Went to the Bagdad to see The Martian, which is not technically a horror movie, although it absolutely should be. On further reflection/discussion, Damon/Watney had it too easy. Things work out for him for far too long when they shouldn’t, and he’s a bit too Pollyanna about the whole thing. (One friend who went into the film knowing very little kept waiting for a titular Martian to show up; I agree that might’ve improved things considerably.)
Damon’s performance has been compared to Tom Hanks’ in Castaway, when I would’ve much preferred it to be more like Tom Hanks in Joe Versus the Volcano.
NASA has a rigorous mental health screening process in place, of course, likely followed by some upsetting prep. But the movie still didn’t ring completely true for me. So I went home and watched the pilot episode of The Twilight Zone.
“Where is Everybody?” indeed. They’re leaving pots of coffee on and programming the jukebox; they’re leaving burning cigars unattended while maintaining their town’s basic infrastructure and empoying some impressive projector-booth technology. They’re leaving behind book displays that are a bit on-the-nose.
It’s a more menacing kind of seclusion than we find in, say, The Last Man on Earth, where Phil Miller gets to have some fun and do a little fantasy-fulfillment before the solipsism takes hold.
In the end we have protagonist Mike Ferris raving at the moon, which is how any study of space psychology should end, really.
