Jen 0:00

While the book is essentially a 400-page orbital mechanics exam that occasionally pauses for a potato joke, the movie is a $100 million public service announcement proving that disco is the real reason humanity should never leave Earth. It's effectively castaway, but with more math and significantly fewer volleyballs. Yeah, definitely.

Tom 0:46

Yeah, the movie did a very we'll get into it, but yeah, the movie did a very good job of like, and so what I'm doing is this. Which the book does too, but just with a lot more math in it. Yeah.

Joe 0:57

We have no we have no just chatter chatter to go, I guess. We did it all before.

Jen 1:02

Yeah.

Joe 1:03

I guess I'll just have to jump right into it then. This is Shelf to Screen, the podcast where we discuss sci-fi and fantasy literary adaptations to the big and or small screen. I'm Joe.

Jen 1:15

I'm Jen Isgrow.

Joe 1:18

And I am Tom. Cool. Cool. I'm just I'm just gonna start every and try to throw you off every episode.

Jen 1:28

I was waiting for the parry.

Joe 1:29

I know. I was trying to I got you there.

Jen 1:31

Okay. Uh I'm from Berkendy.

Joe 1:36

Oh, that's what I should have said. Oh, oh. I thought you one of you was gonna do that. Yeah, I guess not.

Tom 1:45

So we'll get there one day.

Joe 1:47

Yeah. I'm just gonna say something different every week.

Tom 1:50

Love it. Let's go for that.

Joe 1:52

If I remember. If I don't, then I'm gonna say the same thing. All right, let's get into it. We're talking uh we're talking about The Martian, the 2011 Andy Weir novel that was adapted into the I wanted to say like big budget, but it really wasn't a big budget. Um, but definitely like a blockbuster movie, The Martian, directed by Ridley Scott in 2015. Can we just before we get into anything? Okay, is this science fiction? Yes. It's very it's it's like it's barely science fiction, right?

Tom 2:29

It's it's yes, it is barely science, but it is science fiction. There's a couple of uh I think the movie is slightly more science fiction than the than the uh book just because they they don't they don't uh go into detail as to how they go through everything. The science is real. I'll say this and so much so that uh renowned science poo-poor and generally charismatic smirk uh uh Neil deGrasse Tyson says this is the most scientifically accurate space movie that's ever been made.

Joe 3:00

Space movie? Yeah, not talking about the book.

Tom 3:04

No, though he's talking about the movie specifically. He said like basically the only thing in here that's just wrong they didn't know was wrong when they made the movie. And the fact that the atmosphere of of Oh the uh the wind storm, yeah, can't really sustain storms that large, but they didn't know that when they were making the film.

Joe 3:22

So yeah, I think I think well then no, Andy Weir didn't know that when he wrote the book.

Tom 3:27

Yeah, yeah. No, like we didn't know that that the fact that the storms aren't possible on Mars was a fact that was not known to humanity at the time that these that that that this was created.

Joe 3:38

So like I don't think it's that there's no it's not that there's storms, it's just that they're not like they couldn't get that powerful.

Tom 3:45

They couldn't get that power exactly. There are storms, right? And um like there's dust devils and there's there's there's wind. Yeah, just the storm, the intensity of that storm could be. Yeah, the miles per hour. What was it?

Joe 3:56

Like in the 60 kilometer, wherever it was they were at, right? They were they they talk about it. Um, all right. I just wanted to say that off the bat because that's gonna come up, I think, through through this, because it's very science-y, not so much fiction-y, fiction-y in the sense of like he's on Mars.

Tom 4:13

Right, it hasn't happened yet.

Jen 4:14

It's a pretend story that's not real, so it's fiction. Right.

Joe 4:18

Yes, oh it's oh no, no, I agree. It's fiction. I feel like this leans, yeah. I feel like this leans more towards the fiction side than the science side. Well, science fiction side, right? Because it is science, obviously, but fiction science fiction is fake science, basically. I feel all right, so I feel like it's not like fiction with science. It's uh right, like a fiction uh novel with science. It's fake science.

Tom 4:49

I think you know, you can get there, I think there's a range of science fiction between what this is, which is hard sci-fi. Hard sci-fi is like very, very science-driven science fiction.

Joe 5:01

And you have like something like this, which is like as close to the but I feel like there's more fiction in high sci and in uh hard sci-fi. Okay, I think it's like hard fiction and hard science.

Tom 5:13

So this takes place uh nine years from now.

Joe 5:16

Yeah.

Tom 5:16

Okay. Do you think in nine years we're gonna have men walking on Mars?

Joe 5:21

Probably not.

Tom 5:22

Right. So I think that's the most science fiction part of this.

Joe 5:26

The third mission to Mars, too. There is three. Um, all right. Well, before we get into it, before we get into it, um, Jen, your first encounter with the Martian.

Jen 5:37

This. I uh I knew there was a movie with Matt Damon. Um didn't see it, read the book for the podcast, and uh watched a movie for the podcast.

Joe 5:48

Now, Jen, you were concerned about not finishing the book. Did you finish it?

Jen 5:52

I finished it today. Oh, wow. About 5 45.

Tom 5:57

Wow.

Jen 5:57

Put the movie on immediately after and finished the movie at 8 p.m. So I'm I'm r I know everything. It's right in my front of my brain. Oh, and what I did while I was reading it is I was like, um, I know Matt Damon's in it, obviously. I don't know who else is in it. So I fancted in my head. Everyone's in it. Not knowing so many famous people are in it.

Joe 6:18

Well, let's we have to get into this then, Jen. Let's hear these fancasts.

Jen 6:21

Some of them are pretty good. I so first of all, I think that I must have known subconsciously that Jessica Chestane was in it. She was probably in the trailer. Annie Montrose, the press person, who's kind of like her job in Jurassic World as kind of like making it that same character.

Tom 6:38

She is not in Jurassic World. It's Bryce Dyles Howard. Damn it.

Jen 6:43

Okay, well that's what I was thinking of. I knew I had it was Jessica Chestin in my head, though. You're right. You're right. That's Bryce Styles Howard shit.

Joe 6:50

They always get confused. So maybe your fan cast by Styles Howard isn't.

Jen 6:52

No, it was Jessica Chestin. And who else did I have? I had Bradley Whitford in the Jeff Daniels role. Okay.

Joe 7:01

That would have been good. Teddy. This is Sanders.

Jen 7:06

Yeah.

Joe 7:07

The director of NASA.

Jen 7:09

Another person I have from Jurassic World when because Kapoor is Vencott Kapoor in the book and they changed it. That's why I had him as like the guy that owns or whatever the Draft World.

Tom 7:23

Who is this you're talking about?

Jen 7:25

The guy from Jurassic World? He flies the helicopter into the pterodactyls. I don't know.

Tom 7:31

I know the name, I don't know how to pronounce it. Give me a second.

Joe 7:33

Okay. Go ahead. Let's keep going.

Jen 7:35

Um Let me think of who else I had.

Joe 7:37

Who did you have? Okay.

Jen 7:39

Well, go ahead. No, you can't.

Joe 7:40

I was gonna say, who did you have for some of the other crew?

Jen 7:42

Like So the captain, I had this is just because of the Well, you told us already, Jessica Chastain, you said. No, she was the other part.

Joe 7:48

Oh, that's right. I'm sorry. Yes.

Jen 7:50

Um I had I think her name is Gina Torres from Firefly. Gina Torres.

Joe 7:54

Okay, I know Gina Torres.

Jen 7:56

Yeah. Um who else did I say?

Joe 7:58

Commander Lewis.

Jen 7:59

Yeah.

Tom 8:00

Your Fon Khan is the actor's name. Two ox.

Jen 8:03

I don't um did I have Oh, I had Scarlett Johansson as Johansson because it was just popped into my head.

Joe 8:10

Um it works. Instead, we got Kate Mara.

Jen 8:14

Yeah. Um what about Martinez? Pedro Pascal.

Joe 8:19

He's way too old.

Jen 8:21

I didn't know how old anybody was.

Joe 8:23

It wouldn't have been when they made it 10 years ago. This movie came out 10 years ago. That's right.

Jen 8:28

Um I didn't yeah, I don't know. That might have been. Who else did I?

Joe 8:32

Who are the other ones? Um, I had the guy from Rich Purnell. Did you have Rich Purnell?

Jen 8:37

I don't remember who I had for him. But I had um who's the guy that plays like Asian Jim? He's in so many other things, but on the office. On The Office.

Tom 8:47

Oh, uh what's I probably have the actor's name, but I know exactly who you mean. He's uh Randall Park.

Joe 8:52

Oh, Randall Park, okay.

Jen 8:54

As Bruce Ng. He was probably too young.

Joe 8:57

That would have been that would have been fun.

Tom 9:00

Yeah.

Joe 9:00

But yeah, Better Dick Wong instead.

Jen 9:02

Yes, that was good. So I watched this movie in a way where I didn't have subtitles. Not only did I not have subtitles, but there were no captions for the Chinese portion of it. Me too. Oh wow.

Joe 9:14

So good on YouTube. We're gonna talk about this because Sarah looked this up. My wife, my wife looked this up last night. We were watching this. I was watching this with my wife last night. She had never seen the movie and wanted to see it, so we watched it together. And it gets to that part, and I'm like, hmm, there's no subtitles.

Tom 9:31

Yeah.

Joe 9:31

I'm like, this is it must be the version I got, and or something like weird. So so I go back, like I know what they're saying, I know what the conversation's about because I just read, I just finished the book. I think I went into the bathroom or something, and I came back out, and I was like, Yeah, why that's weird so weird. And my wife was looking it up online to see what they said, and she's telling me what the conversation's about. And I was like, No, I know what the conversation's about. She'd looked it up online and found out that like a lot of people have copies of this movie where there's no Chinese subtitles.

Tom 10:02

Oh, that's very odd.

Jen 10:04

You just have to guess. But I knew I was like, all right, they're talking, I remembered what they were talking about. And thankfully that was like the only scene where anybody spoke in Chinese.

Joe 10:12

Yes.

Jen 10:13

So I was like, oh no, I hope they don't have a lot of Chinese scenes because I don't know what the hell they're saying.

Joe 10:17

I yeah, it's apparently a thing. It's not just us. Okay, good, good. Uh it was a thing that a lot of people got copies of this. And and I'm assuming then you saw the theatrical version because there's a there's an hour, a two and a half hour version, like a 10 extra minutes or so of footage. I don't know. The Blu-ray version of it. It's an extended cut.

Tom 10:35

From what I understand, if that's director's cut, there's a character in that cut who's just not in the movie.

Joe 10:40

Uh, what's her name? Uh Jasmine? Princess Jasmine?

Tom 10:43

Yeah? Yeah, no, we scott.

Joe 10:45

I don't know. I don't even know who she plays. I don't remember. I have it in here somewhere.

Jen 10:51

It's not in the book?

Joe 10:52

Uh it's not a character from the book, I don't think.

Jen 10:54

Yeah.

Joe 10:54

Right, Ryoki or something like that. Yeah. I don't remember that character, but it might have just been a made-up character. Um yeah. So I was like debating on whether to watch that version of it because I was like, ooh, more. I was like, it's gonna be more stuff from the book, but I read that it's just extended scenes, basically. Like, there's no like new scenes, it's just like longer versions of some of the other scenes.

