CINEMISSES! The Martian

In today's episode, Tug and Matt discuss the film The Martian, exploring its themes of survival, ingenuity, and the power of the human spirit in the face of adversity. They delve into the film's production, it's all killer, no filler cast, and Ridley Scott's amazing career and directorial style. They also analyze the dynamics between the characters and the political implications of NASA's response to the crisis. The conversation highlights the film's blend of humor and science, as well as its emotional depth, culminating in a discussion about the film's impact and their personal reflections on its storytelling. There is also a consistent refrain about how there are plenty of ways to die in this film, all of which either Tug or Matt (or likely both) would have succumbed to at some point during the narrative. Enjoy.

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Transcript

Tug McTighe (00:00)
Well, hello Matt! How are you, sir?

Matt Loehrer (00:02)
Hey buddy, I'm good. Did you know it's going to get very cold tonight? It's there's like a freeze warning. It's I I should say relatively cold because it may freeze, but it's not going to get down to 75 below zero, which is. Exactly. So we should count our blessings.

Tug McTighe (00:06)
How cold is it gonna get?

which is the average temperature on Mars. Yes, we

should count our blessings. I'm wearing a vest, but I would still be dead in about 10 seconds in the Martian lack of atmosphere. It's very thin atmosphere we've learned by watching the movie that we're gonna talk about today, right?

Matt Loehrer (00:30)
It

Tug McTighe (00:33)
All right, yes, Mars. a planet we've learned a lot about by watching the movie that we're gonna talk about today, which is The Martian, a suspense-filled tale of an astronaut who gets ghosted by his crew and accidentally left behind on another effing planet. When Matt Damon's Mark Watney is left behind on Mars, instead of panicking, he does what any of us would do, Matt. He starts a video blog and uses his own poop as fertilizer.

Matt Loehrer (00:34)
Okay.

Tug McTighe (00:58)
and the poop of his crewmates. What follows is a riveting mix of high-stakes survival, hard science, interplanetary FaceTime calls, and the single most dramatic use of potatoes in cinema history. Grab your space suit, Matt, and as much duct tape as you can find. It's time to blast off with the Martian. So as we are always, this is Matt's, you had cinema missed this. I have sent a scene this, I think dozens of times. This has become a...

one out, it'll be on cable and I'll just watch 10, 12 minutes of it whenever it's on. But you've never seen it, so tell me what you think you thought you knew about The Martian.

Matt Loehrer (01:27)
Mm-hmm.

OK, surprisingly few things. I knew for sure that it starred Matt Damon and boy does it.

Tug McTighe (01:36)
Okay.

Boy, yes it does. His face

the face on the poster could not be more proportional to his FaceTime in the movie.

Matt Loehrer (01:49)
100 %

it is a space story. But not a science fiction story, more like a science story that is also fiction, but not science fiction.

Tug McTighe (01:59)
That's not science fiction in the science fiction description. This is a science drama. I think it takes place in 2035. So it's near future. It's 10 years from now. So it's still sort of same tech we've got, maybe a little advanced. But yeah, it's science. That's exactly right. That's exactly right.

Matt Loehrer (02:09)
Okay.

Sure, and we know about Mars rovers and we've kind of, you know, I think we've got something up there right now taking pictures. So

it was kind of captured the public's imagination. I sensed it was like Cast Away, but instead of Tom Hanks on a desert island, it was Matt Damon stranded alone on Mars. I had no idea who else was in this movie and honestly thought it just might be him and the only guy in the movie.

Tug McTighe (02:40)
Right, and

as we've discussed via text and over a couple of quick calls, everybody, when we're doing this, try not to, we wanna leave all the gold here. We don't wanna blow it early, cause I mean, it's gold. But as we chatted a little bit, boy, boy, did you get that wrong. And we will discuss. Even Sean was sort of wandering through and he's like, Jesus, this cast, right? So tell me why you didn't see this when it came out.

Matt Loehrer (02:51)
Right.

and I'm glad I did.

right?

Okay, so, and this is probably, I'm gonna be as honest as I can. I'm gonna bare my soul. Matt Damon to me is like the Arby's of actors.

Tug McTighe (03:17)
I'm going to need you to unpack that a touch.

Matt Loehrer (03:19)
Yeah, I will. So I remember I kind of feel like he's like if I were an actor, that's who I'd be. We're about the same age. We're probably close to the same height. He just always felt kind of like he could have gone to a rival school in town and be a guy that I know that just happened to turn out to be an actor. But as far as Arby's like say it's lunchtime, you're in your car, you're like, boy, I better get something to eat. And you see Arby's and you think, well, I've had.

I've had OK experiences with Arby's in the past. You know, I like the curly fries. I'm just going to keep driving. I just I'm just I'm never going to get Arby's. I don't know why it doesn't seem fair, right?

Tug McTighe (03:55)
It's been all right. It's been okay.

It could go terribly wrong. One time Sean and I, know, when I used to coach the boys, my boys are grown. I am a still a competitive youth soccer coach, everyone. When I coached the boys one night, you know, we'd been out on the field from five to nine o'clock. I did both their practices back to back and none of us had eaten. So we went to the Arby's right by the training ground and we pulled in.

Matt Loehrer (04:02)
Yeah.

Tug McTighe (04:22)
And they go, hey, hello. I go, hi, how are you? And they go, just want to let you know we're out of roast beef. And I go, we'll see you later. We're out. This is not the only reason I would even stopped is the roast beef. And if you're out, to your point, I'm going to move on to the next corner.

Matt Loehrer (04:28)
You're right.

Right on. Did you know RB is RB for roast beef? That's why it's called Arby's. OK, so it's but here's the thing I don't even have. I can't even say I've had a bad experience with Matt Damon. He's been good in a lot of things. There's just I'm just like, I don't know, maybe maybe you know if it's a Sam Rockwell restaurant. I'm going there every time. So that was that's my explanation. I can't explain it, but that's it.

Tug McTighe (04:42)
I did know that actually, that's home marketing.

