film

Interstellar (2014) versus The Martian (2015)

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It’s been a while since Hollywood has given us a good space/sci-fi flick (and many would argue that they still haven’t) but over the last couple of years the films Interstellar and The Martian have been continually compared, trashed, and adored.

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Interstellar and The Martian have been pitted against each other almost from the start, despite the fact that the 2 are very different films.  Alongside the release of Gravity a few years ago however, some critics are declaring a big-budget renaissance of sci-fi films, particularly those with stronger footholds in “real” science and more plausible storylines.  In short, although the stories are fictitious, they’re meant to appear as if they could possibly happen someday based on projected advances in technology.  Oh, and the fact that Matt Damon and Jessica Chastain are in both further link the two in most viewer’s minds.

I don’t think science fiction necessarily needs an injection of realism to be enjoyable; after all, there are plenty of great stories that utilize hyperdrives and subspace and whatever else to get around all those pesky rules of relativity, though the attention to such science does put it into perspective.  In some ways, I don’t think that these “more scientific” films would be nearly as successful if we weren’t already so familiar with sci-fi’s pantheon of really “out there” stuff.  That being said, films like these tend to emphasize drama and suspense in more broadly applicable forms.

So which is better?  The Martian is clearly the average movie-goer’s choice, with a more successful theatrical run and several Academy Award nominations.  Although the films were released in different years and thus never in direct competition for an Oscar, it’s worth noting that Interstellar’s nominations were mostly nods towards the film’s technical achievements  In fact, it was nominated for Best Sound Editing, Best Sound Mixing, Best Original Score, Best Production Design, and Best Visual Effects, winning only the latter.  In that same year Birdman, The Grand Budapest Hotel, and Whiplash took home many of the most vaunted awards.  Interstellar will have its fans and detractors, but no matter where you fall, it seems clear that when stacked against most of the other drek from 2014, it deserved a bit more recognition.  I’m shocked that it failed to earn a Best Picture or Best Director nomination, and I could definitely see a Best Actor or Best Supporting Actor nomination as well.  I honestly don’t usually pay much attention to film scores, but Zimmer’s score for Interstellar is excellent; at least it received a nomination.  Then again who gives a shit about the Oscars; viewership has been declining for years, much of it due to a growing divide between what “the people” watch and what the industry insiders watch.  (And the decline in quality cinema in general, with so many would-be moviemakers moving into television.)

Still, the Academy Awards are one of the better (quick) ways we have of looking into a film’s success, so let’s see how The Martian fared.  Ok, so The Martian didn’t win any Oscars, but it was nominated for 7, sharing Best Sound Editing, Best Sound Mixing, Best Production Design, and Best Visual Effects with Interstellar, but also adding the coveted Best Picture and Best Actor (in a Lead Role) nominations to its list of accolades, including Best Adapted Screenplay.

The Martian wasn’t a bad flick, but it was kind of a silly one.  Ridley Scott has directed a number of excellent films in his career; some would even say that he helped lay the foundation of modern sci-fi with films like Alien and Blade Runner.  He’s also well known for his period-piece epics like Gladiator, Robin Hood (2010), and Kingdom of Heaven.  With The Martian, it looks a little like Scott wanted to combine the two and showcase a sci-fi epic, occurring largely on Mars.  The problem is that the story just doesn’t have enough meat to it to push it into greatness.  I had trouble watching Matt Damon being goofy on camera over and over again.  I don’t entirely blame him though; the material he had was pretty crappy.  Then there was the shuttle crew, who couldn’t have been a bigger waste of time if they’d tried.  We’ve got a whole crew here who pretty much does nothing throughout the entire film – some techno-babble here and there, a little remorse for Watney (Damon’s character), but really nothing of substance to add to the film.

