The Martian is the latest film from Ridley Scott. It is adapted from the book of the same name, written by Andrew Weir in 2011.The cast is full of well-known actors, more than you’d expect in any feature film.

Earth has sent several manned missions to Mars. The Ares III crew is in an established basecamp, and are performing their duties. A strong sandstorm develops, and is causing trouble for their lander, so they are forced to abort their mission. As they collect themselves and make their way to the lander, some debris smashes into the team’s botanist, Mark Watney (Matt Damon), and his spacesuit’s signal has gone dead. The mission’s leader, Melissa Lewis (Jessica Chastain) tries to look for him, but time has run out, so they all abandon the station, and begin the trip back to Earth.

As fortune would have it, Watney survives. He wakes the next day, half buried in the sand. The equipment that struck him was the communications array, which destroyed the transponder in his suit and pierced his suit. By some miracle, he’s alive, and makes his way back to the habitat, where he does a little self-surgery, and realizes he’s on his own. Help may be coming, but the next planned mission is more than a year off, at least. He has to find a way to survive that long, so he goes about finding what he can do, on his own, with the limited resources he has.

Back on Earth, they mourn the loss of Watney. The Ares mission commander, Vincent Kapoor (Chiwetel Ejiofor) wants to mount a search for what happened, but is rebuffed by NASA’s Chief Administrator Ted Sanders (Jeff Daniels). Ted says he wants NASA to focus on the next Ares mission instead of searching for bad news, which would be made public. Vincent ignores him and sets one of the overnight NASA mission control staff to take a few images of the camp. She discovers Watney’s alive, but NASA is powerless to do anything but observe from afar, until he can find a way to communicate with them.

Once Mark has overcome (more or less) the basic needs of food and air, he then focuses in on the long term goal of lasting until the next rocket arrives. How he accomplishes that is totally plausible, and is properly played out. It is scientifically believable, and within the realm of possibility, as are the events that follow. It’s quite an engaging experience, through and through.

I highly recommend this movie.

Ridley Scott has done his research, as did Weir, when writing the book. The visual presentation of the movie is flawless. Scott has captured the essence of being a scientist without being overly hamfisted or comical in portraying them. There isn’t one scientist who has all the answers, but instead the story clearly demonstrates that real science is a collaborative effort, with all the players doing their part. It’s rare to see it done properly on screen, and this is one of the few times it actually happens.

I do have a few quibbles with the film, because some events are missing from the movie. I suspect that more than a few of them were either planned or actually shot, but this movie is 144 minutes long, so they were not part of the main release of the film. I hope they’re provided and/or discussed when the movie is released on video, considering how thorough has been with his movies in the past.