There's just some, yeah.

you're in every night, right? I love it. Hey,

everybody's taste is everybody's taste. All right, so logline, an astronaut becomes stranded on Mars after his team assume him dead, and he must rely on his ingenuity to find a way to signal to Earth that he is still alive. So there's a lot of drama in that right there. The Martian is a 2015 science fiction film directed by Ridley Scott.

starring the aforementioned Matt Arby's Damon. Drew Goddard adapted the screenplay from the 2011 novel by Andy Weir, which is a great read. It also stars Jessica Chastain, Jeff Daniels, Kristen Wiig, Chua-Tele Ijoafor, it's tough to say, Sean Bean, Michael Pena, Kate Mara, Sebastian Stan, Axel Henney, Mackenzie Davis, Don O'Glubber, Benedict Wong. So this is poused with name brand actors.

in this ensemble, we'll get to a little bit of that later, I have some theories on that. Again, it depicts this struggle that they all have one learning that Watney is alive and then two getting him back to earth. I think that this loaded cast is kind of what Ridley Scott can do. We'll get to him in a sec, he is a legitimate actor, sorry, a legit director, been working for decades.

Matt Loehrer (06:02)
Right.

Tug McTighe (06:09)
on lots of different kinds of things, not just, know he's a lot of, there's a lot of alien in there, a lot of sci-fi in there, but he does a lot of stuff. And I just think he's a, he's a big deal. And you know, when Ridley's attached and Damon's attached, other people will come.

Matt Loehrer (06:23)
For sure, he's

he's in that top tier of directors with the Scorsese's and the Tarantino's and so forth. So this was I've loved. Chew it. Tell actually I had to look this up on Google. How do I pronounce his name? She would tell a Gio for since he first played the Assassin in Joss Whedon's awesome sci fi Western space opera Serenity. Did you ever see that? Loved it, loved it, loved it. And as I've said many times, Donald Glover.

Tug McTighe (06:27)
100%.

Me too, me too.

Yeah, of course.

Matt Loehrer (06:47)
I will watch him in anything. He can do no wrong. He can do comedy. He can do drama. Yeah. So yeah, even though for some of these actors, they were pretty small parts. I think they jumped at the chance to take it, like you said.

Tug McTighe (06:49)
We'll get to Donald Glover later too as well. I agree with you 100%.

100%,

I agree fully. Yeah, think there's also a, for these kinds of actors that are well known and that, you really working, busy actors, I think they like an ensemble too. It just seems like they'll all sign up for an ensemble every once in a while. And it's a big 10 person or 12 person cast and everybody's got their part. So I think that makes it interesting for them for some reason. Maybe it's a little bit more like theater. I'm not an actor.

Matt Loehrer (07:20)
Yeah, or maybe maybe it's like you come in

for, you know, three days and we film all your parts and you're in a Ridley Scott movie and you get paid. OK, all right.

Tug McTighe (07:25)
Right, you're here for a week and that's it. Yeah. Yeah. All right. So

20th Century Fox produced this. The novel Of note, similar to a podcast, Andy Weir self-published The Martian on his blog in serial form. So he released chunks of this novel on his own in serial form and then got such a following.

that he got picked up and became a really now well-known writer. So that's interesting. So Goddard, the writer, was gonna direct, but production was only, again, and this is Ridley Scott, it only got greenlit when Ridley Scott said he'd do it. Ridley and then Damon. Now the movie's a movie. Filming began in November 2014, lasted 70 days.

20 sets were built on a giant sound stage in Budapest, Hungary, and Wadi Rum in Jordan was used for exterior filming. I thought, man, if that's not what Mars looks like, I don't know. I had to look it up because I'm like, where do they shoot this? Because it's what I think Mars looks like.

Matt Loehrer (08:25)
Right.

pretty astounding that a place like that exists on this planet. I'm sure I know there was a lot of green screen. I know there was a lot of CGI for this, but my one regret, I would say my biggest regret in not in being late to the game on this movie is that I didn't see it in the theater because I've been in IMAX or you know, even in a regular movie theater. These panoramic scenes of Mars, even if they're fake, they were still pretty majestic and awe inspiring.

Tug McTighe (08:32)
I know, I know.

Yeah.

100%. Well, and there's

a bunch of Matt Damon, right, in those montages, sort of walking up dunes and you can see the sand. It's not, there's a lot of practical stuff in this too, which I think is interesting. makes, again, it's a sense of place, gives it gravity.

Again, I love science. I'm fascinated by science, which probably why I like this movie. Premiered in 2015 Toronto Film Festival, released in the UK on September 30th, 2015 US October 2, 2D, 3D, IMAX 3D, 4DX, positive reviews, lots of accolades, seven nominations at the 80th Academy Awards. Made 630 mil, which is a pretty good number.

Matt Loehrer (09:10)
That makes sense.

Tug McTighe (09:32)
It's his highest grossing film to date and the 10th highest grossing film of 2015.

Matt Loehrer (09:40)
Yeah, and we'll go through later. can talk about the other movies that came out in 2015. right, but this was kind of an outlier in terms of what it was up against, the kind of the competition, which was very...

Tug McTighe (09:44)
Yeah, but a little bit stacked for him.

Yeah, this is

a, and it's a hard one back to our conversation about, I know it was IP because it was a book, but a book isn't a gigantic comic book series or gigantic Star Wars series, right? So this had a little bit of work to do. So Matt Damon, we said, Dr. Mark Watney, botanist and mechanical engineer. Jessica Chastain is commander Melissa Lewis. Kristen Wigg is Annie Montrose, the PR director NASA. Jeff Daniels is Teddy Sanders.

The NASA boss, Michael Pena is Rick Martinez. Sean Bean is Mitch Henderson, the flight director. And you didn't realize who it was for a moment.

Matt Loehrer (10:26)
Yeah, that took.

He's I and I hate to say this, but he has aged quite a bit since his Fellowship of the Ring days so. Which it's mostly one of those things where I think, wait a minute, that was 20 years ago.

Tug McTighe (10:33)
since since his turn is Boromir.

that was

20 years ago and you feel like it was two. And I mean, Kate Mara as Beth Johansson, Sebastian Stan, Axel Henney, Mackenzie Davis, Benedict Wong, Donald Glover, Chen Xu, Eddie Ko are the scientists from China. Chiwetel Ajil for as Vincent Kapoor, Nick Muhammad from Ted Lasso as Ted Grimes, Jet Propulsion Lab, he shows up right for a bit. So I mean, stacked, of name brands here. So Ridley Scott.

