*Note: This review contains spoilers.You’ve been warned.

Being a huge nerd, I love science-fiction and I myself am a fan of Matt Damon starring in a personal favorite of mine, The Departed. Now The Martian and The Departed are 2 very different movies. I’m very glad to say that this is a new Ridley Scott classic, and I didn’t even read the book and I was still impressed with this movie.

The Martian is based off the best-selling novel which is about an astronaut named Mark Watney who is presumed dead and stranded on Mars during a storm. Soon enough though NASA finds out he is alive. Because of how much time it would take to rescue him, Mark has to figure out how to survive on Mars.

It would have been the easy way out to make this movie a serious, depressing and psychological movie about a man stranded on Mars. They managed to make a very funny movie, though, and Matt Damon plays the funny and the most optimistic guy you’d meet. I mean he got stranded on Mars but still manages to be optimistic about the whole situation and, Matt Damon pulls it off perfectly. Speaking of great performances lets talk about the cast. Holy crap the cast is fantastic and one of the biggest casts of the year with big names like, Jessica Chastain(MURPH!!!!!!!!!),Chiwetel Ejiofor, Jeff Daniels, Kate Mara(Thank god this movie didn’t turn out like her last movie Fant4stic), Kristen Wiig, Sebastian Stan, and Donald Glover. Dang that’s a huge cast and each one of them play their roles flawlessly. By the way, I guess Troy from Community left Greendale Community College to go work for NASA. Also, it would’ve been ironic if Sebastian Stan’s character was the one who got stranded because he was the winter soldier.

When I heard about this movie 2 years ago I loved the premise and it took me a year to figure out it was based off a popular novel. While the premise has been done before this brings more life to it with a very fresh script from the creator of Netflix’s Daredevil, Drew Goddard. I’m so glad Ridley Scott is back with a new modern sci-fi classic. It is amazing to think that we can still see a movie from the same guy who directed Alien. That’s just really cool to me.

This movie looked crystal clear. Like Interstellar, this movie is a movie you just have to see in theaters. It’s an amazing theater experience. Yeah, it’ll still be fun to watch at home but you got to see it in theaters for the beautiful and colorful look. Just like Mad Max Fury Road(Still best movie of the year), the brisk red color of the desert really shine out at you.I love when movies are very colorful and they pop out at you, it just looks beautiful. Whenever they would show shots of Mars and whenever they showed space it looked so crisp and this movie was beautifully shot. Now that I think about it this movie is definitely giving Interstellar a run for its money.

Now like I said before we’ve seen movies sorta like this before like Cast Away, Apollo 13, and maybe even Interstellar. This one though is very factual though and is very different in terms of tone. Even though this movie needs to explain solving problems with science and stuff, it still manages to keep you entertained though, by keeping the comical aspect when it can. Now this movie is pretty funny but at times it needs to be serious. Like in the first 20 minutes, there is a scene where Mark has to pull shrapnel out of his leg and that was suspenseful and it was pulled off perfectly. This movie was also very inspiring and showed just how far the human spirit can push itself. With Mark solving problem after problem it finally results in him getting to go home, and you can see that he is ready and he is so relieved of the fact that he is going home that he cries, and it inspired me because it taught us that all we need to do is push ourselves hard enough and we can also succeed.

At times, you can see Mark is really struggling. Like for example, there is a scene where they are launching a probe of supplies to Mars for Mark and the launch ends up failing and Mark has to start rationing his meals even shorter.Now between that and the next time we see him there is a 20 minute period where we don’t see Mark, and Mars is definitely where we want to be.The parts on earth are well done but when there is a period of the movie where you’re away from the audience’s interest they get distracted. After that though we see he has had an effect on rationing his meals, with a skinny body(Kind of like Christian Bale from The Machinist). Even though the 20 minute period had an effect on the time it still took me out of the movie a bit.

Besides that, The Martian is an amazing movie. Even though it’s still not better than Mad Max Fury Road it is a very close second. The Martian pulls everything off with its fresh script, great direction, awesome cast, and great special effects and I would recommend this movie to everybody. We should all be at least thankful that this wasn’t Ridley Scott’s last film, Exodus Gods, and Kings.