretender for her throne.  This creature has been forgotten, shunted aside for cooler attractions.  But as we see, she is still magnificent.

In the course of the film, Claire finally recognizes that she has not been honoring the relationships in her life.  

Not with her co-workers, not with Owen, and not even with her sister and nephews. So she makes a change.  She acts...responsibly. She sets the animal in Paddock 9 free.

By contrast, Grady is indeed wise and “a life-force” (as Joss Whedon tweeted...), but his character is monumentally uninteresting in comparison to Claire. 

It is Claire who takes on the Alan/Ian/Kirby role of parent who learns the error of his/her ways.  By comparison, Grady already knows everything he needs to know to be a good parent and a good dino wrangler in his first scene in the movie. 

 He doesn’t change or grow, accordingly.  He's right in his beliefs at the beginning of the movie, right at the movie's half-way point, and vindicated in his rightness at the denouement.  So, despite Pratt's efforts and inherent charms, Owen is pretty dull and stagnant as a character.

It’s Claire -- not Owen -- who does the changing and growing.  Jeff Goldblum and Sam Neill vetted this subplot too, so perhaps it is actually the opposite of sexist that this time around Bryce Dallas Howard gets to do so.

We have seen men take responsibility for their children and for the genetically-engineered dinosaurs on several previous occasions. Why can't a woman undertake the same character arc?  

And when she does, why do some insist it is sexist for her do so? If a man can take this journey (or men, accurately...), why is it wrong to send a woman on the exact same one?  Isn't that, actually, what equality is all about?

Moving on from these ridiculous social politics, the first hour of Jurassic World is pretty terrific.

It features an amusing tour of the park (including a dino petting zoo…) and plenty of scenes that help us understand how the theme park isn’t honoring the animals.  

And then, one of the best scenes in the film finds Owen and Claire encountering an injured dinosaur in the field, after the I-Rex break-out. 

Claire touches it gently, as it takes its last breaths.  She realizes that she has given too little thought to the idea that these assets are living animals -- with their own thoughts, their own purpose, and their own destinies.  

The scene represents a nice breather in the action that alludes to the original film (and a scene with a sick triceratops), but more importantly, it hammers home this movie's point. When you don’t treat life with respect and reverence, you are doing the opposite.  You are acting in a dishonorable fashion. 

That is exactly how Claire has lived. 

Her most meaningful and indeed heroic act in the last third of the film, involves the release of a dinosaur from Paddock 9, as I noted above.

Claire releases it to rescue her nephews, of course, but also as an act of honoring the animal.  She frees it and allows it to pursue its destiny as king or queen of the jungle.  It has been denied this fate its whole life; its place on the "food chain" (which Owen tags as a key element of dinosaur life).

That destiny becomes the film’s beautiful, valedictory image. The metaphor is thus clear: we can't cage our children, dinosaur or human, and chain them to our expectations . At some point, they must be free to do what they will.  The film's final image really captures that idea in a majestic, emotional way. 

I won’t lie and state that Jurassic World is a perfect film, despite its adroit handling of the franchise's ongoing  parenting/responsibility leitmotif.  It’s not. 

For example, Vincent D’Onofrio’s character is pretty two-dimensional and awful. He is handled in a less human fashion, even, than are the velociraptors…who are fully dimensional, especially Blue.  He does and says all the wrong things, and at all the wrong times.  He is a basic movie villain, and we anticipate his much-deserved death from his very first scene.

Similarly, there’s not enough suspense in the film's last act, after all the dominoes have fallen. The denouement is satisfying, and yet I walked away from a screening feeling that, at least a little, the film had not scared me sufficiently. 

I can understand not being able to repeat Jurassic Park’s sense of wonder.  It's an impossible act to follow.  

But I did hope for a bit more in terms of scares or jumps this time around.  I suspect I may feel this way because Trevorrow does not possess the neo-classicist visual approach of a director like John Carpenter or Steven Spielberg.  The film is smart and witty, but it is not patient, and the visuals don't reflect the story as meaningfully as they could, except in isolated instances (like the film's aforementioned valedictory image).