Matt Loehrer (10:43)
Yeah, like it just happened.

That was Nate the Great.

Tug McTighe (11:09)
Sorry, Sir Ridley Scott was knighted by the Queen of England. Again, science fiction, crime, historical, epic dramas, atmospheric stuff. He's got a visual language of his own, like a lot of these directors we talk about. He's one of the biggest names in directing. He's one of the highest grossing directors of all time. His movies have accounted for at least $5 billion.

Matt Loehrer (11:13)
good.

Tug McTighe (11:34)
Lifetime achievement from BAFTA, two Primetime Emmy Awards, a Golden Globe, as I said, knighted by Queen Elizabeth II in the second in 2003. And then King Charles made him a knight grand cross, whatever that is, in 2024. Like a knight promotion, right? Yeah, that's right.

Matt Loehrer (11:46)
It's like a promotion. Like, you're just a night. You know, we can do better than that. So he's

we talk about directors a lot. And he is one of the great ones because he pays so much attention to. Cinematography and quality and all the important things, all the details. He doesn't he doesn't do anything halfway. He doesn't give you a subplot and drop it halfway through.

He doesn't have anything unnecessary and it just always looks beautiful in his movies.

Tug McTighe (12:15)
Yeah, he's a make a movie. This is a big experience. I'll go quick because I know we're going on a little bit long, but he's been making movies since 79. I'm just going to run down some of the highlights. Alien, Blade Runner, Thelma and Louise, Gladiator, Hannibal, and Black Hawk Down in one year. I'll pause quickly on Matchstick Men starring Nicolas Cage and the inimitable Sam Rockwell. The Cinemassastreek continues.

Matt Loehrer (12:43)
I wish he'd been in this movie. Just put him in there.

Tug McTighe (12:44)
He would have been a great astronaut.

then American gangster, Prometheus, the Martian alien covenant, Napoleon, House of Gucci. And then this last year he made Gladiator 2. So big movies, big director. He does what he wants and they usually work out for him in the studios.

Matt Loehrer (13:03)
And kind of all over the map genre wise, which is kind of cool. It's not like he doesn't do if there's a kind of movie you like, there's probably a Ridley Scott movie that you can watch.

Tug McTighe (13:05)
100%.

That's exactly right.

All right, tomato meter, 91%. A, popcorn meter, 91%. A, that's our first tie ball game for the popcorn and the tomato meter, so that's pretty good. It made a lot of money, 630 million against a budget of 108 million. 10th highest grossing film of 2015. Go ahead and let us know what it was running up against in 2015.

Matt Loehrer (13:22)
That's pretty good.

Right.

So just for context, the nine that beat it out were the last installment of the Hunger Games at nine. So I'll go bottom to top or bottom to top. Mission Impossible, Rogue Nation, Pixar's Inside Out, Spectre, the James Bond movie, Minions, Avengers, Age of Ultron, Furious Seven, Jurassic World and Star Wars The Force Awakens. So all these franchises, all these blockbusters, aside from Ridley Scott and nothing

of note from the acclaimed directors that you can always count on to win an Oscar for Best Picture.

Tug McTighe (14:09)
Yeah,

no Spielberg, right? No Scorsese, no Tarantino. A lot of sequels and a lot of, again, IP, a lot of continuations of cinematic universes. Deadline Hollywood says it made about $150 million in profit, which seems like a lot of money to me. That accounts for like, but marketing and PR and all that stuff. But again, I think it was a relatively big budget, but it definitely made money, so.

You know, when these guys make money, they get to make more movies. All right. That's the breakdown of the production, et cetera. Let's talk about this film. So it's 2035, the crew of Ares 3, Mission of Mars is exploring Akadelia Planishaya on Mars in solar day. call it a soul. So we'll speak about souls. They're 18 days of their 31 day expedition.

Matt Loehrer (14:45)
I'm not gonna even try.

Tug McTighe (14:55)
a severe dust storm, the one that McCready wouldn't stop talking about, in the thing finally fucking hit Mars and it was bad. they were, they were out just doing a routine, you know, doing their studies and it was going to knock their, their, their Mars ascent vehicle, the MAV. and again, unfortunately in the ensuing evacuation, Mark Watney, this is Matt Damon, is struck by like a satellite just wax him and he flies off their rope he's on and, and he's presumed dead.

Matt Loehrer (15:00)
Hahaha

Hahaha

Tug McTighe (15:22)
we learned later that it knocked his, his, radio out and it knocked his sort of, could tell that they were getting readouts of each other's bio, you know, their heartbeat, but it knocked all that out. So they thought he was dead. and I just want to say so much happens so fast in this movie. the intercutting between the film, okay, the film, the shooting of the film that Ridley's doing the Mav surveillance, there's cameras all throughout the Mav.

Matt Loehrer (15:31)
Right.

Tug McTighe (15:49)
they cut to those and then the suit cams, right? So they're cutting back and forth, which I thought is really, really intense, a lot of drama. And you can just tell these are great, these actors are awesome. The guilt that they feel when they're leaving him is just palpable right from the get go.

Matt Loehrer (15:54)
Right.

Absolutely. And I think they really needed to kick off the movie with, I'm glad they did it the way they did. They needed something exciting, something to create some anxiety. Fun fact about Mars, in reality, you won't get more than a light breeze on Mars. never would have happened, but we don't know that. So was pretty terrifying. mean, and I do think that kind of intercutting from different kinds of surveillance equipment to Ridley to body cams.

Tug McTighe (16:20)
Hahaha

Right. Right.

Matt Loehrer (16:34)
I think that creates that sense of motion and urgency and speed. So I thought that was really well handled in a movie that could, I think has potential to get very dry and kind of.

Tug McTighe (16:38)
Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah, let's talk about that as we go because there's a buttload of science in this and they just say the science, right? But you're into your ear, because you're the proxy, Watney is the proxy for the audience. So you want to understand what he's trying to solve. think it's great, but really intense. The MAV is on the verge of getting blown over and they just, can't, they can't wait for him. They're like, he's dead.

