The Martian (2015)

I've been waiting since quite a while for a comeback of Ridley Scott. There are already 10 years since the last movie that had something to make me remember it, despite the not so positive reviews. I'm referring to "Kingdom of Heaven". Since then I've went through "American Gangster", "Body of Lies", "Robin Hood", "Prometheus", "The Counselor". In the order of release. Do you see the trend? Well, there's "A Good Year" and "Exodus" that I missed, so maybe we can't generalize. Well ... surprise! ... The downhill slope is broken (though, to be fair it's hard to get below "The Counselor" with an 8+ figures budget). So, is it a comeback? ...

I say it's not. No comeback. Yup, the movie is ok .. Probably we're somewhere back at the level of "Body of Lies" in the list above (not that it's really comparable). But from here to the astronomic ratings this movie gets these days... I see a long path to walk. The subject of a stranded astronaut on Mars is catchy, as any type of Robinson Crusoe would be. What puzzles me though is that it seems so catchy that the exaggerated ratio of the Fi in SciFi gets unnoticed. A Robinson Crusoe stays a Robinson Crusoe wherever it might happen = I might expect some spectacular innovations when fighting for survival, but still not at the rate and success frequency that we're getting in "The Martian". You can say I'm not that optimistic, and maybe the technical documenting of the movie is good enough, but still the overall credibility it offers made me roll my eyes a bit too often. Even so ... at least we have a subject, compared to other trials in the genre, which were even more overrated ( guess which ... :) Sandra Bullock stars in it ;) )

Rating: 3 out of 5