In short, the visuals simply do not feel as cinematic this time around, and I missed that element. There's not a single scene here as tense, or as meticulously constructed, for example, as the trailer-on-the-precipice scene of The Lost World (1997).

Still, Jurassic World (2015) ably incorporates all the key genetic sequences of the long-lived Steven Spielberg franchise and gives the juggernaut a solid face-lift. 

Jurassic World is better, frankly, than either of the two previous sequels, even if it’s not quite as good you might hope it to be. 

The film's leitmotif about honoring relationships -- whether with dinosaurs or children -- is powerfully-wrought, and a perfect corrective for our busy, eyes-on-iPhone-screens-at-all-times age.

In the final analysis, Jurassic World gets the job done, but without, precisely, the visual legerdemain Spielberg might have provided were he still in the director’s seat. 

It's a good sequel, but Jurassic Park (1993) still reigns in this Jurassic world.

Movie Trailer: Emelie (2015)

Cult-Movie Review: The Revenant (2015)

A revenant is a person who comes back from the dead…a ghost. 

In Alejandro Inarritu’s The Revenant (2015), audiences encounter a man of the year 1823 who simply refuses to die: trapper Hugh Glass (Leonardo Di Caprio).  

In essence, he returns from the dead multiple times.

Glass manages not to die -- to return to the realm of the mortal -- by simply enduring one breath at a time. As he notes at one point in the narrative: “you fight for every breath.”

“You breathe. Keep breathing.”

Driven by the specter of his dead wife, a beautiful Pawnee, and his murdered son, Hawk (Forrest Goodluck), Glass endures and survives physical challenge after physical challenge. 

Glass is compelled to survive by visions of his loved ones, but also by the Earthly demand to enact revenge on one person, the selfish murderer of his boy: John Fitzgerald (Tom Hardy).

At the end of his harrowing journey, Hugh Glass also comes to a reckoning about revenge, and the fact that, finally, it is not in his hands to enact…and nor should it be.

Birdman (2014) and The Revenant (2015) are such very different films -- with different aims -- and yet both are cinematic masterpieces.

Birdman is an incredible, funny, multi-faceted commentary on the dichotomy between pop art and high art, and the way that one actor navigates it.

Thanks to its breathtaking photography and performances, The Revenant is absolutely beautiful to behold. It is a haunting, throttling vision of the world that "was." coupled with the frightening imagery of the world that "will be" (epitomized by a mountain of buffalo skull).

Perhaps The Revenant is less overtly an intellectual or cerebral experience than Birdman was, but the remarkable consolation is that this film feels entirely more visceral. I am aware that some viewers apparently feel that The Revenant is more like an endurance test than it is a fully-fleshed out movie narrative.  

I would debate that assumption.

The Revenant very much concerns a man who will do anything to achieve a particular end -- revenge -- only to learn that his life's purpose is finally, bankrupt. That bankruptcy, meanwhile is also seen in the film's depiction of capitalism (represented by the mountain of dead buffalo.)  But the overall idea is about the human experience; the notion that we run around, every day, trying desperately to achieve ends that, finally, are irrelevant in the face of nature, or in the face of mortality.

But first thing's first. There is no doubt that The Revenant is absolutely compelling --and gory -- and appears authentically as though it is was filmed on another planet (or at least in another time period). 

I have tried to locate and harness the best words to describe Emmanuel Lubezki's cinematography but keep coming up short. I keep returning to "miraculous", or "near miraculous." So much of The Revenant's artistic success depends on its depiction of the untamed world, and the plight of those men seeking to tame it.

On one hand, I am relieved to know that such untamed beauty still exists on this planet, and was available to be filmed. 

On the other, I am dazzled and impressed by the production team, and its efforts to bring this world to our movie theaters and TV sets.

It's not just the landscape, or rather the visual presentation of the landscape that is stunning. If it were, we could achieve the same delight from viewing a painting, or a photograph. Instead, Inarritu's staging of the action in this untamed world is simply breathtaking.

The film’s opening attack on Glass’s trapping party by an Arikara hunting party, for example, is a masterpiece of brilliant staging and editing.

Watch, for example, how Inarritu’s moving camera constantly erases the old foreground and creates a new one in the frame. 

He works in this fashion so that objects (and fierce attackers) may dart into view, surprise the viewer, and thus suggest the sudden, brutal nature of the attack. Since the foreground keeps shifting -- always in motion -- the assault on the senses keeps coming. There is no "safe" zone in this attack.  The attack isn't brief. Attack is perpetual, sustained and unrelenting.  

At least that's how it feels to the senses.  

Considering the idea of a frontier --- and the unknown encroaching on all sides -- this is perhaps the perfect application of a moving camera. We feel, on a visceral level, what it means to be under siege in the wilderness, and by those who know the land better than we do.  We might flee, and we might run, but the incursion keeps violating the sanctity of the frame and therefore our sense of comfort or safety.

Other moments also legitimately qualify as stunning. Glass rides a cresting waterfall…and survives.  He endures a brutal bear attack…and survives. He races across an icy plain on a horse, and rides his steed over a mountaintop…and survives.

Each of these moments, on its own, is jaw-dropping in the extreme. I cannot stress enough how convincing, how amazing, how immersive, these moments are. I appreciated every single set piece. The action in the film is incredible.

I suppose the opposing point of view here is that these moments, immersive as they may be, do not add up to a believable experience.

The critics of the film would tell us that in The Revenant there’s chance. There’s luck. There’s incredible good luck. And then there’s Hugh Glass.

Perhaps this is the point where the director's facility for magical reality comes into play and ameliorates such concerns. Glass is supposed to be a “revenant,” someone who has returned from the dead, and it is clear that he is impelled to survive by his driving quest, his need to avenge the death of his son. He struggles to survive -- and does survive -- because he must; because he is overpowered by his drive.

How is that drive manifested? Delightfully, not in terms of violence or hatred or rage (the emotion du jour, of our national dialogue). Throughout the film, Hugh is girded by flashbacks of his beatific wife and his loving son. 

At one point, she is even seen to be literally hovering above Glass, like a guardian angel. The implication may be simply that she watches over him; or that his faith in her drives him to continue; to endure.  Perhaps, by dying, Glass has interfaced with a world beyond our own, and that connection with the other world permits him to endure.

In other words, Glass survives because either his wife is guarding him, or he believes his wife is guarding him.  Perhaps it is her memory which helps keep him alive. 

In terms of history, we know that Hugh Glass did survive his ordeal, though The Revenant no doubt takes liberties with the truth. Still this "based on a true story" veneer this is another factor that helps the film's gauntlet read as more believable and less fantastic.

Many have also detected a powerful anti-capitalist statement in The Revenant. 

They are correct to do so. Powaqa’s father, a vengeful Native American makes a very direct comment about how the white man as stolen “everything” from his people, including “the land” and “the animals.”

The film’s villain, Fitzgerald is often explicitly equated too, with material wealth.

He wants to hold onto the boat. He wants to hold on to the pelts. He desires a reward for staying behind and taking care of Glass. 

His actions all originate with his ubiquitous desire for the acquisition of material wealth.

Glass's vision of the skull mountain showcases the logical ending of such overwhelming desire; a strip-mining of the environment and the animals. They will all die or be destroyed to sate our human need to "own" things.  

Soon, the only things we "own" will be a vast boneyard of the used up, the gutted.

These visions, coupled with the anti-capitalist statement very strongly relate to Glass's mission of revenge. Whether the quest is to be rich, or to kill an enemy out of revenge, the endeavor is ultimately pointless.

In the former case, you die alone, and you can't take money with you. Eventually, the world and resources around you will be destroyed, if everybody subscribes to the same philosophy.

In the latter case, revenge will not bring back the dead. Contrarily, it may actually dishonor the dead.

Both ideas -- material wealth and bloody revenge-- are, finally, bankrupt ones that run strongly against the principles we see espoused by the Pawnee, for example. In the last frames of the film, Glass looks up, in the direction of the camera. He has finally let go of revenge -- and just barely -- still lives.

His expression is worth commenting on. He doesn't exactly break the fourth wall, but Glass certainly looks in the general direction of the camera.  It's as if he's saying "now what?"  The philosophy that has kept him alive, kept him moving, kept him warm in the frozen wasteland, even, is bankrupt.

To what -- and whom -- shall he now devote his days?

Glass must choose to change, and stop subscribing to the petty values of his culture. This idea is given voice early in the film, on another occasion as well.

Early on, for example, there is a memorable visual transition from Glass’s cloudy breath to the clouds over a mountain range.  This moment is not merely pretty, make no mistake. The two shots suggest that man, in settling the Americas, is becoming God over the planet. Man's breath and God’s breath are directly equated by the symbolism.

Later, one can absolutely connect Glass’s decision to leave revenge to “God” to a reckoning that man should not settle the land, and should not progress to conquer the Americas, instead leaving its natural beauty to its original inhabitants.

Whether you agree with this philosophical sentiment or not, the way that Inarritu forges the connection -- through a remarkable and symbolic visual transition -- is quite beautiful and quite powerful. This is precisely the kind of rich, illustrative symbolism  that elevates the film beyond its action genre roots.  

In a certain sense, The Revenant really is a “prestige” horror or action movie, with a focus on violence, blood, and even gore. It is a film that makes a character run a deadly and harrowing gauntlet to achieve his goals. It also boasts a pro-social point, that revenge is not a worthy venture.

The magic realism in the film places the dead (or revenants) on the same plane of existence with the livng. In some cases, the dead can signal to the rest of us that love doesn't die. 

In other examples -- such as the buffalo skull mountain -- we see signs of a dark, used-up future.

In both cases, Inarritu's visuals seem to tell us one thing: that the dead don't want us, the shepherds of the Earth, to follow vain pursuits. 

That's the message that the dead convey to the living with such haunting power in The Revenant.

Movie Trailer: The Green Inferno (2015)

The Films of 2015: The Martian

Based on Andy Weir’s 2011 novel of the same name, Ridley Scott’s The Martian (2015) has now earned a number of Academy Award nominations including those for best actor (Matt Damon), and best picture.  

The Martian apparently directed itself, since Scott was not nominated for his significant role in crafting the film. 

But suffice it to say that The Martian’s nominations are well-deserved. This is a great science fiction film, and one of the two best genre films of the year (the other being Mad Max: Fury Road). 

Much superior to other recent “near future” films about the space age, like Gravity (2013), The Martian is, in a sense, a less-fanciful version or re-think of 1964’s Robinson Crusoe on Mars.  

In both instances, a lone astronaut survives alone on the red planet using his only scientific skill-set.  

Only here, of course, we don’t meet alien slaves or slavers, and the focus is much more on the possible than on the fantastic. Robinson Crusoe on Mars brought aliens, alien spaceships and other wonders into the tale of human loneliness and fortitude, whereas The Martian simply focuses on a key issue: Man vs. Nature.  

In this case, that "Nature" belongs to different and infinitely more harsh world than ours: Mars.

Thrillingly, The Martian is precisely the science fiction movie our country and our planet needs and deserves at this juncture in history, when politicians are thinking small, stoking fear and resentment, and focusing very much on petty Earth-bound matters.

The Martian deftly, and without apology, reminds us that no frontier is off limits if we dedicate ourselves to conquering it. We must merely possess the will to conquer it.