Matt Loehrer (17:10)
Yeah, if it blows over, all

are stuck there forever, right?

Tug McTighe (17:11)
They all die, right? So they take off

to their orbiting vessel, the Hermes, leaving Watney behind. Yeah, the crew is really hit hard. They're all really good friends. And I paused, okay, paused it here. I got my notes here, Matt. I paused it. It was nine minutes and 30 seconds. And all of this had happened in nine minutes. So to save the cap, which I'll talk about later, says you gotta have an opening image that sets the stage. So the opening image here is this is a difficult,

dangerous, it will murder you kind of place. Don't screw up, you'll die. And then the inciting incident of he's left behind on Mars happens inside of 10 minutes. They are not messing around. And then we cut, right? We cut right to Jeff Daniels. We don't know who he is yet at a podium. He's, we know he's the NASA director. We don't know that in the movie yet. He shows up on earth, of course, and tells the world that Watney is dead. So really just like bang.

You're neck deep in the mess right away. So he wakes up after the storm. He's injured with a low-action warning. Can you imagine? I can't even fathom. He's like, what on earth just happened to me? My god, they left. They left. Yeah. Yeah. Right. And he's bleeding. He returns to the cruise.

Matt Loehrer (18:21)
Right, well was unconscious and he's awakened by this beeping, you're running out of oxygen, you've got 5 % oxygen left.

Tug McTighe (18:32)
surface habitat, we'll call that the hab as we go, and treats his wound. This is a great gritty scene of him cleaning his wound.

Matt Loehrer (18:38)
let's talk about that. I mean, he has to pull.

He was he got speared by this satellite dish or something with a with big wires coming through it. So a big wire is sticking out of his body. So he's he has to clip that off and make his way back to the habitat and pull it out. And then he's got it. He's got a staple, this wound shot. He's got to pull another piece out that's still stuck in there. So for me, this was the very first of many.

Tug McTighe (18:48)
Right this side!

Right.

Matt Loehrer (19:06)
Would I be able to do this? Probably not moments. It's been like I would have, I would have been like, I don't know, man.

Tug McTighe (19:09)
Yeah Yeah, I'm gonna

just go on record and saying that would I be able to do the shit that Mark Watney did in the Martian? No, I wouldn't is much maybe the largest understatement one of us has uttered on this podcast today because he's about to do about 10,000 things that were like I would have just just laid down in the sand Right. I Just walked up walked it up a dude

Matt Loehrer (19:23)
Right.

Yeah, I would have. I think I would have taken my helmet off and just walked out and let my brain let my head explode.

Tug McTighe (19:38)
He recovers, right? He begins a video diary. Obviously he can't communicate with Earth. And he knows that the next Mars missions is in four years where Ares IV will land 3,200 kilometers, which is like 2,000 miles away at the Shia Pirelli crater. The Ares IV Mav has already arrived on the site. Okay, they already put the Mav there ahead of the four years. So they're going to just land there and get there. So he knows it's there. I think.

In movies, so this is a lot of exposition that we have to explain. And there's a lot of science we have to explain. So I think that the video diary is a very good trick to tell us a lot of stuff we need to know that like in the book, you're just reading him, hit his thoughts. So they do the diary here, they tell us. And then again, save the cat. There's a lot of save the cat in this. Ridley introduces the ticking clock right now, 17 minutes in.

He needs to live for four years. He tells us the Hab is only designed for 31 days. It's just raising the stakes immediately. And then I love it when he just sort of says to himself, I'm not gonna die here. He just admits to himself, I'm not gonna die here.

Matt Loehrer (20:41)
Right.

Yeah, so that was really good because you're right in a book it would be internal internal monologue. Whereas. Right, your dog agrees.

Tug McTighe (20:48)
He's just right.

We, right, we've got

to put, agrees with you 100%. We've got to find a way to say this. And he's alone. Remember in Castaway, they gave him Wilson the volleyball because we needed someone for him to talk to, right?

Matt Loehrer (21:02)
Right.

Yeah, I thought this was a very smart way to deliver exposition in a way that you didn't feel like that you felt was natural.

So, Watney's immediate concern is food, but he tells us right away that he's a botanist, which is pretty cool. Mars will come to fear my botany powers.

Tug McTighe (21:20)
Hahaha

Matt Loehrer (21:22)
So he creates a garden inside the Hab and there was Robin and I Robin and I watched it together and they talk about the Hab and they talk about the Mav and we figured out the Hab is the habitat and the Mav for people who haven't seen it. The Mav is like a rocket that takes you from the ground up into orbit. And there's a space station in orbit or a space station ship up there. So anyway, Hab, Mav, they kind of sounded like. So.

Tug McTighe (21:32)
Habitat.

to their ship.

rant.

Matt Loehrer (21:46)
He realizes he needs to make food and water. So he creates a garden inside the hab using soil that he has to go out and get all the crews waste in these little vacuum sealed packets and open them up and rehydrate them to make soil.

Tug McTighe (21:57)
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Right, so that's a great scene.

He's taking a poop and he pushes them and they have the four that they each have like a QR code that they have to scan because it puts their poop in a different vacuum sealed bag and then he sort of looks at it. So you see that little piece of information. He gets the potatoes from the, they gave them some vacuum sealed actual potatoes.

Matt Loehrer (22:07)
Right.

Tug McTighe (22:31)
that said don't open till Thanksgiving. So it was gonna be the Thanksgiving, part of the Thanksgiving meal. So he's like, holy cow, I can use these and plant them.

Matt Loehrer (22:38)
Right, and they actually built multiple sets with the same garden set up and planted potatoes at different stages so whenever they were filming a certain thing they could, a certain scene they could use whatever garden was appropriate for the size of that. So that was just something they did.

Tug McTighe (22:51)
Yeah. Yeah. So the,

you know, I'm at my heart an eight year old child. So the, when he's mixing the poop into the soil and he has the ear, the earplugs stuff up his nose and he's like, man, Johansson, God, geez. I'm just giggling like an idiot. Thought that was really funny.