Jen 11:18

Okay.

Joe 11:19

So it's not like a regular version.

Jen 11:21

Okay.

Joe 11:22

Tom, your uh your first introduction to the Martian. After we got on a long sidetrack there.

Tom 11:28

Sorry. This is a web comic that I enjoy called um XKCD, right? It's a very science-driven uh usually one-panel comic, not always. Um, and so I was reading that, and there was um there was a panel, it was a there was a cartoon, it was a joke about something from a scene from Apollo 13. And like in that comic, uh if you hover over, if you put your mouse over the comic strip, an additional joke appears uh that he writes like just a joke about the comic, whatever. And so that joke makes a reference to somebody wrote a book making his favorite part of Apollo 13 the whole book. So I was like, oh, what is that? Like that sounds interesting to me. So I looked it up, and it was uh it was a book where a guy's like his favorite part of Apollo 13 is like we have to make this fit into this, and all we have is this, right? I don't know if you remember that from the movie, but like they have to fit it. And so, like, and he that's why he wrote The Martian. He wanted to write a whole story about somebody who just had to keep had to do that over and over again. So that's how I read the book because imagine, yeah.

Joe 12:31

I mean, if Mark Watney was on Apollo 13, that would have been a much shorter movie.

Tom 12:35

Exactly. Um so yeah, and I I uh it had already been published at that point. Um, and I think it might have I don't know if the movie had come out yet, but the movie is coming out soon because I the I copy of the book I have does have Matt Damon on the cover. But he started out, it was like he had a blog, and he was just posting chapters on the blog. And he's like, that's actually a really good way to write like what because like if I couldn't solve the problem, I just wouldn't make that a chapter that I would post.

Joe 13:03

Well, well, you know what what actually happened was there would be people who followed the blog would kind of give him corrections, like scientific corrections, like you you know, more use the wrong formula, the wrong terminology, whatever there, and then he used that to kind of fix the story to make it more accurate.

Tom 13:19

Yeah, I love that stuff. And he basically said, like, I remember reading something with him where he's like, I couldn't figure out a way that he would survive if this happened or if this happened, like if the water broke or if the oxygenator broke or whatever, so those things didn't break. Like because there was no I couldn't figure out how he could possibly survive if these things happened, so those are the only things that didn't happen to him.

Joe 13:39

Yeah, right.

Tom 13:41

Um but yeah, and then uh I saw the movie in the theater uh and laughed. I I laughed at the at the end of the movie specifically, very much.

Joe 13:51

Okay. We'll get into that we'll get into that part. Okay, the end of the part that made me laugh.

Tom 13:56

No, well, although I do love that end scene, but we'll get to it when we get to it as we go through the film. When we get to it, there's two things that happen in the climax of the movie that I enjoy very much, but made me laugh.

Joe 14:09

All right. So my first introduction to this was the movie, and I didn't I just saw the movie much later than it came out. Like I didn't see it in the theater. I was just talking to my wife about it. I was like, I think the first time I watched this movie, it was like late at night and I wasn't tired, and I was flipping around and the movie this was on, and I was like, Oh, I heard this is a good movie, I'll watch this. And that was it. So, and it was years ago, so I didn't even remember a lot of the movie. Um, to be honest with you, going back and watching it uh yesterday. But I enjoyed it, I thought it was a good movie, and I was kind of interested in reading the book because I didn't I don't know if I knew at the time it was a book. But I think when we were starting this podcast, I was like Googling like science fiction fantasy adaptations, and this popped up as like one of the you know better ones, and I was like, oh yeah, I gotta read that book. It's probably much better than the movie. Um I like it better than the movie, but the movie's still really good. And I don't think it's much better than the movie. I don't mean to I don't I didn't mean to say it that way. Like making them both seem like they're not that great. I meant the other way. Like they're both really, really good.

Tom 15:20

Yes, I I I spoil alert. Yeah, spoiler alert. I like this one a lot, right? This was this is This was your pick.

Jen 15:28

I think that the book I think that the movie does a really good job of condensing a lot of the explanation that you don't need. I like the book a lot, but there were parts of it where I found myself like I was losing it. Like all the scientific acts. I'm like, I'm like, do I r do I need to be paying attention to like every single thing he says, or do I just have to like let him talk it out and then see if it works? Like, do I because I'm like the what and the what? Like, okay, and then it would get to another part, and I would it was very good. I just that whole a lot of that, I would just be like, okay, I gotta get past this part and just like let's see what happens after he figures this out.

Joe 16:05

I know what you mean. It not even just the math so much, but sometimes he would describe things, and I couldn't I couldn't picture it in my head because his description of whatever it was wasn't the best. Right. And I guess that's he does it on yeah, and but I guess if you're playing it from the point of writing it's Mark's diary, basically, he wouldn't explain all of that stuff because he's basically he's basically addressing, I guess, NASA and the space community, really, not necessarily like the world, right? Yeah, um, and and obviously his crewmates uh potentially. So it makes sense, I guess you could say it that way. I mean, he does he does describe or give better detail on some things, or like dumbs it down. He does that a bunch of times. Um yeah, so I guess it's a mixture. Um all right, so let's get into the book here. I think we talked a little bit, Tom. You kind of led us right into the uh basically the uh the genesis of this. Um you know, it started off as a survivalist thought experiment by Andy Weir, who was a software engineer. Uh, as you mentioned, Tom, he published it in his blog, and it then kind of became pretty popular. Um they asked that he do an ebook version of it, so he uploaded it to Amazon and did like a 99 cent e-book, and within three months it sold 35,000 copies.

Tom 17:34

Unbelievable.

Joe 17:35

Yeah. Uh that's crazy in three months. Uh, so it led to a major print deal with Crown Publishing and a film option. Same same time when Crown Publishing approached him to do a major print deal. 20th Century Fox approached him to make uh to buy the uh rights or an option to make this into a movie.

Jen 17:55

Crazy.

Joe 17:56

There's also another. So we talked a little bit about the storm, the storms on Mar Mars, how that was a little off. But there was also uh a discovery, I believe, uh right after the book. The NASA's Curiosity rover discovered that Mars soil does contain significant moisture. Yeah, so that also made his you know his whole potato storyline thing a little bit different in the sense of he wouldn't have had to uh what was called create the water, like yeah, burn the hydrogen and the hydrazine burning, yeah, thing. He wouldn't have had to do that. So you win some, you lose some.

Tom 18:35

Yeah.

Joe 18:36

Uh so Drew Goddard was initially hired to write and direct this. Uh Goddard's script was highly praised for retaining the book's uh diaristic structure of you know him doing. I feel like that's gotta be what, like 70% of the book is that is great. Yeah, yeah. Like it yeah, it's it's a really good idea. 60 to 70 percent of it is just his diary. Um it's weird because he's he does the diary part, which is a big part of the book, and then you'll cut back to like NASA, whatever's going on, and that's that that part. But there's a couple of times where you're with Mark and it's in third person.

Jen 19:15

Yeah.

Joe 19:16

Yeah. I I was starting to think like It's very weird. Only like a couple it only happens like a couple of times, I think.

Jen 19:23

I was starting to think like, well, if Mark is talking to us, then we know he survived whatever happened before, obviously.

Tom 19:32

Right.

Jen 19:33

So I think like when things that he might not have survived happened, it was either like at the end, it was like with the crew or like when the ro this doesn't happen in the movie, but it's the part where like the rover flips over. Yeah. And uh right before that happens, it's in third person. So like anything where it's like you couldn't have him telling us because then we'd know, like, all right, he's fine, like he's alive. So if it was something where he might die, I feel like they they just kind of like gave us like a Omni.

Tom 20:04

When the story could now theoretically be about these other astronauts surviving. Yeah.

Joe 20:09

Like, let's let's pull it back and like Oh, I like that that he's trying to trick us, right? So we're trying to trick us basically because if it's from third person, why aren't we getting his why are they doing it in third person? Why wouldn't we just get his diary of it? Oh, that's because he dies here in this instance, but that doesn't happen.

Jen 20:32

So yeah. I mean, I didn't I think if he died, it would have been awful. I was hoping upon hope that he would make it. I mean, even though it was crazy, yeah.

Joe 20:43

I was just gonna say they do another so they do a scene towards the beginning with with the um the fabric where they're they go to like the factory or whatever where they're making the fabric for the uh for the hab.

Jen 20:55

For the hab.

Joe 20:56

Right? There's a short scene where they're with that. It's a third person scene, it's just like nobody's point of view. Yeah, in the book.

Jen 21:04

Um oh yeah, yeah, yeah. Yes.

Joe 21:07

Is that right before the airlock explode? Yeah.

Jen 21:11

So again, that's another situation where like he might not live through this.

Joe 21:14

But what I'm saying is it's a cut to the manufacturing of the fabric. Yeah, it's not he's not there. It's not that's what I guess that's what I'm saying. So I wonder it's just um it's almost explaining something to the the reader that Mark wouldn't have explained, I guess.

Jen 21:32

Yeah, or wouldn't have known. Or doesn't know. Doesn't know, right.

Tom 21:35

He's coming on with the sandstorm, yeah. Right, he's living here. Meanwhile, this is what's happening that's gonna impact him.

Joe 21:41

Yeah, yeah.

Jen 21:42

It's like the narrator. It's just weird because pops in once in a while.

Joe 21:45

The vast majority of it, of everything on Mars is him, is him, except for like a very few scenes. It's just odd. It it struck me when I was like, I was like, weird. We just jumped into third person, but we're still with Mark. Uh very interesting. Um where we're Drew Goddard. So he was gonna uh direct the movie as well, but he actually left to direct Sinister Six. Sinister Six.

Tom 22:11

That's a bad, bad choice, man.

Joe 22:15

Yeah. And then uh Ridley Scott stepped in. And yeah, that's a big change there. Um he was drawn to the Robinson Crusoe type survival elements. Um, and he actually prioritized this over the Prometheus sequel. Like he was working on the Prometheus sequel or was gonna be working on it, and he was like, Oh no, I'm gonna do this and put the Prometheus sequel kind of on hold a bit.

Tom 22:41

What an absolute palette cleanser after just doing Prometheus, right? Like what just a dark, depressing like you know, slog of a film. Um it's not a bad movie, but it's just not a f an entertaining watch in my mind. And it's really dark. It's just very like, I mean, physical, yeah. It's like and like everyone's awful and it's just bad. And then um, and then he's like, and now I'm gonna make everything in that movie is blue, and everything in this one is orange. Yeah. Yes. We're much more cheerful. Um, yeah, I guess.

Joe 23:19

I want to do something more cheerful. Uh a story about a guy stranded on Mars.

Tom 23:26

Right. And Prometheus, one character maybe lives, kinda, right? At the end, and the robot lives.

Joe 23:32

I don't even remember the end of Prometheus. What's her name, Repos?

Tom 23:37

Yeah, she she she's uh she lives. She's not dead yet when they when they when the movie's over.

Joe 23:42

Yeah. Um did they did he made the sequel too to Prometheus, right? I never saw it.

Tom 23:47

Yeah, yeah. I think she dies right away in that.

Joe 23:49

I think it's like a it's another bleak movie.

Tom 23:51

Yeah.

Joe 23:52

All right. So Ridley Scott takes over. Matt Damon is the first choice for Mark Watney. I mean, he he looks like a Mark Watney. Like, if you told me Matt Damon's name was Mark Watney, I would, I wouldn't, I would be like, okay. That's his real name. If you were like, that's his real name, Mark Watney. I'd be like, sure.

Tom 24:07

Sure.

Joe 24:07

He looks just like a Mark Watney. Um, there was concern though, because he had just played a stranded astronaut in Interstellar.

Tom 24:14

Again, another palette cleanser.

Jen 24:17

After Interstellar, after Interstellar, where he's man, Dr.

Tom 24:22

Man, and he's awful.

Joe 24:25

I want to I can I'm just picturing Matt Damon then sitting with Ridley Scott and him being like, Oh, I don't want to. Am I am I gonna be typecast as a stranded astronaut for the rest of my career?

Tom 24:35

Uh don't worry. Again, very blue in the last film. Yeah, very red and orange in this one.

Joe 24:41

Um all those movies about stranded astronauts.

Tom 24:45

When um yeah, he is um he is so great at obviously, you know, but like the humor is spot on with him. Yes, he is.

Joe 24:55

He's yeah, reading the book, I'm just like, my table is Mark Watt. Like, I would say there's a slight difference in the character, in the sense of in the movie, it's a little bit more. Do you see a little bit more of his other side, like of his despair and depression, where in the book it's like you don't see any of that almost right.

Jen 25:15

But you're not, I feel like you're only reading what he puts in the blog or whatever on the log. Yeah. So you're not seeing what he likes breaks down sobbing about stuff. Right.

Tom 25:24

You just see the blog afterwards where he's like, Yeah, well, I blew myself up. Yeah, well, yeah. I guess that's true.

Joe 25:30

Yeah, but like, but I think that we are weir did that on purpose though, when he wrote this book. He I think he didn't want to show that he wanted right.

Tom 25:37

It's it's it's the book, the movie is too, but the book is a phrase I I I heard earlier uh this year, competence porn. It's just about somebody who's really, really capable of being capable, you know. Um competence porn. Yeah. Well, I mean, think about so I I heard this in terms of of actually season one of The Pit. But uh about like, can we just watch something where people who are really good at their jobs do their jobs well, and it's not this existential drama about people who are awful, but like just good people doing good things well, and then that's the story. Um and that's what that's what the the book is, and that's you know, I think the movie is he is more layered, but and and the book they get into right now of all of them, he's probably the most psychologically capable of being alone for this long and like keeping it together. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. And that I think that when they have that discussion, it leads into the one thing that uh Andy Weir is upset didn't make the movie, the only thing that he wished was in the movie was that you find out that right, they talk about that's why they put him on the team because of his personality.

Joe 26:52

They in the book they talk about that. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Who's the guy, the doctor, the the psychiatrist that they talked to, the one who exam examines them all. He's in the book, and they talk about how that's why they put Wadney on the team because of his personality, and he could keep everybody like from going crazy. And like he just had that personality that would that would kind of inspire, like, motivate and bring morale up amongst the team.

Tom 27:17

And like so like there's a scene in the book where like they're talking about it, and Kapoor's like, what must he be thinking up there? Like, how can he like oh yeah, and it cuts to Woundy, and he's like, How can Aquaman talk to whales? They're mammals, it doesn't make sense.

Joe 27:30

Yes, and they did something like that in the movie where they cut to him and he's dancing. It's disco, right? He's like listening to disco. So they did something similar.

Tom 27:40

But um apparently that line is like, and I I'm sure this is tongue-in-cheek, but that's the line that he wished made the book that did the movie.

Joe 27:48

Okay. I would have liked him to put the thing about how why part of the reason why he was on the team was because of his like personality, his likability.

Jen 27:56

And yeah, well, everybody on the team is like the nicest person that ever lived. Yeah.

Joe 28:02

They're all great people.

Jen 28:03

Like, there's every yeah, like there's nobody.

Joe 28:05

They're astronauts. Astronauts are all great people.

Jen 28:07

Don't you know that? That's true.

Tom 28:09

They are right. These are they are like an extra year? Yes, we must. Let's go.

Jen 28:15

And a year and a half. Except for Martinez in the movie only, who goes back to on Aries five or six of my as a kid. And he's been in space for like three years. He's ripping with DJ went back. Yeah. I don't like it like that edition.

Tom 28:31

I I I almost I I actually I I it's I did like that. Just because like it just shows like how much of a like a space sicko he is. He's like, this is his life.

Joe 28:42

Yeah. Definitely holl they definitely hollow wooded it a bit up at the end there with that.

Tom 28:46

Like, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Joe 28:48

Yeah. This is what happens with each character. Hey, look at that.

Jen 28:51

The book just ends. The book ends when he stays. I guess they make it home.

Tom 28:55

Yeah, the book is like the book. The book is they rescue him, and that's the book.

Jen 28:58

But this is like we have to make sure everybody knows. Well, no, they all have happy endings and they can't.

Joe 29:02

In the book, there's a sh there's a scene at the end with him, right? And the kid goes up to him and he's like, hey, you're that guy who was stranded on Mars, right? That that's the end of the the end of the book. I didn't read that. Oh, do I have did I have something with like extra pages in it?

Tom 29:16

Yeah, I think the the my rememb my member to the end of the book is they rescue him.

Jen 29:21

This is the happiest day of my life, isn't it? The end of the book?

Tom 29:24

Exactly, yeah.

Jen 29:25

There's like stuff in the back here, but it's like an essay and like an interview I didn't read. Yeah, there's nothing else here. You have extra pages. Yeah. I tried to look at the end of the back.

Joe 29:36

What's that? Yeah, I definitely don't. The little kid comes up to him. Avoid the clap. No, and he curses at the kid, and the mom pulls him away.

Jen 29:46

What? You dream that.

Joe 29:47

I did not dream. Maybe I did dream that. I'm gonna extend up and go get it.

Jen 29:56

And go get the book and Sarah, tell her to bring the table.

Joe 30:02

He curses at the kid? There, right? You dreamed it. Jen, I very well could have dreamt this last night before the No, I think I really like now that I'm saying it out loud. Um that I'm saying out loud, I think I'm crazy.

Tom 30:19

Well Joe's well, Joe's fever dreaming the end of it. I will tell you the line in the book that I wish made the movie, which I think did make the movie, you just didn't see it. Okay. Um, when he gets told, Mark, this is going out around the world. Everyone's doing your typing. Yeah. He does the boobs thing. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. And that one he did. Yeah, like he hypes and you don't see what it is. You just see them all laughing and embarrassed.

Joe 30:45

Yeah. So uh Jessica Chastain was cast as Commander Lewis. Uh then they also added, of course, I've I forgot, like, literally, this has just got everybody in it. This is a movie of its time in that sense of like all those actors were like in a lot of movies over the course of those few years. Yeah. Yeah.

Tom 31:07

Like there's like two, there's like two people who are like heavily featured in this film that aren't moderately to super famous.

Joe 31:14

What's weird is uh what's her name? Kristen Wigg is like third build in the middle.

Jen 31:20

Yes, I noticed I'm like, wow, Kristen Wig.

Joe 31:24

Yeah. Yeah. Wow, indeed.

Jen 31:26

Okay, Jeff Daniels.

Joe 31:28

Yeah. I can see Jeff Daniels as as as like an and Jeff Daniels.

Tom 31:33

Chew it all efor, man. Yeah. Every time I'm like, I've watched the movie, I've seen the movie a bunch of times, but like uh every time I see it, I'm like, oh no, this guy's the best in this movie. This he's so good in this movie. He's so great. And then every time she would, I'm like, oh no, he's the best. He is so awesome.

Jen 31:49

I think my favorite part is when he's like, do you think he's like, are you effing kidding me?

Tom 31:54

Yeah.

Jen 31:54

Or is he like, are you kidding me? I think it's the second one. But it could be the first one. It could be the first one. It could, it could be.

Tom 32:02

Yeah.

Joe 32:03

Yeah, they made him Vincent Kapoor instead of Venkat Kapoor. So that I was just reading about this too. So there was apparently like people, so there was like a whole thing about whitewashing in this. There was like the uh I'm trying to remember the um the organization of it. Uh oh, the Media Action Network for Asian Americans. They criticized the casting of Mackenzie Davis from Mindy Park. It's funny, when I saw her, I was like, oh, I always thought she was Korean too.

Jen 32:30

I thought she was Asian as well. Okay. Yes.

Joe 32:32

But then I was like, last name. That I get, right? Okay, gotcha there. But then apparently they were upset that they cast Chiamatella Ujafor for Kabor. And they said, you know, that they're whitewashing. And I was like, how do you whitewash by putting a black African man in there? How does that I get it? I get it. It's not an Indian person, but you can't say you can't use the word whitewash. You gotta call it something else.

Tom 32:58

And he's still half Indian in the movie. I mean, he's not Indian in real life, but like the characters they mean an Indian actor.

Joe 33:04

They wanted an Indian actor to be they cast them and they couldn't make it. They were like, We got Shuba Teleghore. That's yeah.

Tom 33:11

And he's freaking awesome. Uh everyone's great. Sean Penne's terrific. Everyone's terrific. Oh my god.

Jen 33:16

Wait. Did everyone have the same thought?

Joe 33:19

Yeah, it's just the Council of Elrond thought.

Jen 33:21

But how do you not have him explain what the Council of Elrond is? It's right there. And it wouldn't have even been like too funny. It would have been he explains a little bit of it. He says something, but he doesn't like it.

Joe 33:32

He said something from the Lord of the Rings, I think. He says that part or something like that.

Jen 33:36

I think maybe his character wouldn't have like I think it was Benedict Wong's character who like says, Oh, it was like if we're gonna be here, I want my code name to be Glorfindel.

Tom 33:47

That was a nice line added in there. That was great.

Joe 33:49

And Jeff Daniels delivered that one perfectly. Yeah. Um, all right. So you mentioned Sean Bean, and and again, we're like into the movie now, but I didn't even get into some of the just because we're talking the casting. I will say this I like I love Sean Bean. He definitely wasn't playing the Mitch character from the books. Um he was much more timid and like Yeah.

Jen 34:10

Oh, let me find who I had from Mitch. Hold on. What's the guy's name? In the book, he's very um No uh Mark Duplas. Oh Mark Duplass.

Tom 34:20

He's even more timid, I feel than really Mark Dupless.

Joe 34:24

Did you ever see the movie Um for the morning show?

Jen 34:27

I see I've no, what's the movie?

Joe 34:29

Uh uh Oh god, no, I have to look it up. The horror movie he was in. They made they made two of them. Creep. No.

Tom 34:35

Oh no.

Joe 34:35

Oh yeah, it's a horror movie. He's a freaking psycho in that. Okay.

Tom 34:40

I actually don't know if I've ever seen a Mark Dupless movie, anything that he's in.

Joe 34:44

He does more writing, right? Doesn't he now?

Tom 34:46

He writes and directs a lot of his own stuff. Okay.

Joe 34:49

Yeah. Well, I think he might have uh he might have wrote Creep, I don't remember, or or he might have directed it. I can't remember. Anyway, okay. Anyway. That's fine. Um yeah, I will yeah. I don't Sean Bean's portrayal of Mitch wasn't really like the book. I was kind of looking for a little bit more of the uh Mitch attitude, like kind of go fuck yourself type of attitude. I think a little disappointed.

Tom 35:12

I mean, he he definitely he definitely acts on that in the movie. Like he's like, but yeah, he's not he's not in your face. He's much more like a just a like a non-confrontational character.

Joe 35:24

Yeah, he looks like he was he looks beaten down a bit. Yes, but yeah, just in the way he's playing the role.

Tom 35:30

Yeah, no, I think that's exactly right, Joe. He does, he's very he's very like kind of you know hunched into his chair.

Joe 35:36

Yeah. I don't I guess that was a conscious decision, or I don't know. I was wondering if Sean Bean had like recently suffered an injury and was just you know grinding through.

Tom 35:47

I I I I I I almost feel like he was relishing playing against type. Like he's he doesn't die and he's not particularly tough.

Joe 35:55

My wife said, Oh my god, is he gonna die in this? And I was like, No, he doesn't die.

Tom 36:00

Nobody dies, zero body count film.

Joe 36:03

Yeah, zero body count. Wow. All right, where were we? Production. Yeah, I think we well, we'll get through everybody, I guess, when we get to it. I want to get a little bit through the production of it. Um, right, so all the outdoor uh Mars stuff was shot in Jordan, which apparently uh has been used for other movies to represent Mars, which I think is pretty damn awesome. Um if you think about it now, we all now associate that scenery in Jordan as Mars. So they the American cinema feels like it has to use that, and as soon as they go to it, it's like very believable that this is Mars. Like we can't we can't do something else because people are gonna be like, no, no, I saw Mars in all those other movies, and it looks very different.

Tom 36:53

I like it. Like Monument Valley Valley was every place in the old west. Yeah.

Joe 36:58

And then the indoor stuff was shot in Hungary.

Tom 37:01

Uh at the time, the largest indoor, like the largest sound stages in the world.

Joe 37:07

Yes. Yeah. And as I said, it wasn't a huge, this was a $108 million budget movie.

Jen 37:13

That's crazy, but that includes a salary for all these people.

Joe 37:18

Yes.

Jen 37:18

Like $25 million of that had to go to Matt Damon.

Joe 37:21

I'm sure I'm going to go to the end of the day.

Tom 37:23

I wonder how much of it is like do it for this, and you'll tell points at the end kind of a thing. But uh, yeah. But yeah, I'm sure he I'm sure he had a sizable salary.

Jen 37:31

I hit the nail on the head. 25 million. Perfect. Wow. That's exactly how much he made.

Joe 37:37

So the other the other movies they shot in Jordan that take place on Mars were Mission to Mars, Red Planet, and The Last Days on Mars. Okay. So this is four movies now that have all used this same location as Mars. That's it.

Tom 37:50

I've seen three of them.

Joe 37:52

Yeah. And now it's forever connected with Mars.

Tom 37:54

So there you go.

Joe 37:56

They actually left um the rover that they had built. They left it for the people of Jordan, and then they took it and put it in a museum.

Tom 38:04

Well, that's cool.

Joe 38:05

Yeah. Pretty cool, huh? Yeah. I would have sold rides on that thing.

Jen 38:11

I want to start one more conversation that says Jessica Trestain stated reports suggesting she made seven million were heavily inflated, clarifying she actually earned less than a quarter of that figure, which was under 1.7 million, and Matt Damon got 25 million.

Joe 38:26

Yeah. Yeah.

Jen 38:27

That's insane.

Joe 38:28

So Well, I mean, he has probably 30 times more screen time than she does.

Jen 38:33

I don't know. Yeah.

Tom 38:34

Maybe.

Joe 38:35

She's it's about it's about the screen time.

Tom 38:38

It is, but it's also about the fact that she's a woman and they get paid for it. Oh, yeah, yeah.

Joe 38:42

No, but I'm saying, like, I don't think, you know, I don't know. What did Jeff Daniels make? Do they have that now? It doesn't say no. Oh, but was this after Zero Dark 30?

Tom 38:50

Yeah, she was already, I think, an Academy Award winner.

Joe 38:52

Okay.

Tom 38:53

He's only an Academy Award nominee.

Joe 38:55

That's true. Well, he won for writing, right? He Jeff Daniels, I mean. Oh, oh, I thought you were talking about Matt Damon.

Tom 39:01

Yeah, Damon has one for screenplay. Yeah. He was nominated for this movie, too. Yes. Best actor. No, this movie was nominated for uh seven, I think Academy was. Including Best Picture 1-0. But had some tough comments.

Joe 39:15

It won the Golden Globe, though, for Best Picture.

Tom 39:17

Best Picture, because it was oh, there was a huge controversy with this. Because it was nominated in the comedy or musical field. Oh, yes. And they were like, he's funny. This is not a comedy.

Jen 39:26

Yeah.

Tom 39:27

Like, and they actually changed the rules after that because so many people were upset that they did that just to get him a win or get the movie wins. Um, because it won Best Picture Comedy or Musical as well. And uh so they changed the rule after that to basically stop that from happening.

Joe 39:42

Yeah, look at that. Breaking new ground, changing rules. That's it. Yeah. So yeah, so let's go. You want to go right into the movie? Should we start it off? Let's go. Let's start it off. So I couldn't remember when I saw this, right? They I wasn't sure if they were gonna do it like in the book where it starts with him stranded already, and then they'll do a flashback to the what happened. I'm not sure I carry the way. It was good this way. Yeah, um, yeah. I kind of like the idea though of them like starting him alone on Mars. And even if they did one of those, oh maybe that's too corny though, like it starts with him narrating he's on Mars, and then like, you know, whatever, minute or two into his narration, kind of setting it up, they do the flashback. But I was fine with the way it was. I was just yeah.

Jen 40:25

I thought it was fine. I thought it worked out well.

Tom 40:27

And I thought they they tried to do a little bit of show don't tell about his personality being a gel for the for the team and how they all kind of like respond to his constant humor and charm. Yeah. And it was it was good, I think, to show that team as a functioning unit to explain later on why they're willing to sacrifice themselves, you know, to go and save him.

Joe 40:50

That's a yeah, that's a great point. Uh it does make that connection up front, I think. Something weird that they changed that I'm not sure why, and I'd love to find out, but so minuscule. It's it's soul 18. Yeah. Where the starts and the the whole thing happens in the book, it's like soul six, I think. So I thought that was just a weird change.

Tom 41:11

Yeah, uh, I don't I don't know.

Joe 41:13

Because there's definitely no payoff or anything like that for that, but uh maybe they just liked it.

Tom 41:18

They I don't know. Yeah, I don't know.

Joe 41:23

I don't yeah, it's just a weird change. I didn't I don't know why. But yeah, uh good action sequence in the beginning. I think that's also part of it. It's like let's throw up a nice big like kind of set piece right in the beginning to kind of get people all on board of this uh with this. So I I totally understand why they did that from the perspective of just like uh filmmaking, I heard I hear they call it. Oh, here you go. Although they don't use film anymore, most people.

Tom 41:50

Yes.

Joe 41:51

That's true. And then we get our top we you know, we get topless Matt Damon for, you know, just to catch all the ladies right up front.

Jen 42:00

Yeah, you go. Pouring blood. So hot.

Tom 42:05

Well you know, he staples it up too.

Joe 42:08

Yeah, he staples himself up, pulls out the little pulls out the other piece of the antenna and does the old like measure it up to the other piece to make sure he got everything. Oh, is that what he was doing? I think so, yeah. It's just yeah. I feel like if you had never seen that done in a movie before, you'd be totally lost on like what is he doing?

Tom 42:26

Yeah.

Joe 42:26

But I feel like the only reason people understand that is because they've seen it happen in movies before. It's never something anyone will actually experience in real life, I don't think. Oh right. He's not they don't make mention of him being an engineer in this movie at all.

Tom 42:42

Uh no, he's uh he's he's just a botanist. He's yeah, in the book, he's got masters in engineering and botany, and here he's a PhD in botany, I think. But they don't he's clearly an engineer, though. There's no way he's not.

Joe 42:56

But they don't they don't mention it at all.

Tom 42:58

They don't mention it.

Joe 42:59

I'm wondering if they do that purposely to make him seem more fantastical, or you know what I'm saying, like more spectacular. Yeah, like look at this botanist doing all of this crazy shit. There's no way a botanist could do all of that. Um so I thought that was an interesting thing too. And I I will say this too. Do they mention in the movie at all that Sebastian Stan is a doctor?

Tom 43:20

I was until the very end, maybe they make a they don't mention it, but they make an allusion to the fact that he like they make some kind of reference to the fact that like he should be checking vi like something, like he should be checking vitals or something. Yeah, the only person.

Joe 43:38

Oh, he makes he's the one who says that uh the vitals, he's the one who tells what Mark's vitals were when his suit got punctured and yeah.

Tom 43:46

Right. And the fact and he's the one who's like, he's got after a minute, like don't like he's there's no way he can survive. Yes, yes. Yeah, the only people that they make clear what their jobs are on the ship are Martinez and the captain. Like Yeah. One's the pilot, one's the captain, and everybody else is. Yes, yes, sure. They make it clear she's like the systems computer person.

Joe 44:10

But that's it, yeah, you're right. Yeah.

Jen 44:12

Well, they say that the other the Russian guy is like a chemist.

Joe 44:15

He's a he's German. German.

Jen 44:18

That's what I meant. German.

Joe 44:19

Uh yes, he is. At the end, they're like, you're a chemist, you can make a bomb, right?

Jen 44:23

Yeah.

Joe 44:23

Yeah. But he's also the he's also their navigator.

Jen 44:27

Sorry, I was thinking of the Russian guy in Armageddon.

Tom 44:30

Well, yeah.

Joe 44:31

They should have just put Peter still married. He's probably too old at that point to be maybe in this movie, but yeah. That was like the only actor in this movie who I like didn't know. Yes. Yeah, right.

Tom 44:41

Yeah.

Joe 44:42

So much so to the point that I thought he might have been a real astronaut that they threw in there.

Tom 44:47

You know how like that, like um I was like, is he a Scars Guard?

Joe 44:51

Is he like Like in that movie Blue Crush, they put a real, like there's a real surfer in there as one of the three girls. And in um in uh what's it called? Uh Grindhouse, the one, the Clinton Tarantino one, right? Aurelia Stumpwoman, yeah. Aurelia Stuntwoman. Yeah, yeah. Um, you know, that's what I thought. I was like, is this guy from NASA? He might be an astronaut, I think.

Jen 45:11

I don't I don't think his accent was thick enough because like I I spent the first like 10 minutes of the movie trying to be like, who is this extra guy? Did they add like another guy? And then I realized he was the German guy, but yeah his act I read his accent as much thicker in the in the book.

Joe 45:28

Maybe they didn't want well, I don't know if that actor is German, to be honest. What's his face? Yeah, I don't know. I think he I think he is a German actor, but I don't know if they I don't know what his real accent is like, and if they thought like doing a too thick of a German accent would sound silly. Like it'd be too stereotypical sounding, maybe. I don't know. But yes, he doesn't yeah, he doesn't talk that much either, I guess.

