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Ridley Scott returns to outer space with The Martian, a movie that will make you excited for NASA, the American way of leaving no man behind and vacuum packed poop. But if you’re like me and get bored with choppy presentations of problem solving pretending to be cinema, it will also make you long for Scott’s past outer space movies where things go terribly wrong and almost everyone dies instead of the complete opposite. Mainly Alien, but I also prefer Prometheus to his latest.
Even if you love The Martian, though, I recommend you see those two movies if you haven’t before. And if you like it even a little bit (I admit I liked some of it a little bit), then you should like the following titles, all of which this new optimistic sci-fi release reminded me of:
Interstellar (2014)
Obviously there’s the connection in the casting of Jessica Chastain and Matt Damon, the latter playing characters who are stranded alone on a planet in both. If you haven’t seen this Christopher Nolan sci-fi flick already, you’re much better off watching it after Scott’s movie rather than before so your attitude about Damon’s character in Interstellar doesn’t affect your reception of his character in The Martian.
You’ll also pay less attention to its many faults because you’ll be so excited about how much bolder and more beautiful this is, how much more emotion and passion and drama you feel coming out of its filmmaker compared to the expressionless space program infomercial now in theaters. Also, Hans Zimmer‘s Interstellar score is as amazing as Harry Gregson-Williams‘s The Martian score is bland.
Gerry (2002)
Much better than Damon alone in an isolated place with threat of starvation and dehydration is Damon joined by Casey Affleck in such a situation, on Earth. In this absurdist first installment of Gus Van Sant‘s “Death Trilogy,” the two actors play hikers “fucking marooned” in the desert. And thank goodness there are no cutaways to people trying to figure out to bring them home.
Marooned (1969)
Not all movies intercutting between astronauts lost in space and NASA personnel at Mission Control back on Earth are boring, so long as the latter scenes star Gregory Peck and the former scenes get to play out as long as they do here. Like The Martian, this movie from director John Sturges is based on a novel by a guy who really knows his science (Martin Caidin). But Marooned the movie is more concerned with the drama than the technology, and that makes it more thrilling. It also doesn’t have a bad score. It doesn’t have any score.
It! The Terror from Beyond Space (1958)
In this sci-fi classic, a rescue party is sent to Mars to recover a lone astronaut who has survived since a disastrous previous mission. That sounds like The Martian, but interestingly enough this movie provided inspiration for Alien, Scott’s earlier, better outer space movie. That’s because this rescue ship also manages to bring back a creature that begins killing the crew on board.
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