I haven’t read the original novel (published as part of some dude’s blog a couple years back), but apparently part of the appeal was the exhaustive scientific approach taken in order to explain Watney’s survival with such limited materials.  Unfortunately we don’t really see much of Watney “science-ing the shit outta Mars.”  (Not to mention I think Bob Saget could’ve delivered that line better…Damon’s attempt at bringing the would-be catchphrase to life is cringeworthy…)  Most of it happens offscreen or during quick snippets of him tearing away at various plastics, vaguely explaining things during his uninteresting video chats.  Scott is partially to blame for not pulling more gravitas out of his cast, but the script is at the core of the problem.

Besides all the neato science stuff going on, what we need is some suspense and drama to drive the story forward, neither of which the movie contains in any amount until the last 20 or so minutes.  We’ve got this man trapped on Mars for a very, very long time – not to mention the shuttle crew, who is away from Earth just as long – and yet the core themes of isolation, social breakdown, and fear are rarely touched upon; when they are, it’s usually with a comic twist.  The damn crew is still in space and everyone finds out about Watney’s situation very quickly, so I would venture to say that there isn’t really a moment where the viewer is stricken with the horrible possibility that our protagonist might just have to die on Mars.  Without that big threat holding the movie together, we need something else: his mental state, his ability to function normally, his will to live, something  that keeps us personally vested in the story.  It may not come together exactly how we thought it would, but seriously, wasn’t it immediately obvious to everyone watching The Martian that all that needed to happen was for the ship to turn around and scoop him up?

One feature of so-called “epic” films that viewers enjoy is the episodic structure.  You have the overarching objective (get Watney off Mars) and all the little bits and pieces in between are the glue that holds the narrative together.  Then there are the large chunks, little vignettes in their own regard, that drive the story forward and tell stories of their own.  The Martian takes a stab at doing this, but typically we’re given the condensed version via video diary.  Watney’s mishaps and adventures just aren’t cinematically satisfying and we’re treated to just a little too much of the solemn shuttle crew and NASA’s political and ethical dilemmas back on Earth.

Perhaps the worst side-effect of this botched structure is the muddled timeline.  I’m not 100% sure, but I think he spends something like 551 days on Mars, which ought to be around a year and a half…then there’s the flight to and from Mars.  However, we’re never given many clear indicators that time is passing except near the end where he grows a beard and looks visually disheveled for about 13 seconds.  Aside from some well-hidden clues in the dialog (luckily a Martian day is something like 24.556 hours or something, so we can roughly equate the “sols” on Mars with days on Earth), there’s really no clear sense that months or even weeks are passing.  There’s got to be times when several months have passed from one shot to the next, yet Scott does a lousy (read: nonexistent) job of conveying such.  During that last bit where Watney is in the rover and preparing to rendezvous with the shuttle, he takes a 3 month trek across Mars…and all he does is eat some shit on camera and do the same goofy shit he’s spent the last 47 video diaries doing.

The Martian would’ve benefited by either taking itself a little less seriously and cutting some of the running time, or taking itself more seriously and spending more time on a handful of action and/or drama sequences to keep it interesting.  The film’s most compelling moments appear near the end, where we’re actually given some good old fashioned “will he won’t he” suspense as Watney floats along uncontrollably in his small vessel awaiting pickup.  Spiraling along aimlessly, predictably off course and out of time, these few minutes are as close as we get to the helplessness and isolation that should’ve been major themes of the story already.  It’s actually pretty cool when he does his whole “Iron Man” thing by puncturing the glove of his suit and controlling the pressure loss like a thruster, and the reunion with his commander and crew really tries its best to be a mild tearjerker and pull at the heartstrings; unfortunately we just haven’t gotten to know these characters well enough to successfully mine an emotional scene like this from them.

Ok, so what about Interstellar?  Yeah, I think it’s by far a better film, but it’s got a few problems as well.  Most Nolan fans are still slack-jawed with adoration at his latest creation, though the larger public may find Nolan’s style wearing a little thin.  After all, Interstellar is his first film since 2002’s Insomnia not to open at number 1 at the box office.  (This includes the Dark Knight Trilogy, The Prestige, and Inception.)  Nolan isn’t a bad director, he’s just becoming a bit of predictable one.  There are things he does well and a few things he does not-so-well and as a result there’s a certain sort of rigid “Nolan-ness” about his films – not necessarily a bad thing if you’re into it, but it can lead to a “been there, done that” sort of feeling.