Jen 45:52

So no, he doesn't.

Joe 45:54

Yeah. Um I actually didn't take a lot of notes for this movie because I was kind of just watching it. Um sometimes I forget, like, you know, I forget like, oh, I should be, I should be saying things. So my next note is the what's the next the toilet washing sound was kind of funny. Oh, the flushing, sorry, the flushing sound.

Tom 46:15

Oh yeah.

Joe 46:16

Well I don't because it was just it was so like up front, it was just silence, and then you just listen to this weird toilet flushing sound, and it was a very distinct sound.

Tom 46:27

Vacuum seal sound, yeah.

Joe 46:29

Yeah. When he thinks of the idea to use his shit for fertilizer.

Tom 46:34

Everybody's shit. Yeah, well, everybody's shit, yeah.

Jen 46:37

They had to like keep track of who was shitting. So I think he just opened the No, there was like a a board on the wall, like a screen. And it it looked like you almost like you had to like tap it when you went to the bathroom or something. Maybe like everybody's names were on it. I don't know if that's another thing. No, no, or just like it's like. No, no, but how much you were shitting.

Joe 47:01

Oh, is that is that what that is? They are each tracking their fecal uh output.

Jen 47:07

Maybe make sure you're not constipated on Mars.

Tom 47:10

How much are you how much human matter you're leaving behind?

Joe 47:14

I wonder if they're running medical tests on it.

Jen 47:16

To see if they're there, if they're healthy.

Joe 47:19

No, I mean that's what I mean. No, I mean up there. I wonder if the doctor is. Yeah, I don't think they're he's gonna test every single shit they do just like once a week or something. I don't know.

Jen 47:32

Maybe.

Joe 47:34

Making sure there's no lead in that stool and red stool. Mars Mars stool.

Jen 47:41

The sand gets in into your mouth a little bit and turns your stool red.

Joe 47:51

Nice. We talked about the Chinese subtitles missing.

Tom 47:57

Here's another bit of of I think of good science fiction-y stuff, right? He's got he's in Johansson's laptop, right, to get the I think it's Johanson's laptop to get the hexadecimal key. Yeah. And then he just like pushes it from her laptop to his laptop, like you would move a slide from one linked monitor to another.

Joe 48:15

Oh yeah, yeah.

Tom 48:16

And I'm like in the movie, yeah. That's not how file sharing works.

Jen 48:20

Like in nine years it will.

Joe 48:23

I don't even think it would take nine years. I mean, you could do your you could like tap your phones to share pictures and things like that.

Tom 48:29

I guess true. Um, yeah, the the biggest thing that looked science fiction-y to me in the movie was like the graphical outlays and interfaces. Like it was very oh, yeah, yeah. It was very like future coded.

Joe 48:41

Yeah, I think so. And I mean, obviously the spaceship, I know like a lot of that was based off of like real. Well, they what they expected to look like, yeah. Yeah. Um a lot of scientific. I mean, I mean, they NASA was or they had a consultant, right, with this movie, so I think they got to visit this, you know, the Johnson Space Center, and so there was a lot of um, I guess, oversight to make it look as real or as potentially real as possible.

Tom 49:09

The only stuff they said that they really were like, well, we're not gonna do with what anything like what NASA's looking at is like the design of their suits on Mars, which would be much more like the suits that they would wear in space, but they made them much more like form fitting and with interior lighting so that you can see people.

Joe 49:26

Yeah, they they made two separate suits in the movie, right? They had the one, but in uh in the book it's the same suit. And yes, it's very like this is like a super slim fit you know, astronaut suit.

Tom 49:39

Yeah, it's uh uh sportswear, right? But um yeah, I want to go back. We we talked about the casting a lot, and I I may mention like it's such a fun cast, and like I said, for whatever reason, I don't think this is like a thing that Ridley Scott normally does, but like every almost every single person that's in the movie is somebody who is or will become at least moderately famous, yeah, right? To the point like the last time I had seen the movie, uh I did not know what Ted Lasso was. And so one of the guys that I thought wasn't famous in the movie is now one of like the stars of Ted Lasso. So the guy who's not uh from the Pathfinder Mohammed, yeah. Yeah, right. Uh the guy who's not British, one of the guys who's really British that's not British in the movie. One of the three, right? Because Chewita Leg of War and Benedict Wong, uh, all actually British. But uh Benedict Wong's British?

Joe 50:33

I didn't know that. I don't know if I've ever I don't know if I've ever heard him talk with a British accent.

Tom 50:37

Yeah. He has one of my favorite lines when after after the scene that you didn't know what was being said exactly because there's no subtitles, yeah, he's like, My uncle back home is helping us out. Like Yeah. Okay.

Joe 50:53

Was he was he making a joke? He was making an I am Chinese joke and Chinese. So it must be yeah. Okay. For a second, I wasn't sure if they were. I was like, is are they trying to be serious in that without the other?

Tom 51:07

I think it would be like similar to me saying, like, if if the mob helped us out, I would be like, Oh, my cousin.

Joe 51:13

Yeah, like oh yeah, yeah, okay. I loved how his character, every time he was like on a conference, he was basically being fed cue cards from his team.

Tom 51:23

They had like the whiteboard with like everything on it, like that he needs to say, or well, the first one that he gets is when they're like, You need to do it in this much time, and the person just writes, no. Yeah.

Joe 51:38

But like there's like another scene later on where they have like, and it's got like a whole, it's got like color-coded, like uh, I guess responses or things he needs to tell them about. Or um, yeah, I thought that was funny. Like things like that. That's just like such a nice little touch there.

Jen 51:52

There was a good line uh in one of those scenes from Jeff Daniels that was right out of the book where he was like, How often do this to the security checks, you know, bring up problems? He's like, Oh yeah, do you want us to not do the checks? He's like, Right now, I just want to know how often they bring up problems.

Joe 52:07

Yeah, there's a lot of dialogue straight from the book, like lines that are I I've just been like, Oh, yeah, that's right from the book.

Tom 52:12

Yeah, like I I like so in another movie, in a lesser movie, I would say, they would strive to make like Teddy a bad guy or make somebody like somebody that you would want to get comeuppance for all this time. But like, no, everyone's just good and wants to like do like wants to do right. Like they disagree about things, yeah. But like Teddy's like, I want to protect NASA, it's important for humanity to go into space, and I don't want to I don't want to risk five people's lives. It's not like that's not fair to them, and they're not they're not going to think objectively about this. That's my job, right? And of course they're like, no, of course we'll just risk ourselves right now, right?

Joe 52:55

Yeah, China, China's good people in this too. Yeah, yeah.

Tom 53:00

They have the opportunity to go like we'll keep our plan secret and we'll have our own mission to Mars by ourselves, and then they but they say no. Like and it was good, like it I wish you did see the subtitles so you can see the bit of it because like Tom, tell us, translate.

Joe 53:15

Yes.

Tom 53:16

So uh I don't remember the characters' names, but the female woman from the Chinese space program is telling the head of the program, the older gentleman, about this and waiting to see his response. And he responds in a way where he's like, Well, we would have to do this, and like she's so happy because she comes like when he responds in a way to imply that he's going to give them the the ship, she's happy because that's what she wanted, but she didn't think it was like she didn't think she had the authority to say we should do that. And it's just like, oh, everyone's good. Okay, everyone's good. All right, good.

Joe 53:54

Everybody's good in this, there's no bad people. Even Mars isn't that bad.

Tom 53:59

Right. Well, and he they have that the thing, like because his response is, well, we'd have to do it as like part of like the s the humanity, like the science of humanity. Like we're gonna have to we can't do it government to government. We have to do it like scientist to scientist.

Joe 54:13

Yeah.

Tom 54:14

Right? As like the the way to bridge it, like basically saying like China, China would not go to America and say we will help you, yeah. Right, but we can show space program to space program and say, and then they get to get a Chinese astronaut on the next mission.

Joe 54:27

Yeah. That's right. Yep, that's the deal. It's a good deal. Although some one of them, I believe, thinks uh I feel like there's another Chinese person later on who thinks no deal because getting a Chinese astronaut on Mars is like they're not gonna find anything out that we'd have we don't already know from the Americans going to Mars. Like it's not gonna, is it really worth it?

Tom 54:49

Well, right, I I if if memory serves from the book, because they they they they say it in the movie, and the way they say it is like that ship wasn't landing on Mars, that ship was going to Mars, right? Like they weren't the the Chinese space program wasn't ready to land a ship on Mars or land people on Mars, they were ready to like go to Mars. Yeah, so like now, like while they're still building their own program to go, we're gonna have a person there. And I think that's more of an even trade.

Joe 55:16

Yeah, yeah. No, I I thought it no, I'm not yeah, I'm not criticizing the trend myself. I'm saying somebody I believe.

Tom 55:22

Yeah, there is there's like a more like pragmatic third person from from the Chinese authority who's like, well, we should have gotten more. Um yeah.

Jen 55:31

I'm just remembering another third person part where it tells you how like their first food shipment like liquefies and light how it like slams back in the back of the rocket. And I feel like that's something that like no one will ever know. Because by the time it crashes, they're probably not gonna be able to figure out like immediately.

Joe 55:49

So like, oh, did you say it? Yeah, they say it after the fact when they didn't hear that. When they're doing the press yeah, when the when they doing the press conference, or was it uh yeah, or they were on TV, I forget it was, but yeah, they do say it.

Jen 56:02

Oh, I didn't hear that at all. Okay, I didn't forget that.

Joe 56:04

But this is done more this this reminds me of what's his face? Um uh the guy who does uh Clear Present Danger and uh Tom Clancy. Tom Clancy. That that was a total Tom Clancy scene for me, Jen, because that's that's that's the exact shit he does when he writes. He'll write like the whole like what was it, the one with the is it the sum of all fears? There's literally or two to three page description of a nuclear bomb going off. And I don't mean like the damage it does, I mean the reactions that are happening to actually make the bomb go off. It's like it's like three pages of of scientific description of what's happening inside the the nuclear bomb. He does that with in the Hunt for October 2 when he's describing like the jet propulsion system.

Tom 56:46

Yes, he does like the entire like okay, I get it. The movie's like see these things, it makes the submarine go silent. That's all that's all we need to know.

Joe 56:56

So, just in general, right? This movie, this movie is very close to the book. It is a very well condensed version of the book, I will say, right? Like, and and I don't know if we were talking about this prior to actually starting, but there's a lot of science and math in this book, and a lot more explanation of what he's doing and and his thought process on coming up with solutions to these problems that he's facing. Um, they kind of just you know condense it a bit, like they don't give you all the details, which makes sense.

Tom 57:28

It does. People don't like that's one, it's easier for you to either absorb or skip that if you're reading a book. Whereas in a movie, like nobody wants to hear that much stuff. And then they do a good job in the movie too, of like, okay, he's doing science, but he'll just explain to you that he did science. Like it's not like you don't need to see him like crunching the numbers. It either works and he tells you what he just did, or it doesn't work and he tells you why it doesn't. And then um I was I didn't realize this, right? But I was in reading up on this afterwards, I thought it's interesting, right? They in order to make his motion on Mars look the way it would on the Martian gravity, they um they had to film at a higher frame rate and then slow it down to a normal frame rate. So they basically filmed at double speed and slowed it down to make it look like he was moving in a more weightless environment.

