The Martian on the cusp of reality

Matt Damon on getting NASA’s support to make his film as real as possible

PASADENA/ CALIFORNIA: When Matt Damon needed to play an astronaut stranded on Mars, he and director Ridley Scott were able to turn to US space agency NASA to make the extreme circumstances of The Martian as scientifically accurate as possible.

“We’re kind of on the cusp of being able to do everything that happens in the movie,” Damon spoke of space exploration.

“With the right funding and the right attention, these are the kinds of things that we will be exploring in the very near future and this is going to be a part of our kids’ lives.”

The Martian, based on Andy Weir’s 2011 novel of the same name, follows Astronaut Mark Watney (Damon) who is stranded on Mars after his team, led by actor Jessica Chastain’s Captain Lewis, presume he is dead in the aftermath of a powerful Martian storm.

With no means of communicating and the next manned mission to Mars four years away, Watney tries to survive on the deserted lands of Mars, using his skills as a botanist to grow food using Martian soil.

On Wednesday, Fox released the second trailer for the film, which highlighted Watney’s determination to survive on Mars as well as his dry wit, while unknown to him, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (Nasa) must decide whether to try to rescue him.

“(Weir) really got this guy with this great sense of humour, really smart and really capable guy, but somebody who has that great kind of gallows humour that people who do this kind of work tend to have,” Damon said. 

Published in The Express Tribune, August 21^st,  2015.

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