For example, Nolan is great at storytelling, and he handles non-linear storytelling as well as other confusing or surreal aspects with a deft hand.  Just look at Memento – it’s a story told backwards and forwards at the same time, with the climax taking place in the middle of the story but at the end of the film!  Not only was the approach brilliant and engaging, but it also fit in perfectly with the lead character’s anterograde amnesia.  Inception plays fast and loose with reality itself (and time along with it) yet the transitions are seamless and complex without being confusing or pretentious.  And don’t forget The Prestige: built on the premise of a magic trick (deception, misdirection) the entire film unfolds much like a magic trick itself!  Nolan is incredible when it comes to putting these types of stories together, though he has a little bit of trouble crafting something so unique out of Interstellar’s story.

As for his faults, Nolan has 3 big ones, at least one of which he seems to be fairly aware of.  First of all, he can’t direct action scenes.  I don’t know why, but he just can’t.  His most action-oriented films to date are the Dark Knight films, and if you pay close attention, you’ll notice that he avoids lengthy and complex action sequences, preferring to focus on the dramatic tension rather than the action itself.  Batman Begins has almost zero action scenes, and in Dark Knight Rises, when the final confrontation in Bane’s occupied Gotham was unavoidable, the resulting “battle” is actually a bit lackluster and anticlimactic.  Most of the time he compensates well for this shortcoming, though Interstellar could’ve definitely benefited from one or two genuinely high energy, fast-paced scenes.

Sometimes Nolan gets a little too wrapped up in his storytelling, to the point of dragging the film down with overlong expository scenes.  I mean honestly, Batman Begins is full of boring scene after boring scene for the sake of setting up the story.  It doesn’t seem so bad the first time, but it’s one of those films that’s tough to watch again and again just because so much time is spent in dialog.  Interstellar gets off to a pretty draggy start at first too.  There’s a good 45 or 50 minutes there at the beginning that could easily be trimmed down to a tight 20.  C’mon Nolan, trim the fat and then stick all this shit in a Director’s Cut for us…maybe…?

Lastly, our director has a bit of trouble bringing warmth to the screen.  In nearly all of his films the characters feel cold and distant.  We’re given a good deal of insight into who our characters are, but we never see the casual and more human side of them.  We only ever seem to get the “strictly business” parts.  In some films this detachment works, such as The Following and The Prestige, but I feel like other films would benefit greatly from making a more emotional connection with the audience (definitely The Dark Knight Trilogy).  Interstellar really needs to develop this human connection, because the entire film is about one man’s attachment to his family motivating him on his quest to save everyone!

The film doesn’t quite feel like it’s almost 3 hours long, which speaks to its successes and strengths in some areas.  However, it does feel a little long in general and the length impedes repeat viewings.  Between the uber-long intro/first act and the frequent cuts to events on Earth, it’s hard to watch Interstellar without noting its sometimes draggy nature.  On the plus side though, we are given clear references to the passage of time; we might not have any of Nolan’s signature trickery here, but at least we know what the hell is going on and how long it’s been.

The biggest difference between Interstellar and The Martian is that the good parts of Interstellar are really, really good.  Much like The Martian, there was an increased emphasis on “real science” when constructing the film.  Unlike The Martian, this “real science” isn’t boring stuff like oxygen scrubbers and heaters and rover weight management – no, instead we get into all the fun stuff relating to Einstein’s theory of relativity and the amazing yet true natural phenomena that the theory predicts – such as time dilation.  