Matt Loehrer (23:12)
That was great. Kind of that

was gross and it was funny. I mean it was humanizing and but he had to do it so that and he had to create water. And he again this is another one of these. said so all I need to do is take hydrogen and likes do something to it.

Tug McTighe (23:25)
Take the rocket.

I have plenty of rocket fuel. So I just need to take that, burn it, add hydrogen, turn it into water.

Matt Loehrer (23:28)
Right.

Right, so he burns it and he explodes.

Tug McTighe (23:39)
He

blows up. Very funny.

Matt Loehrer (23:41)
So he realizes

he didn't factor in. It had to do with his oxygen that he was exhaling. He didn't he didn't factor that into the equation. I thought again, I'd be dead 10 times over already. But he does it. He makes water. He may he plants these potatoes and now he's got a garden and he's growing potatoes, which is pretty great.

Tug McTighe (24:00)
So we cut back to Earth. Teddy and Vincent are arguing about Congress PR and meteorology estimates about when when when Watney's dead body will be covered in sand. I love the political aspects of this conversation, right? We'll talk about Teddy in a little bit, but the storyline gets deeper and deeper in just a short conversation. So there's lots of meeting conversations, briefings, PR because they're they're they're spinning a lot of plates.

Matt Loehrer (24:28)
Something that I else that I liked about this, as you mentioned it, there are characters that I liked better than others. There were, you know, Teddy Jeff Daniels. I thought was kind of a jerk, but I think that's. That's kind of his job, but there's no villain in this movie. It's Mars is the villain, so everybody for the most part on the same team and just trying to trying to get him home, which is kind of cool.

Tug McTighe (24:36)
Right, he's the head of NASA.

No, Mars is the villain. Right.

Right, and

Teddy, even though he's sort of a dick, similar to the best Marvel bad guys, you can kind of argue his... I see your point. He's like, hey, one dead astronaut is better than six.

Matt Loehrer (24:59)
Yeah, he's not.

Yeah, he's not a cartoon. He's a, you know, he's a pragmatic guy and he's doing his job and maybe.

Tug McTighe (25:08)
And he says a couple

of times, I want to stay in space. I want to keep doing this. I want us to all keep doing this. All right, speaking of ads, let's give a shout out to our sponsor, Little Bear Graphics. When you've abandoned one of your employees and left them trapped all alone on a desolate planet, you need some marketing help ASAP. That's why NASA should have called Matt Lora at Little Bear Graphics. He could have helped them greatly in their sales pitch to the world as they tried to tell them just how badly they'd screwed up.

Matt Loehrer (25:13)
Right. Interesting.

Ha ha!

Tug McTighe (25:37)
And if you need some help with graphic design, websites, brochures, and more, do what NASA didn't do and contact Little Bear Graphics at littlebear.graphics. So I feel like you could help them with their PR problem.

Matt Loehrer (25:48)
Right, get me on the phone. Wait a minute, I know a guy. All right, so Mark is modifying a Rover that's up there, which is nice to know. They had a lot of stuff up there. Yeah, it's like an SUV. he's gonna need to go that 2000 miles to the Aries for MAV at some point, but he's got four years to do it.

Tug McTighe (25:52)
That should have been the first call that Teddy made.

Now they got their Jeep. like, yeah, they got a lot of stuff.

just like.

2000 miles though. you fathom like, Jesus.

Matt Loehrer (26:14)
Right. no,

it's it's it's insane.

So again, it's a how the hell is he gonna do this moment since we find out right away that his vehicle can only go so far, which is not very far before it's completely out of power.

Tug McTighe (26:25)
Right.

the MAV only goes, uh, it can only go 35 miles without a recharge. And the recharge takes 13 hours and it's just all this terrible stuff. And he's just like, I just got to math this math of shit out of this. I just got to math it up.

Matt Loehrer (26:40)
Yeah,

which is nice. He never succumbs to despair. He never says I give up screw this. There are points where he's frustrated obviously, but he's he's always thinking to the next problem and then how to solve that problem and get to the next one.

Tug McTighe (26:54)
Yeah, it

is that like, so they don't really tell you, they keep saying he's a botanist, but he's also a mechanical engineer. So he's got that brain too, right? Like, okay, let me fix this thing. that broke. Let me fix that too. the third thing broke. Okay, now I fixed them all. So we'll talk. No. Yeah, it was like, that's right. Here I got it. the printing. We're out of ink. Dang it.

Matt Loehrer (27:02)
Right.

Again, I would be in there were no graphic designers on that spaceship like we need a poster stat.

Tug McTighe (27:22)
So back on Earth, Mindy Park, Mackenzie Davis is reviewing satellite images of the habitat. And she sees some equipment has been moved and no equipment should have been moved because nobody was supposed to be there because the crew is on their way home and Mark Watney is dead. So she goes and calls Vincent and he calls Teddy and they then are like, well, Watney's alive. They release the news to the public and our first major piece of conflict comes here.

on Earth conflict when Teddy does not want to the crew Mitch Sean B Mitch Henderson. He's the flight director. He's like, you've got to the crew. And this is when Teddy says they'll be distracted. They need to focus. still incredibly dangerous what they're doing. They're flying back on a spaceship.

But he's like, they can't be distracted. they don't tell him. And Sean Bean is really upset at this. They don't ever tell you, but He's clearly a former astronaut, a former commander. He's been in space and he knows how the crew works and all that stuff. So, I think, I don't know if we're supposed to dislike Teddy, but we're not supposed to like him. Because once again, his problem,

is they're up there. Watney's dead. They're flying home. Vincent's problem is they got to get Watney home. Kristen Wiig is the PR director is like, we'll get crucified if people find this out. Hey, she says, hey, America, remember that astronaut we killed and had a really nice funeral for? Well, he's alive and we left him behind on Mars. Our bad. So

Matt Loehrer (28:44)
Right.

Yeah,

I think it's more their approach that Teddy is very clinical and he's again. Ultimately, he's the guy making the decisions. And so I think Sean Bean is more emotional and. I'm not sure his ideas are the best, but it is kind of a you know the raging yang to the silver yang kind of that that dichotomy.

Tug McTighe (28:58)
That's right.

That's right.

That's right.

