By Robert Goldrich

“Bring Him Home.” That marketing line for The Martian (20th Century Fox) pretty much encapsulates the movie’s plotline as astronaut/botanist Mark Watney (portrayed by Mark Damon) is inadvertently stranded on Mars as the rest of his Aries III team believes he’s dead when a violent storm forces them to evacuate the Red Planet. We then see his story of survival—revealing Watney’s intelligence, humor and indomitable spirit—and the lengths to which NASA and others, including his Aries III compatriots, will go to rescue him.

Based on the novel of the same title by Andy Weir and adapted by screenwriter Drew Goddard, The Martian is a departure from what’s become the dystopian sci-fi movie norm. Bringing home this creatively ambitious, engaging, life-affirming piece of sci-fi entertainment was director Ridley Scott whose blend of storytelling and visual acumen—along with the assorted collaborators he assembled for the film—were tailor-made for the project.

“I’ve had a first-look deal with Fox for 12 years now,” related Scott. “Sometimes they give me something and between Andy and Drew they came up with something that blew me away.” However, the project could itself have become stranded given a concern of Damon. “Matt played the part of a guy stranded on a planet in Interstellar. He was concerned about taking on a similar role so soon,” explained Scott. “It was quite a small part but he wanted me to look at it. Chris [Interstellar director Nolan] showed me what was what [an early cut of Interstellar] and I knew that this [The Martian] would be quite different. There was no problem.”

For Scott, one challenge was to give Watney a voice while abandoned on Mars. “I was told that a voiceover would be pretty challenging. But this isn’t really a voiceover. It’s subtext of what a human being is experiencing. It’s a guy on his own. The reason he’s talking is to give him an intonation as if there’s a person there with him. We had 35 Go Pros in habitat. He’s eventually talking to camera. The Go Pro takes the place of a companion. His intelligence and wit come through.”

When communication links are established between Watney and NASA, there’s more conventional dialogue, including a humorous yet heartfelt exchange between Watney and his Aries III colleagues who are on the cavernous Hermes spacecraft—originally headed back to Earth before changing course, adding years to their journey to come back towards Mars to rescue Watney. Those crew members include Commander Melissa Lewis (Jessica Chastain), Rich Martinez (Michael Pena) and Beth Johanssen (Kate Mara). Among the cast on the ground are Jeff Daniels who plays the head of NASA, Chiwetel Ejiofor as the director of Mars missions, Sean Bean as a veteran astronaut and crew confidante/mentor, Kristen Wiig as NASA’s PR director and Donald Glover as a socially awkward Jet Propulsion Lab tech who comes up with an inspired, mathematics-based idea to rescue Watney.

Crew members
Akin to the stellar cast, Scott assembled a crew of artisans to take us on a futuristic space ride grounded in science and reality to do full justice to the story. Among those artists were cinematographer Dariusz Wolski, ASC, production designer Arthur Max and visual effects supervisor Richard Stammers.

Scott first worked with Wolski on Prometheus, then The Counselor followed by Exodus: Gods and Kings. “My son Jake who’s directed a couple of features but has sort of followed in my footsteps by starting in commercials—he directed three for the Super Bowl [via RSA Films]—introduced me to Dariusz, recommending him as someone to check out and to potentially work with,” recalled Ridley Scott. “Dariusz had done quite a few films by then, including three of the Pirates of the Caribbean movies. I went with him for Prometheus, which was the first time for me doing 3D. Dariusz right now is one of the best in the business. He makes the process so much easier. 3D isn’t a challenge when working with him. I can say, ‘This is what I want.” He says, ‘We can do this,” and we’re in ‘let’s go’ mode.”

Scott’s collaborative relationship with VFX supervisor Stammers started with Kingdom of Heaven. “I met Richard on that film and that brought me to MPC,” recollected Scott. “I’ve worked in close quarters with MPC. On visual effects films, I will entertain them as the leading light for that process, the only exception since then being Exodus [for which Double Negative was the lead VFX studio]. No one studio can handle all the visual effects so they farm out to others, giving us a far ranging mix of talent that can be brought to bear on a film.”

For The Martian, MPC headed an ensemble of talent which included artisans from such shops as Industrial Light & Magic, Framestore, The Senate and Territory Studio. Stammers is a two-time Best Achievement in Visual Effects Oscar nominee—earlier this year for X-Men: Days of Future Past, and in 2013 for Scott’s Prometheus.

Production designer Max and Scott have a long-standing relationship, dating back to a Pepsi campaign in London. Their spotmaking collaborations then moved into features with Max thus far having served as production designer on 11 Scott-directed films. Max earned Oscar nominations for Scott’s Gladiator and American Gangster. The wide range of Max’s work for Scott is reflected in their last two completed features—Exodus: Gods and Kings and The Martian. The former brought new life to the story of the defiant leader Moses as he rises up against the Egyptian Pharaoh Ramses, setting 400,000 slaves on a monumental journey of escape from Egypt, which is besieged by deadly plagues. Light years away in chronology and most everything else is The Martian, set several decades into the future, requiring Max to create such settings as Mars, NASA’s massive control/space mission launch center and life aboard the Hermes.

“I’m glad I gave Arthur a whirl on that Pepsi campaign,” quipped Scott. “He’s great to work with. We sort of all climb into this industrial design approach which is fascinating. We visualize things digitally on paper like a photograph. We play around with photographic representations of what we may finally build and then okay what we will construct. Arthur and I love to explore these environments.”

Table of Contents:

Lenny Abrahamson
Scott Cooper
Cary Joji Fukunaga
Brendan Gibbons
Lauren Greenfield
Todd Haynes
Ridley Scott

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