Time dilation is truly one of the most interesting practical problems that us humans would run into even if we could figure out a way to zip around the galaxy and Interstellar does a pretty good job of addressing it as a systemic and inherent issue.  Time dilation may sound like science fiction, but as weird as it is, it’s been experimentally proven.  In a nutshell, time dilation can be caused by both speed and gravity.  The faster an object is traveling, the slower its clocks will run in relation to objects moving slower.  For example, if I leave Earth traveling at half the speed of light (these numbers are not exact, just made-up place holders to illustrate the concept) and traveled for 2 years (by the clocks on board my spacecraft), I might find that 20 years have passed on Earth.  The people on Earth experience 20 “regular” years and I experience 2 “regular” years, but it’s all relative.  If an Earthling could view the events on the spacecraft in real time, they would actually see us moving in slow motion, though we experience our own time normally.  Weird ain’t it!?

The other type of time dilation, gravitational time dilation, is probably what most people will remember in the film.  This basically means that the more gravity a given object is under, the slower its time will pass relatively.  The film illustrates this perfectly: Miller’s planet, under the immense gravitational influence of the the black hole Gargantua, has its time slowed severely.  For every hour spent on Miller’s planet, 7 years pass on Earth.  And again, time passes “normally” for people and objects in either time.  Cooper and Brand literally only experience (and thus age) a little over 3 hours from when they leave the main craft for Miller’s planet and then return.  Romilly, however, who stayed behind, has experienced (and aged) a whopping 23 years.  Of course Interstellar plays with the concept of some sort of “stasis sleep/hibernation” to somewhat combat these practical limitations, but I can live with that, and indeed, it might never be possible for humans to venture into space if they can’t figure out a way to “sleep” for months or even years at a time…the psychological effects would be unforeseen and potentially hazardous.

Anyway, I think it’s fantastic that Interstellar addresses these concepts.  Ostensibly they may appear as “made-up” just to complicate the plot, but the truth is that any space-faring civilization will have to take such a concept into account.  The implications are pretty wild too – suddenly this notion of a galaxy with hundreds of inhabitable worlds existing as one big happy “nation” vanish.  Communication between worlds would be of an immense cost when it came it to time, and it would be very difficult to keep the events of even 2 different worlds in sync.  Here’s a neat example I ran across: we may not can travel at the speed of light (or faster, which is what would really be needed for conventional sci-fi setups; even the speed of light isn’t fast enough), but that doesn’t mean that, theoretically, we couldn’t get close.  Let’s say we can travel at 95% the speed of light, and we set off for Proxima Centauri, Earth’s second-nearest star; it’s about 4.2 light years away.  Now that 4.2 “light years” is a measure of distance not time, but it also gives us the valuable information of how long it would take if we were able to travel at the speed of light.  If we were a ray of light, it would take us about 8 and a half years to make a round trip from Earth to Proxima Centauri and back.  So if we travel at 95% that speed, we’ll tack on a little extra time and call it 9 years.  So yeah, a brave explorer gets in their ship and sets off for Proxima Centauri and comes back with his data, having been gone a whole 9 years.  However, when he returns, he finds that something like 80 years have passed on Earth.  That right there is time travel into the future, plain and simple.

Ok, focusing back on Interstellar, it’s not just the “real science” that’s cool, it’s the fact that it’s used to help craft an interesting story with a unique perspective.  Indeed it is time that is such a valuable commodity for our explorers and the folks back on Earth, and it’s fitting that this limited resource is played with in not only novel but also scientifically sound ways.

Interstellar is also more visually compelling than The Martian; The Martian is just one big desert with a red filter whereas Interstellar features some beautiful “space-scapes,” the spherical wormhole, and of course, the black hole herself, Gargantua.  Again, “real science” comes into play here for what were considered the most realistic depictions of a wormhole and a black hole.  It’s hard to believe, but all this stuff that we “see” in space isn’t captured in a nice neat photograph.  A lot of it is interpolated and inferred through raw data – 1’s and 0’s – and other methods that rely more on measurements and changes thereof rather than a nice clean photo of something.  To be fair, we don’t know if wormholes exist or not, though the theory of relativity does predict them and account for them without breaking down.  Black holes, on the other hand, are very real, but our information on them is scant precisely because we can’t “see” them and must study them in other ways.