Jen 58:21

Okay.

Tom 58:22

That meant that in order for him to look like he was talking, he would have to speak at double the rate of speed, and so that when it slowed it down, it would look like a normal rate of speed, and they couldn't do that, which is why they made everything video narration things after the fact that he just didn't talk generally while he was doing stuff on Mars.

Joe 58:41

Yeah, which I was about to say, he doesn't talk really when he's out on Mars. Like No, but I think the original script was a little bit more of like him talking to himself or maybe recording the um recording his vlog basically like with a camera in the suit or something like that.

Tom 58:57

They do funny things like show him from outside the the rover screaming obscenities. Yeah. You can't hear him.

Joe 59:04

Yeah, yeah, definitely. Uh I mean, again, this is the book is mostly him doing his vlog or a log. They don't even tell you if it's an audio log, uh, he's typing or he's the video log. Like they don't even I don't even think they mention it in the book. It's just his diary. Um, and it you know he's definitely recording it, I think, digitally somehow. It's definitely I don't think I think it's clear that he's not writing it.

Tom 59:26

Yeah, it's not freehand. There's no pens and paper. He's like either putting it, but it's not, I don't think it's doing it. Like, I imagine it's typed and you're reading it, like is the conceit, you know.

Joe 59:38

Okay. I think it's you're reading what he's typing. I was thinking it could have been audio or video as well. I wasn't really clear, and like I said, I don't think it makes it clear. I don't think it does, I don't think it matters. No, it doesn't. Um so you're gonna have to translate that to a you know a video medium, and and to have him just talk about doing stuff, I mean you get a couple of shots of that just to get like set the stage and show you like what's going on and uh and you know keep the story going and get you that feeling of like this is the lost tapes of Mark Watney or whatever. Um, but you gotta show stuff because it's a movie, so we're gonna show a bunch of stuff too, uh, which is great. I mean, I thought they did a really good job of the balance of that.

Tom 1:00:23

But going into the it's a movie stuff, I'll guess I'll not pay off the tease that I had at the beginning. Oh, okay. There's two things that happen during the climax of the movie that, while they're fine for the movie, made me laugh. Because the one thing, the first thing is in the book, he talks about the idea of piercing his suit and flying around like Irish. Oh, yeah, and then does not do that because that's a dumb idea. But in the movie, they're like, we're not gonna have this guy save himself for two hours and then only just sit there while other people rescue him. He has to take an active part in his rescue. And then in the book specifically, he goes, if this were a movie, the whole crew would be at the airlock high-fiving me or whatever. Yeah, it's everyone's flying the ship, they're all there.

Joe 1:01:09

They don't really fly the ship. That thing flies itself.

Jen 1:01:19

Oh, yeah, spinning around.

Joe 1:01:21

Well, he says something to the effect of like, you're not going out without like he says something.

Jen 1:01:26

Well, that's no, that's in the book.

Joe 1:01:27

Like, there's not gonna be memorials for you guys and no, no, no, no, that not that part. When he climbs out, like half out of the of the shuttle of the MAV, he's like, You guys are I think it's when they decide they're gonna blow. No, it wasn't when they were gonna blow the what's it called, was it? Yeah, when they were gonna blow the um the the airlock, the airlock to slow it down. He I think he says something to the effect of like, you guys aren't gonna uh let us know. Yeah, and he kind well no, I don't even know what was the memorial part though.

Jen 1:01:58

I don't know.

Joe 1:02:00

I don't know. There's the part, yes, but he does. He like climbs like half out of the MAV. Meanwhile, in the book, he's he's still strapped in.

Jen 1:02:07

He's like, don't strap in. I I didn't like that like the commander had to take the part. And I was like, I get it for the movie because it's like it makes sense, but in the book it was like, okay, she's a commander, everybody has their jobs, everybody figures it out together, and they do their jobs and they get them back. Right, yeah, like the way they're supposed to.

Joe 1:02:30

Well, they don't talk about that.

Jen 1:02:31

I'm gonna do this. I have to like what and Bastion Stan just stands there and does nothing.

Joe 1:02:36

I know, he's so neutered in this movie, he like barely does anything. I it's funny when I was reading the end of the book. I was like, oh, the Iron Man thing. I was like, I remember that from the movie, and then they didn't do it. And I was like, oh, I was like, they changed that. They thought like they probably thought, like, oh, we gotta do this, this'll be funny. Um, and then the Jessica Chastain part too. I was like, I was like, it's not Beck who goes out and gets him.

Jen 1:02:57

It's no, it is Beck.

Joe 1:02:59

She's literally Well, no, I mean in the movie, it's not when I was reading the book, that's what I was thinking. Yeah, it's uh the commander, and I was like, Oh, that's something they changed as well. And I'm like, Oh, now I don't like it.

Tom 1:03:11

No, it I mean, whatever. It is like she's I'm sorry, I'm much more famous than you at this time. So stands. Yes.

Joe 1:03:19

I've got a that's that's his job, though. He's the EVA guy.

Jen 1:03:22

That's his yeah, right. Everybody has their job. Like everybody does their jobs, right? You don't just like decide you're gonna go out.

Joe 1:03:28

I'm gonna go.

Jen 1:03:30

Yeah, okay.

Joe 1:03:31

Right.

Jen 1:03:33

Yeah, it didn't make a bigger any more millions.

Tom 1:03:35

I would have caught him the first time. But whatever's your game's my job.

Joe 1:03:43

It's my special, uh, it's my specialty.

Tom 1:03:45

Right.

Jen 1:03:46

Yeah, the book they're like, don't take off your seatbelt until he's literally got his hands on you. Yeah, okay, I got him. Take his seatbelt off. Okay.

Joe 1:03:53

Yeah, he literally uh he he he gets to him, he connects himself to his suit and then he unbuckles him. And this he just like climbs out, he's like half out of the hands like I'm over here. It's going on, I guess. Yeah.

Tom 1:04:12

That beats it.

Joe 1:04:13

I don't like I don't like the Iron Man thing though. I think it's funnier that he mentions it and they don't and it it doesn't happen.

Jen 1:04:19

It's just like he mentions it so that they get the idea to do what they do.

Joe 1:04:23

Well, I don't think he he doesn't do that on purpose.

Jen 1:04:26

No, no, I mean, but in the book, like that's why it's in there because he says that and then she's like, oh, we could blow that out the back of the ship and do that. Not and then he actually does it.

Tom 1:04:36

Yeah. Yeah. It's I mean, that's a little it is a little bit of a okay, we need to make this more of a Hollywoody kind of thing, and our stars need to be true stars at the end. But like, um, it's fine. It doesn't really detract that many points from this movie. It it's one of those things where no the book's probably a little better there, but yeah.

Joe 1:04:55

Well, there's I mean, there's a few other significant things that they leave out.

Tom 1:04:59

Yeah, the whole the whole commute is much easier. Yeah, right. Even though they tease in the beginning, like, oh, it's gonna be tough. Like it's just like, oh, he gets he's he just drives down. He's tired sometimes.

Jen 1:05:09

Yeah, they're laying under the thing, they cut out like the bedroom that he makes.

Joe 1:05:12

Oh, yeah. What's that? I get that part. He gets yeah, just have him sleep in the map because uh we don't need to get a whole other part about him making a tent into a bedroom. I got that part. They cut out the sandstorm um on his way there. They cut out him flipping the rover, which I that would have been really cool if they put that. That's the one thing I was like, oh, they should have put that in there. That would have been really cool.

Tom 1:05:35

I literally do wonder if they're like, this is already like a 200 page screenplay. We gotta we gotta we gotta let's just get him to the end.

Joe 1:05:45

And then they cut they cut him breaking they cut out him breaking the uh the Pathfinder connection where he's in this movie he's in touch with NASA from when he gets in touch with them till the end of the movie. In the book, they he breaks the the communication and then they're like

Jen 1:06:00

Yeah, so he's like, I guess I'll just go there on the day I said I was gonna go. Yes.

Joe 1:06:04

And he just get to the crater without any of their help.

Tom 1:06:09

Yeah, it's not he doesn't explicitly communicate with NASA while he's driving, but there you have eyes on him the whole time.

Joe 1:06:17

I think he is communicating with them. I think you just don't actually keep it they actually don't show that they brought Pathfinder with him, right?

Tom 1:06:24

Yeah, and and he makes the same comment about the fact that like no one's given me explicit permission to get on the thing. So technically I'm you know Mark Watney space pirate.

Joe 1:06:35

Um they left that part in too.

Tom 1:06:38

Yeah, his whole space pirate uh best and and then pour back home his like well, the more maritime gets it like right away.

Joe 1:06:46

Yeah, he's like, Yeah, we got it. He's a pirate.

Jen 1:06:49

I really like uh when he first starts like when he talks to them and he hears them, the crew, like when he's strapped into the MAV and he starts like getting choked up. I thought that was very nice.

Joe 1:06:59

Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, oh yeah, that was his first communication with them since first hearing somebody's voice.

Jen 1:07:05

Yeah.

Joe 1:07:06

Oh, that's right, yeah. Because first time hearing a voice, yeah.

Tom 1:07:09

Yeah. In like a year and a half, two years almost.

Joe 1:07:12

Yeah, those were the biggest things I think that they cut out. Um, I can't think of anything else in particular, but those everything else was pretty much condensed. But yes, a big part of the book is him figuring out and preparing for how he's gonna get from the hab all the way to the crater. It's a good chunk of the book, and they just kind of really, really condensed it. Yeah.

Tom 1:07:31

They just kind of like, oh, he's figuring out how to drive further and farther. Like that's it.

Jen 1:07:35

Yeah.

Tom 1:07:36

Yeah.

Jen 1:07:37

Uh I like how they showed that they had that they were doing the stuff right in Houston and then telling him what to do. Yeah, like they were doing sure it worked. Yeah, that was cool.

Joe 1:07:49

I did like that too. They talk about like how they're just had there's just tons of people just trying to figure all this stuff out. Yeah. It's cool that they show you in the movie.

Tom 1:07:57

Yeah, and and that's apparently a real thing. Everything that NASA sends into space, there's an exact duplicate of it on land, so that if this happens or anything like that happens, they can they can solution it here on land and give people exact directions about what to do to fix it. Yeah.

Joe 1:08:15

Yeah. And uh, I think he he praises and thanks uh uh universal valve connections in the book because like NASA standardizes all like the connections and everything so you can interswap things and yeah, smart because he's constantly connecting hoses up to different things and uh yeah, a lot of nerdy stuff like that. That's really awesome. Rich Purnell, Donald Glover. Yeah, that was it was fun. Yeah, even like a character like that is still somebody who's really famous, right? Like he's in like three scenes. I mean, they kind of give him a little bit more in the movie than the book, the character in the book.

Tom 1:08:54

Yeah, he has like an extra scene to be cool, kinda in a very good thing.

Joe 1:08:58

He's much cooler and cooler of a person in the movie than he is in the book. Yeah. Yes.