Perhaps it’s not that we are Star Trekkian-like perfect beings -- at least not yet -- but rather that the individual fear of death -- coupled with the human race’s fear of stagnation -- can push us to the next horizon, and then the one beyond that. The Martian is realistic in its approach, and yet optimistic at the same time. It imagines that mankind can achieve big things, and do it under his own auspices.

What are those auspices? Knowledge. Training. Endurance. 

And no less important, imagination too.

We need The Martian now, indeed, because aspiring politicians routinely suggest that they somehow know better than the scientists do. Even though they have no training, and worse, no curiosity about how the universe works.

The Martian is very much about what happens when a dedicated, imaginative scientist is given a challenge, and rises to the occasion. The film will, I imagine, inspire many young people to become astronauts, botanists, physicists, or the like. And of course, that's a very good thing.

So Scott’s film reminds us -- in a sadly anti-intellectual time -- how knowledge, not ignorance, can transform not merely our lives, but the planets themselves.

“This is space. It does not cooperate.”

On a mission to Mars in 2035, astronaut Mark Watley (Damon) is injured during a terrible storm. His commanding officer, Lewis (Jessica Chastain), is unable to find him in the blizzard and forced to assume that Mark has died. She leaves the planet with the rest of the crew.

Against the odds, however, Watley is not dead, only wounded. He manages to return to the astronaut shelter on the surface, and face the fact that he has been abandoned, possesses no way to return home, and that another mission to Mars is not due to arrive from Earth for four years. 

Mark possesses approximately thirty-one days of life-support, which means he will have to improvise, and -- after rationing his supplies -- grow roughly three years of his own food.

Watley goes about solving this food problem by planting potatoes (using his own waste as fertilizer), and then faces the next crisis: He will have to travel fifty days in cold temperatures, in a rover, to reach the distant landing site.

Back on Earth, meanwhile, NASA learns from satellite footage that Watley has survived.  

Now the organization must rally and determine a way to bring the marooned astronaut home alive.  

One answer involves launch a second rocket, but a brilliant young physicist comes up with a plan to redirect Lewis’s ship back to Mars for an extraordinary orbital rendezvous...

“I am going to have to science the shit out of this.”

In my introduction above, I compared this film to Gravity. I believe that film is technically and visually brilliant, but when you think about it -- and its dramatic point -- for an length of time...you encounter disappointment.  

Basically, Gravity is about how the entire space program is pulped in one day, but one woman survives, and learns to deal with her personal demons (the death of a child). It only took the destruction of every shuttle, station, and satellite in orbit for her to accept her past traumas.  

Worse, the film makes no notation that though it is a good day for Sandra Bullock’s character, psychologically-speaking, it is a very sad day for mankind, and humanity's efforts in space. The space program, in that movie, would have been set back years, if not decades. And yet, we are expected to cheer when the scientist arrives home safely on Earth.

All I could think about was the future lost, destroyed, or prevented by the incidents of that terrible day.

The Martian adopts a different and far preferable creative strategy. 

It’s a movie about people navigating challenges -- in bureaucracies and on Mars -- and figuring out how science, technology, and know-how can rescue people and break boundaries.

It’s not merely about survival and escape, while the space program crashes and burns as a consequence. The Martian is about how the space program can achieve great things, even though death is always a possibility.  

The film’s protagonist, Mark Watley, is given no facile “back story” to conquer. There’s no Hollywood bullshit here to attempt to falsely manufacture psychological drama. Instead, Mark must keep his vision trained squarely on the present, battling each problem as it arise. He then uses his wit, skill, and training to conquer it. 

Watley pulls together every scrap of knowledge and training he has, but even that considerable effort is not enough. We see throughout the film that man survives not just when he is smart and adaptive, but when he employs his imagination. 

Mark isn't depressed, brooding, or angsty about the set-backs and reversals he encounters. 

On the contrary, he keeps engaging his imagination,considering new ways to survive and thrive.

Uniquely, The Martian shares an opening shot with Scott’s Prometheus (2012).  