Like I said, the good parts of Interstellar are really good.  It takes a while to build up some steam and although the payoff may not totally warrant the amount of exposition before it, it’s still a moderately satisfying experience.  However, it’s during the last act where the movie starts to really sputter and crumble.  Whereas The Martian was content with its goofiness evolving into actual suspense, Interstellar went from cold, hard, calculating science to some really corny stuff that barely made any sense and that undermined the previous seriousness of the story.

Our first clue that something fishy was on the way was Brand’s weirdo speech about “love transcending dimensions….like gravity” smack dab in the middle of the film.  It’s just me either – many viewers felt that this was a serious jolt to the established flow of the movie.  It was hokey, immature, out of place, and purposeless.  Here they are, on the other side of a wormhole, with god knows how much abstract and nearly-infinitely complex math and science behind them on this journey to save (or preserve) the human race, and Brands spits out some stupid shit about “love.”  It’s like baking a cake with sand, nails, and styrofoam instead of sugar, flour, and eggs, and proclaiming that it’ll taste great because you tossed a healthy dose of “love” into your cooking.  I was genuinely embarrassed for Ms. Hathaway as I sat and listened.

This mess rolls around a second time as Cooper and the surviving robot enter the black hole.  First of all, I think the idea of entering the black hole is ludicrous, though this appears to be the entire crux of the film: these “future beings” gave us a way to measure inside the black hole, get out unscathed, and pass this data along to somehow enable humanity to build a giant space station while they figure out where to live.  To me, the whole concept of “surviving a black hole” was too preposterous.  The tidal forces would rip anything to shreds, probably down to an atomic level, and that’s that.  Furthermore, the “data” needed from “inside” the black hole is so flimsy and unspecific as to be laughable.  They didn’t even try to justify this approach with bullshit techno-babble because of just how weak and messy the idea is.  It’s probably also worth pointing out that a black hole isn’t a void; there is a “thing” inside just like stars and planets are “things”….all of the matter that goes into a black hole doesn’t disappear, it’s merely compressed to an infinite density.  I guess you can still think of it as a “hole,” but it’s a hole with a bottom, not a tunnel to a new place.

Anyway, aside from all that, Cooper’s experience with the tesseract (some kind of 3-D representation of 4-D space built by “the beings” to allow Cooper to take actions irrespective of time) was just confusing and a bit too long.  I can’t be sure if Nolan and his crew (including Thorne, who weighed in heavily with all the “real science”) had some grander vision for the tesseract and the viewers just didn’t’ get it, of if they got plain lazy.  I mean I get the overarching idea of Cooper interacting with Murph via the bookshelf – moving around inside this tesseract didn’t “move” Cooper through space, it moved him through time.  Yeah, there’s a reasonable degree of internal consistency here, but the practicality of it all doesn’t seem to gel with the rest of the film.

After and during the painfully long tesseract scene, we’re given a little more insight into the film and how all of the events tie together, though I’m not convinced that the film needed it.  Essentially the beings who built the tesseract (implied to be humans from the future) orchestrated this really convoluted rescue of mankind by having Cooper “transmit” data about the wormhole back to his daughter who is then able to “solve the equation” and save humanity.  She lives a nice long life as humanity’s messiah, Cooper returns like a hundred years later, says hello, and then steals a spaceship to (presumably) reunite with Brand on Edmund’s planet.

Ok ok ok wait a minute, back up – what!?  Yeah, it gets pretty messy when/where it doesn’t need to be.  As the end approaches, it becomes clearer that Nolan isn’t sure whether he wants the film to be about the preservation of humanity (Plan A, where everyone on the planet is rescued), or the continuation of mankind (via Plan B, where we leave the only remaining member of the endurance, Brand, to continue on to Edmund’s planet and presumably “raise” the frozen embryos).  Personally I don’t really care, but I wish the film hadn’t gotten so wishy-washy there near the end and I really wish the film hadn’t started treading on supernatural-ish ground by likening the communication of a being through the 4th dimension to a ghost, not to mention the god-like powers and religious implications behind whoever built the tesseract in the first place.  The entire plot point is fraught with problems anyway, for instance if these beings were powerful enough to convert a working 4-D space to a working 3-D space, why did they even need Cooper in the first place?  Or Murph, for that matter?