Right, at one point

Vincent says, well, let's just mount another Ares mission. We can do blah, blah, blah. And Teddy goes, man, I'm never gonna get that sold through Congress. I gotta keep getting money for us, So there's all these big problems. But again, your point earlier, big cast, not a ton of screen time for any of these people except for Damon. And they all use it really well, because I think it's written very well and directed very well and performed very well.

Matt Loehrer (29:25)
Right.

Tug McTighe (29:41)
And they all have, you know what's great about this too, is this a little bit unlike the thing where you're like, it could be windows or nulls or mills or these are all very distinct character personalities and they have different things to do. I think that's again, another thing that adds to the, to the good vibes of it.

Matt Loehrer (29:41)
Agreed.

And there's no fluff. mean, they're creating these characters. You know who they are. You know what their job is. You know the kind of people they are. When we get to Danny, Donald Glover, said, Danny Glover, Donald Glover, you realize he's a little out there, maybe on the spectrum a little bit, but that's OK, because that's the person.

Tug McTighe (30:01)
There's Del Fluff.

Shanty Clever.

Right. Right. He's a, cause

he's a fricking math genius thermodynamicist or whatever the hell that is. Yeah. Right. Hey, I do want to note here this is where we learned that commander Lewis loves disco. Cause she had all the music and Matt Damon's like, you have brought the worst music in the world onto the ship. And I love disco. So that, that part makes me happy.

Matt Loehrer (30:22)
Yeah, astrophysicist. So he needs to be that guy. So the characterizations are great.

Right?

And

it's the only music he had.

Tug McTighe (30:44)
Yeah, it's the only music he's like, I'm not

gonna turn the beat around. I refuse.

Matt Loehrer (30:47)
Right,

this entire movie is punctuated. You get a lot of montages set to disco, so that was a nice whether you like disco or not. That was a nice kind of piece of continuity.

Tug McTighe (30:52)
Yeah.

That's right.

Yeah, so now we're driving the plot here. Watney's alive. They're trying to sort out how they can help him. We see Benedict Wong at Jet Propulsion Labs out in California. They all decide they're going to figure out a way to send it. They're going to put a Mars, again, a Mars probe into action and they're going to send him some supplies because he's going to run out of food. So he takes a one month journey to time is a flat circle here in the Martian.

to go retrieve, he remembers that the Pathfinder landed and lost, contacted like 97, think. And he's like, maybe I'll go to Pathfinder and dig that up and bring it back here and see if it works and maybe I can contact NASA.

Matt Loehrer (31:39)
Right. And they figure out that's what he's doing. So they've got a counterpart to it on earth.

Tug McTighe (31:44)
And they bring it back to yeah, it's in storage. So they bring it back. We connect it. He figures out a way to communicate with them using ASCII code, American Standard Code for Information Interchange is what ASCII stands for. C-MAT is the most common format for text files and computers and on the internet. Anyway, this is where we first see Nick Park. Right from Ted Lasso. He is the guy who sees what he wakes up his Pathfinder and their Pathfinder wakes up.

Matt Loehrer (31:56)
I didn't know what that was.

Thanks, Doug.

Tug McTighe (32:11)
And they start, he puts up signs. It's like, Watney, I'm alive. Are you reading me? Yes or no. And they point the camera towards yes. And again, this is where we first, I've got a little through line that I really liked where they keep giving Watney these little wins. And remember when the camera turns on, he just goes like this, goes, woo!

Matt Loehrer (32:36)
Great.

Tug McTighe (32:37)
And there's no one there to celebrate with him or anything.

Matt Loehrer (32:39)
Yeah, he's

but he's sustained by these. I think he needs it.

Tug McTighe (32:43)
These little wins, right? Well, he does because all we're gonna do is start kicking him in the nuts here pretty soon and I once heard Steven Spielberg describing story thusly Act one put the protagonist in a tree act to throw rocks at him act three. Let him come down So that's what we're doing. We're in we're firmly in act two where we're just throwing rocks at Watney And then through science that we are

Matt Loehrer (32:49)
Right.

Tug McTighe (33:08)
Now they have followed their own rules and we'll talk about that as we go. Like they've set up the rules and they following their own rules. So science that we completely now buy, they transmit a software patch to link his Rover with Pathfinder so that he can just type in text messages to them. Now takes 30 minutes to get from Mars to earth and 30 minutes to get back from earth to Mars. that's.

Like the three bubbles are going for a long time. Um, so that's another, just part of the, of the problem that I think is, is really good. Right. And they let him know, Hey, we're going to send supplies and we're working on a rescue mission again, little win. Um, here it comes. Here comes the first sort of big throw a big huge rock at Mark Watney. And that's when he asks Vincent, Hey, what did the crew think when they found out? And they come clean and say, we haven't told him.

And there's a funny bit of business here when he lays into them and the world with his F bombs and his, did you guys do this and F you and F that? And they go, hey, you're broadcasting this to the world. goes, oh, really? And then you see him typing and then you see them going, ooh, ah, ooh, ee. And then they cut to Teddy is like, yes, Mr. President, we're doing our best to calm him down. Yes, sir. So Teddy, again, Teddy's right. He's got a big job. He's talking to the president about all this.

Matt Loehrer (34:18)
Hahaha

Tug McTighe (34:32)
And then you really see the crew break down when Mitch sends them a video that says he's alive and we left them behind.

Matt Loehrer (34:42)
Yeah, and I understand why Teddy didn't want to tell him there's nothing they can do about it. They're on their way back, but there's still years from home, right?

Tug McTighe (34:49)
That's right. That's right.

Yeah, they're like, yeah, a long time. They're like a year and a half from home, if not more. And then the other great part is, and I think this is really great part of Mark's character, he says every time it comes up, he says, it is not their fault. Tell them it is not their fault. I'm not mad at anybody. I would have done the same thing. You thought I was dead.

So their guilt is catastrophic. Commander Lewis is wrecked. There's nothing they can do about it. And then here comes another kick in the nuts. The Hab airlock blows, injuring Wani and just destroying his potato crops. So he's like, I can get, man, I can keep growing potatoes. I'm good to go. But then the Hab gets a hole in it, not the Hab, the airlock blows up.

