Just Lauren

After Gene had read The Martian book aloud to me back in December, I was nervous when he told me a movie was being made.

The Martian is one of my favorite books, top 3 I’d say, so I didn’t want to see its beauty be destroyed like so many other books are when they’re made into movies, especially since I love it so much.

I am happy to say that this film did an excellent job as an adaptation. I was not disappointed.

Yes, there were scenes from the book that were not included in the movie. There were two specifically that I thought should have been kept in, however, with the movie already being at 2 1/2 hours, I can understand why they were left out. It would have easily pushed the movie to 3 hours, possibly even 3 1/2. Although, I probably wouldn’t have minded. 😉

One scene was changed slightly where the problem was slightly different. That was a small bummer to me because the scene in the book was so scary, so emotional, and the one in the movie was over in a minute with minimal emotions. However, yet again I understand it was likely because of time constraints. And there was plenty of emotions throughout the rest of the movie to be enough.

One more negative thought about the movie, there was one character switch. In the book, X character did the action, in the movie Y character did it. I thought the change was unnecessary. Not only that, but I felt it didn’t add anything to the story.

Of course, all of these negatives are fairly minor, the movie stole my heart. In fact, I was crying within the first 5 minutes of it and cried throughout. It did a great job of not adding any fluff, I’m not sure if it added any extra, non-book scenes at all, actually.

Matt Damon did a wonderful job portraying Mark Watney. I’m thoroughly impressed with the rest of the actors as well. The characters were smart and were pretty spot on to the characters in the book. It felt like a very realistic movie.

If you’re going to see the movie (which you totally should) then read the book. It doesn’t have to be before since the movie did a great job. Just read it. Even if it doesn’t become your favorite book, I don’t think you’ll regret spending your time.