It’s bad enough being stuck on Mars as the only human being on the planet, trying to live in a place that is absolutely inhospitable to that idea. It must be even worse if you’re Matt Damon and the inhuman Space Paparazzi are hovering. All right, so that last bit isn’t true, but here’s the latest poster for Ridley Scott’s The Martian anyway.
Adapted by Drew Goddard from Andy Weir's bestseller, The Martian features Damon as NASA astronaut Mark Watney, seriously injured and thought dead by his crewmates on Mars during a huge storm that forced them to evacuate. But Watney is very much alive, and intends to stay that way, putting his botanical skills, engineering nous and astronaut survival training to good use, figuring out ways to live with limited supplies. Fortunately, he’s also got a wry sense of humour to keep him sane.
Back on Earth, meanwhile, NASA director Teddy Sanders (Jeff Daniels) and some of his team (Chiwetel Ejiofor’s Mars mission overseer Vincent Kapoor, Kristen Wiig’s media relations expert Annie Montrose, Mackenzie Davis’ tech Mindy Park and Sean Bean’s crew supervisor Mitch Henderson) have to decide what to do, especially when they discover Watney’s non-dead status. And then there are his crewmates, headed back to Earth on the Hermes ship, and seemingly kept in the dark about Mark’s status. How will Commander Melissa Lewis (Jessica Chastain), tech expert Beth Johanssen (Kate Mara), pilot Rick Martinez (Michael Pena), flight surgeon Chris Beck (Sebastian Stan), and German astronaut Alex Vogel (Aksel Hennie) respond when they, too, learn that there is life on Mars, and he’s busy growing potatoes to help him survive?
We gave you an exclusive new look at the film recently and there’s more from our visit to the set of The Martian in the latest **Empire, which is on sale – on Earth, at least – from tomorrow. Oh, and check out our trip to NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, where we talked to planetary scientist Dr. Jim Green and author Andy Weir about life on Mars.