And he's just lost the part of the hablius growing the potatoes in. I don't know that it's possible. guess this is a little bit confusing, one of the first kind of confusing parts, because I had the same thought. know, I'm like, just bring more dirt in and mix in more poop. But then I think that part, because remember, he seals it up with plastic. So I think it's sort of everything's blown up, and he can't reclaim it.

Matt Loehrer (35:43)
Mm-hmm.

Great.

He did.

That was kind of cool. He did seal it with plastic and then there was a scene where he was he had just done this. He is plastic and duct tape, which by the way, duct tape would not work on this on Mars because it does not function as it should at 75 below. Right, so that was kind of fake, but maybe it's super duct tape in the future. But he has covered this with plastic.

Tug McTighe (36:12)
It's not gonna stick at 100 million degrees below zero, yeah.

Matt Loehrer (36:21)
And then duct taped it on and the wind is rising outside and he's doesn't have his suit on. He doesn't have his helmet on. He's needs to get comfortable doing this and you can tell he's just terrified. Because he thinks he's going to get swept out and into the zero atmosphere and die.

Tug McTighe (36:28)
Any? Right.

Yeah, yeah.

Well, you know what I love

too, when he is able to text back and forth with the crew finally, and they're just busting his chops and they're busting each other's chops. And that's every team I've ever been on, every crew, right? That was a really real, you know, they're like, hey man, sorry we left you behind, but it's because we hate you. And they're just giving each other the business and it just, that felt really real.

Matt Loehrer (36:48)
Right.

Right? That was pretty great.

Tug McTighe (37:02)
So it's exactly what a team would do. actually, it's what Watney needed. You mentioned that part where he's terrified. It brings him back, and he starts working again. Because he got to talk his team. And again, I'm glad they took as much duct tape as they did. The amount of duct tape they took is equivalent to the amount of flamethrowers on our last expedition.

Matt Loehrer (37:15)
Right.

Right, there was no shortage of

So Kapur and Wong and the Jet Propulsion Labs are preparing a resupply to deliver food and they're working around the clock. So they're trying to get everything and it's not just getting supplies, but it's also the weight of those supplies and they've got to do safety checks on the rocket that's going to take it up there. So they've got a million things to do just so they can get food.

So Watney will survive the next four years until Aries IV arrives.

Tug McTighe (37:53)
Yeah. And you can tell they're

all the crew of nerds at Jet Propulsion Labs. You can tell they're just all living there. They're not leaving.

Matt Loehrer (38:03)
Oh yeah, it. Yeah, and

it's very Teddy's very much it's he's like Kirk to Scotty. He's like how long is it going to take? They'll be like two weeks. He's like you got two days and you say OK, we'll figure it out. Which is cool, because I've worked with people like that too. It's like we don't have. This is what we have to do and they're like OK, we'll get it done. So yeah, a lot of stress.

Tug McTighe (38:13)
Right, and they're like, right, we'll Right.

All right, let's figure it out. Yeah, this is where the problem, right?

This is where the problem ensues, right? Because Teddy says, let's just, Teddy says, let's skip the safety checks and he says, I'll own it, right? This is where he stands up for, not for the first time, but no, no, it's my call. I just gave you your time back.

Matt Loehrer (38:30)
skip the safety checks.

Right. So yeah, they,

and they, yeah. So they can get it done if they don't check for, know, go through all these safety protocols. So they do. And the ship goes up and it explodes in the atmosphere and they're all out of luck. So now they're really in trouble because they don't have any, they don't have a ship or like a rocket that they can get up there.

Tug McTighe (38:51)
Yeah. Right. then, yeah.

Right,

right. And this is when Mark is despondent. And he says, I've run out of ketchup seven days ago, so I'm gonna go ahead and dip this potato I grew into crushed up Vicodin. And there's nobody that can stop me.

Matt Loehrer (39:13)
Right. And then that next scene where he sends that note to Lewis, he gives a really heartfelt speech and asked her to talk to his parents if he dies and tell them it's not their fault and that he was doing what he loved. And what was the line that he said?

Tug McTighe (39:28)
I'm dying for something big and beautiful and greater than me.

Matt Loehrer (39:32)
So that was a really nice

piece of copy, that dialogue or that monologue there.

Tug McTighe (39:36)
for sure. So

And now surprise allies come to the forefront, the Chinese, who they have the Tai Yang Shen space probe, and they're talking and they're like, well, why don't we offer that to help the Americans? Why didn't they come to us? And she's like, cause it's classified. He goes, so if we never did anything, the world would never know. But if we do something,

Matt Loehrer (39:43)
Right.

Tug McTighe (39:58)
and we save their astronaut, we look great. So this is where I say scientists are greater than politicians. Yes, help.

Matt Loehrer (40:01)
They're gonna know.

Right. don't know

if they would have, I don't know if this were made today, if they would agree to help us, but.

Tug McTighe (40:09)
Yeah, fair,

So I also want to pause to discuss the secret meeting that they have where they Chris Wigg says, what the hell is project Elrond? And he goes, it's the secret meeting. It's a secret meeting. And she goes, well, how am I supposed to know? it's because it's the secret. And then Benedict Wong from on video goes, it's the meaning that they decided to have the elves and the dwarves and the hobbits and the wizards to

when they decided to put the one ring into Mountain Doom. And then Teddy goes, I wanna be code named Glorfindel. And she goes, I hate all of you. And also don't forget that Boromir, Sean Bean was actually at the Council of Elrond in the film. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Matt Loehrer (40:43)
All of you.

I did forget that. I was glad you mentioned it. Cause I was like, all right. He's that's

little meta meta moment. And we get to meet Donald Glover's character.

Tug McTighe (40:53)
So what they're meaning of, yep.

Yeah, because Donald Glover, astrophysicist Rich Parnell, who was also just living at JBL trying to solve this problem, wakes up in the middle of the night with an idea. And Donald Glover is so great in everything he's in. And I also want to let you know what I don't think you do know. Do you know where he got his rap name of Childish Gambino?

Matt Loehrer (41:20)
I used to know, but tell me again, because I forgot.

