Let's Talk About the Marvelous Ending of 'The Martian' (Spoilers!)
(Warning: We’re about to spoil the ending of The Martian and the book it’s based on. If you haven’t seen — or read — The Martian, come back later.)
Matt Damon recently confessed that he surrendered the role of Marvel’s blind vigilante, Daredevil, to his old Boston buddy, Ben Affleck. Thanks to his new film The Martian, based on the bestselling book by Andy Weir and directed by Ridley Scott, the actor is now able to take flight as a much more celebrated costumed Avenger: Iron Man. No, Damon’s stranded astronaut/botanist Mark Watney doesn’t have a spare Tony Stark-manufactured metal suit stashed away in his Martian habitat. Instead, his “Iron Man” moment is part of his last-ditch effort to escape the Red Planet and reunite with the crew that mistakenly left him for dead.
Here’s the sequence of events that sets up Damon’s superheroic feat: after months alone on Mars — during which time he’s tried to stay alive by farming potatoes and keeping his equipment going, while the big brains at NASA devise a rescue plan — Watney has a way home within his sights. Following the space agency’s instructions, he’s piloted a land vehicle on a seven month journey across the surface of Mars from his home base habitat to the launch pad that was built for the next arriving mission. Sitting there is an already-assembled “MAV” (or “Mars Ascent Vehicle”), the rocket that’s used to transport the crew from the surface to their orbiting spaceship. NASA’s part-genius, part-crazy plan is to have Watney fly this MAV into space while his shipmates aboard the Hermes make a return flyby and intercept him … kind of like a baseball glove catching a ball that’s been thrown at hundreds of miles an hour.
Watch Matt Damon narrate the trailer for ‘The Martian’ below:
In order to pull this stunt off, Watney has to make the rocket as light as possible, which means stripping the craft to its barest essentials. (He even takes the top off and replaces it with what’s basically a plastic tarp.) Meanwhile, the Hermes crew, commanded by Melissa Lewis (Jessica Chastain), is carefully calculating their trajectory to ensure that they’ll be able to fly low enough to grab their lost teammate while avoiding being pulled into the planet’s orbit. The big moment arrives and Watney blasts off as the Hermes is passing by. He’s finally going home!
…Except he’s not. Even divested of much of its weight, the MAV still can’t travel high enough to rendezvous with the Hermes. Lewis tries to salvage the operation by ordering a controlled explosion that ruptures an airlock and gives the ship additional thrust without wasting necessary fuel for their return trip to Earth. But there’s still a big gap separating Watney from his rescuers. That’s when the botanist proposes yet another crazy brilliant idea: “I get to fly around like Iron Man.” By puncturing the gloves of his space suit, Watney is able to “fly” in the gravity-free vacuum of space, arms at his side like his favorite superhero. He soars up to Lewis, who is hanging on the outside of the Hermes tethered to the ship by a slender rope, and the two grasp hands. With that, he’s hoisted back into the ship and the jubilant crew begins the long (star) trek home.
And if you think the crew is thrilled, just wait until you hear the audience’s reaction to that moment. Watney’s Iron Man heroics brought the house down at the screening I attended, providing the perfect bit of brawny derring-do to cap off what had otherwise been a wonderfully brainy rescue adventure. Interestingly, this scene also happens to be one of the subtlest, and yet most significant departures from Weir’s book. On the page, Watney also proposes his Iron Man plan — twice, in fact — but both times, it’s dismissed by Lewis as being “too risky.” Instead, she uses that germ of an idea to initiate her “rupture the airlock” approach.
Watch an interview with ‘The Martian’ star Jessica Chastain and NASA astronaut Tracy Caldwell Dyson below:
Meanwhile, another crew member, Chris Beck (played in the film by Captain America star Sebastian Stan, giving The Martian another Marvel connection) is tasked with hanging off the Hermes and making his tethered way towards the ascending MAV where Watney sits, waiting. Beck reaches the rocket and greets his teammate with an casual, “How ya doin’, man?” Watney stammers out a response: “Give me a minute. You’re the first person I’ve seen in eighteen months.” Beck latches himself on to Watney and the two are carefully hoisted back aboard the mother ship.
Granted, this seems like a small change in light of some of the other alterations that screenwriter Drew Goddard made to Weir’s book. (Those changes include the elimination of a second storm that threatens Watney’s journey to the MAV launching pad, as well as the inclusion of an all-new epilogue that catches up with the crew when they’re back on Earth.) But it is a case where the filmmakers defied the author’s science-first approach in favor of a fantastical, crowd-pleasing movie moment. In the book, Watney agrees with Lewis’s rigorous analysis of his “fatally dangerous” proposal: “You’d be eyeballing the intercept and using a thruster you can barely control.” And while he half-jokingly keeps suggesting it as a viable plan, he knows enough to hang tight and wait. Damon’s Watney, on other hand, decides to ignore the science and take a leap of faith.
That’s why fans of the book may leave the movie experiencing feelings of elation and disappointment. For much of its runtime, the movie does a great job staying true to the book’s depiction of an ordinary man surviving extraordinary circumstances. But in its closing moments, it can’t resist transforming its unique hero into another superhero.
Watch the cast of ‘The Martian’ talk about extraterrestrial life below:
