The Martian
I've first heard about this from the movie trailers and it didn't interest me at the time. I do follow the Mythbuster guys on social media and they talk about it saying the author has NASA to help him keep the science accurate. That intrigued me. I didn't go see the movie as I'm more interested in the book instead. Since I didn't have the time to read I decided to opt for the audio book. The audio book is unabridged and read by only one guy. I wish audio books had more voice actor options, but luckily this guy was pretty good. Its impressive how he was able to voice all the characters pretty distinguishable including the female ones.
The audio book is a little over 10 hours long come to the movie that's 2 hours. The hard part is whether the go for the movie or the book first. I went for the book first. As a warning, I will be posting some spoilers.
The book is told as diary entries or day log entries numbered by Sol, a day in Mars. You hear the protagonist, Mark Watney, report on what he did that day. The guy really have some good sense of humor and sarcasm of the pleasant kind. The voice actor really makes it pretty enjoyable to listen to even with all the science stuff. The science isn't too difficult to follow, but as a visual reader it was hard for me to imagine what most of the equipment even looked like. Luckily, the movie should help me with that later on.
I really enjoyed the detailed science in this. There's math too but mostly just numbers thankfully. No one wants to hear anyone talk math. Not many works or people go into this kind of detail, and just be vague or skip to the answer. The humor in the audiobook is the clear winner though. Listening to it really helped my mood especially during bad days. I can't help but smile as I listen to it. The book ends with a nicely with Watney thinking how much man power and money was put into saving his life, but humans help each other. Its what we do.
Ok onto the movie. It is different than what I imagined it to be but that is expected. Matt Damon's Watney is a little different take than the audio book's actor. Its more serious, and obviously at a faster pace. First 30 minutes felt rushed since I've read the book.The evacuating part at the beginning was done at a good pace. Watney performing medical treatment on himself was strangely given more focus and time than is really necessary. After that it felt quite voyeuristic and the pace was fast. Again its because I've read the book. Watney didn't talk much and the majority of the science talk was taken out. Of course this is compared to the book. I watched the movie before finishing the book so the rest of it actually didn't feel rushed. The scenes on Earth weren't cut as much as Watney's is.
One thing I can really appreciate is that Kapoor isn't given a stereotypical accent like in the audio book. The movie overall was pretty good. Also Sean Bean is in it where his character gets the Elrond Lord of the Rings reference, which as a fan of the books and movies, I was really happy about. Some scenes are done better in the movie such as the scene when Watney and Nasa started to type to each other through Pathfinder. I do think simplifying some things like when the airlock broke was a good thing. The ending is a bit different from the book and also a bit more dramatic. I definitely think the movie did the ending better in terms of excitement. It also had a little epilogue which the book didn't have. Its was nice though the ending message isn't as heartwarming as the book.
Overall, I do enjoy both the book and the movie. I definitely find this work to be worth the time to read or watch so please do if you haven't!
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