In both films, the camera hurtles (relatively low to the ground) across an inhospitable surface. In Prometheus, that surface belongs to Earth, as the alien Engineers attempt to seed it with their DNA. 

In The Martian, that surface is Mars.  

In both cases, knowledge, reason, science and technology ultimately re-shape that surface to accommodate or welcome life.

It’s on a huge scale in Prometheus, and a small one (for now), in The Martian, but as Watley trenchantly notes, by growing his own food there, he has, by definition, colonized the planet. He has taken the first step of introducing new life to Mars.  

The Martian and Prometheus are polar opposites, or mirror reflections in another significant way. 

In Prometheus, the search for God is what impels man to the stars.  

In The Martian, man survives a harrowing space journey not on faith in a supernatural being, but by faith in his own abilities, ingenuity, and know-how. 

The two films provide a kind of perfect yin/yang in terms of philosophy.

One is about the literal search for God, and the divine within. The other is about mankind -- through his knowledge -- evolving into something, if not Godlike, then at least able to brave the dangerous realm of outer space.  

It's no accident, or coincidence, that Mark Watley puts a crucifix (belonging to another astronaut) to practical -- rather than spiritual -- use during the duration of the film. He must use his imagination, training, and every material he has on hand if he wishes to endure. There is no time to worship idols.

The two films -- Prometheus and The Martian -- work well together in tandem, as a Ridley Scott double feature, actually. 

One is a horror film about what terrors could await us in space. Prometheus reveals to audiences ow small we are in the scheme of Cosmic Things. When we meet our Maker, we are not ready for the knowledge that flows from that encounter.

Its philosophical book-end, The Martian is a hard science fiction film that suggests how we will already know, by 2035, enough to survive and flourish in our first steps away from Earth. We will face challenges, and we will beat them back. And we will learn from our successes.  We will tell others (as teachers), and build on them.

One reason I appreciate the work of Scott so much (in Prometheus, as well as here) is that he is persistently able to craft images and symbols that resonate in the imagination.

Here, early on, an empty chair looms large on the Martian escape ship (and in our imaginations), a reminder that an astronaut has been lost.  

Again, the typical dramatic bullshit approach would demand histrionics on the part of the commanding officer, or shipmates.Instead, we get no words, just close-ups of anguish, and of that empty seat.

And in the film’s climax, Mark practically bursts out of his capsule into a whirling void (in orbit). His only way to survive (and get home) is to cut his suit open, and utilize the escaping pressure as a means of directing himself through that void. 

This is a perfect symbol for man’s capacity to reshape fate, and nature, to his desire. We are all on a spinning surface too (the Earth), but we can direct its future with our technology, our science, our imagination, and our know how. We aren't just passengers.  We have the capacity to exert power and control over our environment.

I suppose The Martian could have proven a rather dry, life-less experience as a one-man-show, but through its use of disco music on the soundtrack, and the buoyancy of Matt Damon’s central performance, the film brilliantly comes to life. 

The soundtrack, straight from a hedonistic time and place in America culture, lightens the mood, provides stark contrast to Mark’s travails, and finally, calls us back to the last time in history -- the heyday of the Apollo program -- when America looked to the stars, dreamed, and then made real plans to reach them. 

The disco music, in essence, makes The Martian a kind of sequel to the early 1970s, before the combined weight of Vietnam, Watergate, Three Mile Island, Inflation, and Oil Embargoes brought human dreams crashing back to terra firma.

The leitmotif of The Martian is simple and worthwhile. 

Life is hard. 

And life in space is even harder. 

If we want to endure as a species, however, survival in space and on other worlds is a virtual necessity.  We can cry and whine about how dangerous the endeavor remains, how expensive it is, or even how time-consuming it is. 

Or we can look at the challenges…and, using our knowledge as a starting point, imagine how to beat them.  

As one character here memorably notes, “you can either accept” the difficulty of reality, and the constant nearness of death, “or get to work.”

The Martian reminds us that it is time to quit the bellyaching.

Let's get to work.