Jen 1:09:02

I just love how he's just like doing everything and not telling anyone. And then like all of a sudden he's like, hey, I figured it out. Like nobody knew that he was doing that.

Tom 1:09:13

He at one point he's just play plugging into like a giant mainframe supercomputer to check his check his calculations. Yeah.

Jen 1:09:21

And they're like, oh, in the book, he's like, uh, his boss is like, I think you need to take a vacation. He's like, Yeah, okay, okay, I'll take one right now. He just stays there working so he doesn't have to do his actual job.

Joe 1:09:32

Yeah, his character's a bit of a jerk. Like, he's a little jerky in the book, I think. Not like a jerk jerk, but he's like he's much more like he doesn't know uh yeah, he's a little uh socially awkward.

Tom 1:09:45

Yeah, I mean uh like a Larry David kind of attitude. Yes, he's more he's more to put like a community spit on it, he's he's much more like um uh Abbott in in in that he's just weird and not like on people's wavelength in the movie, not like he's abrasive about it. Yes, um, but yeah, he his the scene where he explains it to like to everybody in the room at the council is terrible.

Joe 1:10:12

Yeah, it is. It's it's actually really good the way it was written and performed because right there's he's really explaining it to us, yeah, the viewers, not to most people. They um so they do a good job of making it, it's almost on two levels. A level of like, yes, we're explaining it to NASA experts, but we're also explaining it to you know viewers of the movie who have no idea anything about aerodynamics and uh sorry, astrodynamics.

Tom 1:10:36

Yeah, and and Christian Wigg is is a a non-science person too. Like she needs to have this stuff explained to her in a way that she can understand it.

Joe 1:10:45

She knows a little bit about science being the uh I guess the publicist or yeah, but like she knows how to press secretary or whatever you want to call it, yeah. Yeah, they definitely give her a bigger part, obviously, because it's Kristen Wig and she's again third build in this. Yeah, that's um I was very surprised at that.

Tom 1:11:04

Yeah, and she's very good at it. Uh don't get me wrong.

Joe 1:11:07

Oh no, I know I know that, but it was just weird, like that character being third build is kind of weird. Like you said, above Jeff, right? She's right above Jeff Dana.

Tom 1:11:15

Yeah, he's fourth, I think. Right? It's yeah, Christian.

Joe 1:11:18

Matt Damon, Jessica Chastain, then Kristen Wake.

Tom 1:11:21

Kristen Wake, Jeff Daniels, um Sean Bean. Sean Bean. Yeah. Let's see.

Joe 1:11:26

If do they put in IMDB, do they put the cast in the billing order?

Tom 1:11:30

I don't know. I don't know.

Joe 1:11:31

No, actually, then if if it is, then Michael Payne would be fifth.

Tom 1:11:34

Oh no, he is fifth. He is.

Joe 1:11:36

Yeah, then then Sean Bean, then Kate Maris, Sebastian Stan, and then uh Axel Henny, which is the German guy Vogel. Yeah, yeah.

Tom 1:11:46

That's not Swedish, she was Swedish, yeah. Oh, is he Henny's a Swedish name? I don't know if he's I don't know if he's Swedish, but Norwegian. Close. It was close.

Joe 1:11:55

Yeah. Grew up in Oslo. Then she would tell Benedict Wong, yeah, Kenzie Davis, Donald Glover, Nick Mohammed, blah blah blah blah blah blah. We're not gonna go down the whole thing, but um, yes, it is a top-notch cast. You've got all the pieces I think you needed to make. I feel like this is just this was like a a gimme, right? We're we're writing the script of this really great book. We've got uh Drew Goddard writing the script, who's um pretty uh successful uh screen uh Scott screenwriter. Um, you've got Ridley Scott directing it, Matt Damon starring in it, and then like, oh well let's put let's pull in Jessica Chastain, Jeff Daniels, let's put all these people in there. Like it was really difficult to mess this up.

Tom 1:12:45

Yeah. Yes.

Joe 1:12:48

Oh, I didn't realize Goddard's also did the screenplay for Project Hell Mary. Makes sense. Another Andy Weir adaptation. Go ahead, Tom, sorry.

Tom 1:12:57

Yeah. This reminded me of like uh like an old-fashioned Hollywood movie, like the kind of movie that like would play on your local television station if you were a kid in the eighties or nineties. Yeah, you know, like where it's just like, oh, like we're just gonna get a ton of really good quality actors to fill out every part in here, even if it's a smaller one, and you're gonna go, oh, I remember that guy, that's great. And like just let audiences enjoy the film. And like you don't need to explain, like, I know who Sean Bean is, so I know this guy's got nobility or whatever, and I don't have to worry about it. You know? Um, and I think it was very refreshing to just uh I thought I mentioned the competence porn thing before, but like to just see a big Hollywood movie done without like any kind of it's not trying to do anything other than entertain you, you know.

Joe 1:13:51

Yeah, I will say this. I wanna I wanna take back what I said before because they should have been worried about this movie because Drew Goddard, uh, you know what the movie he wrote before this was? It was another sci-fi adaptation of a book, a really good book, which I think we have to put it on our list. I just realized that's not on our list. Uh, World War Z. Ooh, uh that movie was not good and very different from the book. Yeah, it's not, you know. It was like they just kind of took the concept of the book and made it into a whole its own thing. Right. Uh, but he did do Cabin in the Woods before that, so all right.

Jen 1:14:27

Well, that's a great movie.

Joe 1:14:28

Yeah.

Tom 1:14:28

He directed that he directed that movie, right?

Jen 1:14:31

No, is that Josh Whedon?

Joe 1:14:32

Oh, did Whedon direct that?

Jen 1:14:33

Yeah, that's a Josh Whedon movie, I think.

Joe 1:14:35

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And and Whedon also wrote with him. I guess I don't know if he covered it. Yeah, he also wrote on that too. I don't know if it was a collaboration or a edit. And of course, Cloverfield.

Jen 1:14:46

Which is a that was like a gimmick movie.

Tom 1:14:51

It was a gimmick movie, but it was it was fine. I liked it.

Joe 1:14:54

Yeah.

Tom 1:14:55

It was a good gimmick.

Joe 1:14:56

So I will say this movie was pretty successful.

Tom 1:14:59

Yeah. Yeah.

Joe 1:15:00

It made uh $630 million globally. We already said it only had $108 million budget. Uh seven Academy Award nominations, the Golden Globe. Fans of the book liked it. Um Weir liked it.

Tom 1:15:17

Yeah.

Joe 1:15:17

He he agreed that it was a very faithful adaptation to the book. He was also, I think he also consulted a bit on the movie, so um, so he I think he got his vision out there the way he wanted it. You know, I think some of the things we talked about some of the things that we didn't like that I think also some of the fans of the books didn't like with the Iron Man, you know, maneuver that he actually uses, and then the changing of who go who goes out and gets him. But otherwise, yeah. I don't think there was really much negative uh sentiment about this movie. It was, I think it's got like an eight on IMDB, eight out of ten on IMDB. So that's the one.

Tom 1:15:56

And I thought it was and I thought it was I thought it was rated lower than that. Uh no, I thought it was rated low. I thought the eight was a lower rating than I thought it would have had, because I really don't know why you would not like this film. Yeah. Um, and I would before we go into our own ratings of it or whatever else, like I want to just call it one other scene that I really like, and it's another reason why Trevor Tell Edu4 is the uh non-Mark Watney edition MVP of this film. When they're going through what they have to do to get the Mav into space, and they're like Oh, when they're telling them all the stuff they gotta tear off together, you're gonna send them into space without without a navigation system. They're like, we haven't even gotten to the bad part yet. We'll get to the bad part.

Joe 1:16:37

Yeah, yeah. That's that's in the that's how it is in the book, though, basically.

Tom 1:16:42

It is, but his delivery of it is so great.

Joe 1:16:46

Yeah.

Jen 1:16:46

I love how they have to show a model of them ripping everything out of the yeah, that that was funny.

Joe 1:16:53

That was another great show, don't tell, but that scene is they're like a comic, a comedy duo almost over there with that when they're like pulling the stuff off, and yeah, um we're gonna put a tarp over. Yeah, yeah. I think yes, the Kapoor character is a bit more animated in the movie than he is in the books. He's a little more even keeled. Um, but yes, it works, it works well for the movie and for uh for Chiwa Telegend 4 for sure. All right, anything, let's see, are there any little tidbits of uh interesting facts that we didn't discuss? We talked about Project Al Rond. I mean, I couldn't I you gotta try to keep a straight face during that scene with Sean Bean just kind of sitting there in the corner. Apparently they launched they launched they launched a copy of the film script into space aboard NASA's origin spacecraft in 2014.

Tom 1:17:47

That's cool.

Joe 1:17:48

Okay. Uh potatoes, they were real potatoes that they grew on set.

Tom 1:17:54

Oh that's pretty cool.

Joe 1:17:55

Yeah. Rather than using prop potatoes, they just grew potatoes.

Jen 1:18:00

Seems like a lot of work.

Joe 1:18:02

I don't I don't know, is it or is it more difficult to create the prop tomate potatoes? I I actually don't know the answer to that.

Jen 1:18:10

I mean the plants seem like when they're just green, it seems like that would be easier to be fake than to grow real potatoes.

Tom 1:18:20

But you know you're gonna have to dig them out? I don't know, and then I guess you have them and you can do whatever you need to do with them. It has to be method. I don't know.

Joe 1:18:27

I I guess so. I don't know. Maybe they it's part of their their food budget.

Tom 1:18:31

So before just on that, there's one like I watch this movie, my whole family watched this movie. Everyone liked it, and there's a scene in the movie where he's eating the potatoes and like he's making the potatoes. He's like, and whatever it is, my son, my older son just goes, he's using a lot of ketchup. Whatever it is, we're like sort of like trying to ketchup in. And then the next scene, he's like, I ran out of ketchup 30 30 souls ago or whatever. Yeah, like you used a lot of it, man.

Joe 1:18:59

So we we forgot to talk about the part, you know, in the beginning, like in the book, Andy Weir actually wrote his own software to um to write the basic, like basically like the orbital, you know, tracks of Hermes to make sure like that was something that could really be done.

Tom 1:19:17

Oh wow.

Joe 1:19:18

Okay, yes.

Tom 1:19:19

Amazing.

Joe 1:19:20

Yes. He he he wanted to make sure all of it was scientifically accurate, all like the the astrodynamics part parts of it. So uh the Hermes spacecraft set cost one million dollars. Uh, and we mentioned it's based is it was based on NASA deep space designs, so it wasn't something that they just totally created um out of nowhere.

Tom 1:19:41

One million, one and a half million for Jessica Chastain, one million for the ship, twenty-five for Damon. That's close to thirty percent of the entire budget.

Joe 1:19:51

Does movie budgets can uh also account for like the promotional part, the marketing and promotion, or no? It shouldn't count that in there.

Tom 1:19:59

It should.

Joe 1:20:00

Okay.

Tom 1:20:01

Sometimes they don't. It depends on depends on that. That's all press, what you want to say. So you don't have to.

Joe 1:20:06

Yeah.

Tom 1:20:06

Um there's a pretty big campaign for this.

Joe 1:20:09

Yeah, Ridley Scott used real GoPro cameras on the characters to give uh Watney's video log a real, more like found footage feel.