Are we supposed to believe that these “beings” (a pretty flimsy cop-out in the first place, if you ask me) can engineer this elaborate scheme and send humans into black holes and build wormholes yet for some dumb reason can’t directly act on the events?  Why didn’t these damn “beings” just write the code in some crop circles?  Or send a random radio wave towards Earth?  Or write it on a piece of paper when someone wasn’t looking?  Better yet,why don’t they snap their fingers and send us all to a habitable planet?  Or cure The Blight that was ruining Earth?  I don’t feel like I’m nitpicking here – these are valid logical inconsistencies that really ought to be accounted for.  Without any understanding of who these beings are, their intentions, their capabilities, etc., all we’re left with is one giant, gaping deus ex machina which kind of defeats the whole purpose in putting together something as realistic as Interstellar in the first place.

NOLAN:  Hey, we’re all about the science here and crafting something at least semi-plausible, except we can’t really figure out how to jumpstart our story without an arbitrary catalyst…

CREW 1:  What if it’s just coincidence?  Or random natural phenomena?  Or maybe humans have been hunting something like this for years and only now found a possible solution?

NOLAN:  Nah, viewers won’t buy that.  They need an explanation.  “Just because” isn’t good enough.  We need some purpose behind the wormhole…intelligent design…easier to accept than “coincidence.”

CREW 1:  Ok, well, aliens?

NOLAN:  Maybe, but then audiences are going to want explanations as to why aliens can build wormholes and we can’t.

CREW 1:  God?  Angels?

NOLAN:  Pffffftt!  Are you kidding me, no one will buy that!  We can’t mix inexplicable religious stuff with this highly scientifical film, it’ll blow our credibility!

CREW 1:  Hmmm….

NOLAN:  I got it!  We’ll call them beings…and these “beings” exist or have figured out how to exist in 5 spatial-temporal dimensions, so what we call “time” is just like another direction in space for them!

CREW 1:  Huh?

NOLAN:  No it’s great…these 5-D beings will have unfettered access to our 4 dimensions so they can manipulate anything they want and all the explanation we need to give is that they exist within a higher-dimensional space!  Perfect!

CREW 1:  (And he thinks the audience won’t buy “God” as an explanation….)

Now that we’ve hashed it out, where do you stand on the issue of The Martian versus Interstellar?  Interstellar is obviously my pick, but there are still a number of strange decisions that the film went in that I don’t totally agree with.  Overall I think Interstellar is a more coherent, artistic, and full-realized piece of work, though its breaks in convention make it a tough flick to enjoy again and again.  The Martian, while utterly too goofy for its own good about half the time, does have some funny moments and on some level tries (and succeeds) at making itself more explicitly entertaining.  I do appreciate The Martian for saving the best for last; it’s not a particularly magnificent scene as far as sci-fi goes, yet the actual rescue is a solid piece of suspense.  Interstellar, on the other hand, plays its trump card at the midway point with visits to Miller’s world and Mann’s planet (where Damon’s character tries to kill Cooper), leaving the remainder of the film to unravel with all the tesseract/Murph/black hole/space station mumbo jumbo.  The Martian is perhaps a bit more immediately gratifying, but its biggest shortcoming (next to Interstellar) is its inability to capture the wonder and awe of science fiction in the way that Nolan’s film does.  Even if you don’t like it, pieces of Interstellar will stick with you: the music (especially the initial docking sequence), Gargantua, the wormhole – whereas The Martian ends up being just a tad too far on the wrong side of memorable.

Agree?  Disagree?  Feel like throwing any other recent, big-budget sci-fi flicks into the mix?  Let’s hear it in the Comments section below!

Written by The Cubist