Tom 1:20:18

Okay. Cool.

Joe 1:20:19

Yeah. Um the we uh the disco. We didn't get any we didn't get any 70s television shows though. Which are he was watching.

Jen 1:20:28

Oh, and happy days. Oh, yes, yes. There was a happy that's right.

Joe 1:20:31

There was the happy days one, yeah.

Tom 1:20:33

So this is something I didn't know until I uh was reading up on this for for the for the pod, but it's like Joe Hanson, you freak when he's got uh he's going through and it's like leather, whatever from Mars or whatever, and he's going through the computer. I thought that was porn. That's like a video game. Yeah, oh yeah, no, it's like a text game. I thought it was porn because he's like you freak, and it's like leather women from Mars or whatever. Oh no, no, it's a video game, yeah. I was like, that's much less interesting.

Joe 1:21:03

It's a weird video game, it seems like. I imagine so.

Tom 1:21:06

It's like a text game. Like uh real game? Real game. Those are real games. Like those are like weird 80s text, like like King's Quest.

Joe 1:21:17

What's it called games? What are they called? Mob mob games? No, what are they called? Uh whatever they are. I can't remember what they're called.

Tom 1:21:24

There's a uh I don't know what you're talking about, so but sure. Like you two. Someone in chat's gonna probably tell you then look in the tree, and the character walks over to a tree and looks at it.

Joe 1:21:34

Yeah, yeah. There's a name for those games. I can't remember what they're called. Something with like it's like a weird uh acronym.

Tom 1:21:41

MUD.

Joe 1:21:41

MUD, thank you. MUDs, thank you, Holger. See, I was close. I said mod.

Tom 1:21:45

But he's saying they're just text adventures, they're not even that. So are these ones, Hoger, where it's just like I type and it types back what you see. There's no video at all.

Joe 1:21:53

Yeah.

Tom 1:21:54

Um, okay. MUDs. So Hoger in chat is explaining to us that that's not like King's Quest, which has graphics. You just text, you just there's no controllers, you just type into it. This is just total like a text game. The only one that I know about that is uh I played a hitchhiker's guide video game like that. Oh yeah, which is just text.

Joe 1:22:11

I uh had a game, it was called Zor. And you were it was kind of like a DD type game where you're in like a dungeon. You start off in a dungeon and you're just yeah, you're just typing back and forth with the computer.

Tom 1:22:23

Trying to figure out how you can get the hell out of the hands.

Joe 1:22:26

Yeah, we're gonna just die like within a few years.

Tom 1:22:28

Of course, everything is death.

Joe 1:22:30

Yeah. Uh except this movie. No one dies in this movie.

Tom 1:22:37

One other comment.

Joe 1:22:38

Let's do it.

Tom 1:22:39

So um about halfway through the movie when he gets to plutonium, uh, he goes, I've gone through all of uh Captain Lewis's records, and this is the least disco song that she has, and hot stuff comes on. Fine. Later on, towards the towards the end of the movie, as he's going towards the Mav, Starman plays. And there's a presumption that I have that all of the 70s era disco music that's in the movie is the music that he has available to him, even if he's not actively playing it at the time. Yeah. Yeah. Starman is so much less of a disco song than Hot Stuff. Yeah. That is my problem with the film.

Joe 1:23:18

Um, don't they play Starman though when they're in the world? It's when he's adding the modifications on the map on the Mav.

Tom 1:23:27

No, it's when he's doing I think it's when he's getting to when he's getting driving to the crowd.

Joe 1:23:35

Yeah, yeah.

Tom 1:23:36

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Joe 1:23:37

He's ripping everything apart.

Tom 1:23:38

And again, maybe it's not. Maybe it's just the only instance of the movie where music's not, but like it seems like it's another song that he has that's much less disco than hot stuff.

Joe 1:23:50

Yeah. Yeah. I agree. Definitely agree. I wasn't sure, to be honest. I thought when that song came on Starman, I thought that was just them the movie people playing Starman, like because it fits.

Tom 1:24:02

It could be. I do like that the credits come on to I Will Survive. That's yeah.

Joe 1:24:07

Well, what's funny is I thought they should have played that in the movie. I was talking to my wife about that. I was like, I'm surprised they didn't play this in the movie.

Tom 1:24:13

I almost feel like it's like a like like they know that you're waiting for this needle to drop, and they're waiting to give you that that that release. Yeah. Okay, they got me. It's working.

Joe 1:24:27

I want to go find my version of the book now and tell you about that end.

Tom 1:24:30

Yes. Maybe reading aloud the fever dream.

Joe 1:24:36

I uh what's gonna happen is okay.

Tom 1:24:38

Or Courtney curses out a kid.

Joe 1:24:40

When this episode drops, right? If you're listening to this episode, shortly after this, within a day or two, if you do not see me post something on social media of me reading the ending that I was talking about before, it was a fever dream. Uh all right, are we ready to give our our ratings on this one? Or is there more? Is there more? Would you like to know more? All right, who wants to go first? I was thinking about this all day, actually, so let me go first. I'm just gonna go first. I'm gonna give this a four point two five. Whoa.

Tom 1:25:20

You kind of I I felt you'd go down the stairs of of of ratings there.

Joe 1:25:25

I was gonna give it a four, but I think I'm gonna give it a four point two five.

Tom 1:25:29

Yeah.

Joe 1:25:30

Go for it. Who was it? Yeah, I don't need to say anything more about it.

Tom 1:25:34

Um, I like this movie a lot. Uh, I think this is my I think this is the the my favorite movie that we've done so far, I think.

Joe 1:25:41

Well, I'll tell you in a minute if you uh once you give me your rating.

Tom 1:25:44

I am going to give this a I want to be bold. I'll be bold. I'm usually very I feel like I usually rate low. I'm gonna give this a 4.75.

Jen 1:25:53

Wow.

Joe 1:25:54

Okay, so I will say this.

Jen 1:25:55

Perfect.

Joe 1:25:56

Go because I don't have the ratings for the first like eight episodes we did, because I we know no one wrote them down and no one's gone back and listened to the episodes so so I could fill it in. This is the highest rated movie you've done so you've said so far since since the uh War of the Worlds, I think, is the first one where I took down.

Tom 1:26:14

Okay. Okay.

Joe 1:26:15

So the Dune movies and the hedge night, I don't have those listed here.

Jen 1:26:18

Okay.

Joe 1:26:19

All right.

Jen 1:26:21

I'm gonna give it a four.

Joe 1:26:23

All right. As a movie, as just a movie.

Jen 1:26:26

Yes.

Joe 1:26:27

Okay. Um, anything particular you didn't like about it?

Jen 1:26:31

I'm not saying that a four's bad, but just Yeah, no, I I liked it a lot. Um you know, I just the ending I didn't care for, but uh it worked in the movie. It was fine. Um and I uh Yeah, I thought it was very good. It's just uh that's that's my very good rating four.

Joe 1:26:48

We got an additional ending though in this movie than we did in the book where we got all this extra stuff added on.

Jen 1:26:54

Like the uh wrap-up happy ending for everyone.

Joe 1:26:58

Yes. The yeah, they didn't really play up the Beck Johansson thing at all in the movie, except there was like a what's there's the scene of him of her looking at him out in the suit.

Tom 1:27:11

She smooshes his helmet.

Joe 1:27:13

She does do the kiss with the helmet, but I'm talking like before, like there's there's nothing before that.

Jen 1:27:19

Yeah, it's not much. It doesn't matter.

Joe 1:27:21

Yeah.

Jen 1:27:22

In the movie.

Joe 1:27:23

She does do the kiss on the helmet and say, Don't tell anybody I did that. Just that's exactly that's exactly what happens in the book.

Jen 1:27:28

Yeah.

Joe 1:27:29

Although you know by that point that they've been sleeping. They're actually sleeping together at that point.

Jen 1:27:34

Yeah. I don't think that was the first time she kissed him.

Joe 1:27:38

I I don't know. I have no idea there really was a punch before that.

Jen 1:27:41

Yeah, in the book, it wouldn't have been, obviously. But in this, I I just assumed it was the same, but I guess it didn't really tell us that.

Joe 1:27:50

Yeah.

Jen 1:27:50

But they have a baby now, so Yeah, a little cute baby.

Joe 1:27:54

Successful adaptation.

Jen 1:27:57

Yes. Yeah. Very successful.

Joe 1:28:00

I think this was very good adaptation. This was one of the better adaptations that we've done. I'm not I'm trying to think if there's anything better that we've done so far? Yeah, I mean we did last week The Lion the Witch in the Wardrobe is a pretty faithful and close adaptation to the book as well. So these two are definitely in that same area.

Jen 1:28:21

I feel that this could have been wildly changed under a different writer and director. Yes. Oh, yeah. And I appreciate that they didn't go that route and they stuck as close as they did.

Joe 1:28:33

Yes. Sparingly put in some little Hollywood type, you know, like things for like to make it a little more uh broad in the you know. Um I will say this. So watching this and after reading it, I was thinking about something that would have been really cool. And it would not surprise me if sometime in the future, while we're still alive, that they do a limited series of this, The Martian, and just redo it, like a new adaptation of it, but it's like an eight-episode TV show. Because this the book totally fits that. It's just like him, you know, having to figure something out, figuring it out, testing it out, then a pro something happens and then he has to figure out how to do it. Like you could that could just be episode.

Jen 1:29:17

Eight problems could come up, definitely, that you solve by the end of the episode.

Joe 1:29:22

Well, no, no, by the end of the season.

Jen 1:29:24

No, but uh each episode contained could be like a new its own little problem that happens.

Joe 1:29:28

Yes, exactly, exactly. I feel like this book would lend itself to being a limited series, like it could be easily adapted. And you can get a lot more of the uh although I feel like if they did that, they would probably add a bunch of like they would add stuff.

Jen 1:29:42

There's an alien woman that lives on Mars and he has a relationship with.

Joe 1:29:48

There's a f he when he's digging, he he discovers a frozen alien body in the under the sand.

Jen 1:29:55

He takes an egg home with him and hatches. That's like the coda at the end of the season.

Joe 1:30:01

It just turns into alien, the move Ridley Scott still never gets away. I'm gonna work this into the alien universe.

Tom 1:30:10

Uh what you call it.

Joe 1:30:11

Is that moving on? Predator shows up, predator lands on the planet. Just bring it into that whole universe there.

Jen 1:30:18

Okay.

Joe 1:30:18

Mark Watney has to figure out how to defeat a predator.

Jen 1:30:22

That's episode, that's episode four.

Joe 1:30:27

All right, I think we've destroyed this enough. Uh I want to remind everyone to follow us on social media, join us over in Discord to hang out with us and chat with us there. We also post our episodes on YouTube, so go to our YouTube page to like and subscribe, rate and review us, wherever you listen to podcasts, and check out our Patreon page and support us that way. Links to all the aforementioned information are included in the show notes to this episode. Tom, final thoughts? Uh this movie was good. Go watch it. Jen, you want to take us out?

Jen 1:30:58

Houston, this is Hermes Actual. Six crew safely aboard.

Joe 1:31:06

Thanks everyone for listening, and you'll hear us next time.