Tug McTighe (41:21)
He typed his

name Donald Glover into a Wu Tang Clan rap name generator on the internet and Childish Gambino got spit out. And then he was Childish Gambino for the next 15 years. But he's got an idea he wants the Hermes to accelerate past Earth as they come around Earth, they're gaining speed to go back to Mars.

Matt Loehrer (41:26)
That's

I did not know that. Okay.

Tug McTighe (41:45)
We shoot the Tiang Shen up to them with the supplies, which is a relatively easy space maneuver. And then they fly to Mars with the added velocity. And then we shoot, they can't drop into orbit, so they shoot Watney in the space somehow to be solved later. That's a tomorrow them problem. And then they catch Watney and come home, which is gonna be called the Purnell maneuver.

Matt Loehrer (42:03)
Right.

Yeah, this is how the enterprise traveled through time in Star Trek IV The Voyage Home. So hopefully, hopefully they don't travel through time in this one.

Tug McTighe (42:13)
100 % save the whales.

So Teddy doesn't want to do this. This is what he says. I got one dead astronaut already. Anything could happen. I don't need six dead astronauts. He doesn't like it. Henderson, he says, we're not doing it. It's my call. And then Mitch goes behind Teddy's back and sends a secret encrypted message to the crew that says, this is what we want you to do, or this is what you could do. Teddy says no, but I wanted it left up to you.

Of course they unanimously vote. Even though it's going to add Matt, it's going to add 550 days, 18 months it's going to add to their journey. And they cut to all of their families and they've all got, half of them have got kids and you know, but they're like, we got to go save them. We left them behind. So they vote for it. They divert the Hermes. Then Sanders is forced to support them publicly, but he demands Mitch's resignation. says, as soon as you get them home, I'll expect your resignation. He's like, I can live with that.

Matt Loehrer (42:52)
Great.

Tug McTighe (43:14)
so Teddy says, this is all bigger than one person, Mitch, and Mitch goes, no, it's not. But then Teddy just looks up and goes, bring our astronauts home. So he's like, I'm mad at you, I wanna fire you, but you gotta, I need you to go bring them home. Because Teddy does want them home, right? So.

Matt Loehrer (43:25)
That was a good, yeah. yeah.

Tug McTighe (43:29)
We launched now into montage, Starman, My David Bowie, fantastic choice. As Watney is preparing all the plans and all the habs and all the gear and all this, this is a, this is a, you start to see that this has taken a big toll on Watney. He's skinny, you know, he's got sores on his body, his teeth are terrible, right? It's, he's just been there a long time. And then seven months later,

Matt Loehrer (43:50)
Right.

Tug McTighe (43:56)
He makes the set the 90 sole journey. So that's 12 months, right? To the Shia Pirelli crater where the map for Ares IV is prepositioned. And this is where they show just a ton of great Mars stuff.

Matt Loehrer (44:03)
Right.

No, that's three months. It's basically 90 days. Well, assuming a Saul is a day. I don't know how long a Saul is.

Tug McTighe (44:14)
three months. Basically 90 days. Okay. Yeah,

think they made it equivalent. Either way, a long time.

Matt Loehrer (44:25)
Right, so there was some really neat scenery imaginative where he's on this little Martian SUV and he's traveling across this landscape that's just vast. mean, so I know it's all computer stuff and matte paintings and who knows what anymore, but it looked really cool. So this was another one of those moments where you got to kind of imagine what it would be like to be him in this situation. Really scary. And so small, yeah.

Tug McTighe (44:50)
and just be lost and on your own, yeah.

And he keeps saying things like, every time I do something, like, I'm the first person ever step here, I climb up there, I'm the first person ever climb that, first person ever touch that rock. So it's weighing on him existentially as well. I mean, he's been alone a long time. Okay, so he's gonna use the Ares IV to rendezvous with the Hermes as they come by.

Matt Loehrer (45:05)
Right. Yeah.

Tug McTighe (45:16)
But this is when they then now they throw another rock at him and go like, it's way too heavy for you to get out. So you've got to get rid of some weight. And there's a great scene where Vince Wong is like, Benedict is like, okay, we'll take this out. take that out. And there's a dude and they got a paper model of it. And he hands him a chair and hands him the top of it. And the guy's just holding all this cardboard stuff. And they're like, you're dismantling the whole ship. You're taking the top off. goes, yes.

Matt Loehrer (45:39)
Right.

It's we're putting a tarp where the nose cone of this rocket would be.

Tug McTighe (45:44)
Right. So,

he says, at one point he goes, luckily you have the greatest minds on planet earth, helping me solve this problem. And so far their best idea is to drill a bunch of holes in the top of the math and hit it with a rock. but again, this is, this is how creative problem solving takes place. You have to embrace the box you're in. In fact, I have a presentation called, tighten the box and begin the idea that is about this very thing.

Matt Loehrer (45:58)
But it worked.

Tug McTighe (46:11)
Right? Occam's razor. If all things are equal, the simplest idea is the best one. Drill a bunch of holes and hit it with a rock. So he has to take a lot of the ship apart. That's a fun scene where he's just dismantling. He's shooting out panels in the nose cone and throwing out chairs and all this. Speaking of dismantling, it's a good time for our ad break to talk about a little bear graphics. Don't dismantle your business the way Mark Watney had to dismantle the MAV to blast himself off of Mars.

This is called Matt Lohr to help with logos, branding materials, and more. He may not have the smarts of a NASA astronaut. Okay, he definitely doesn't. And he would have been dead on Sol 18 by 8 PM Mars Standard Time. But he does know his way around strategy, design, copywriting, creative, and more. He's sort of the Mark Watney of small marketing firms. Sort of. Anyway, you can check out his work and get in touch with him at littlebear.graphics today.

Matt Loehrer (47:03)
So great.

Tug McTighe (47:04)
Another needle drop as Mark is working is Abba's Waterloo. And a montage, see Mark out of his, this is where we see Mark out of his space suit for the first time in a long time. And he's in bad shape, thin, got a beard, sores, his hair's long, he's just dirty and like he hasn't taken a shower in God knows how long. So many minor injuries. Like we were just not meant to hang out in space. We humans, as our recently returned astronauts butch.

Matt Loehrer (47:22)
Thanks for watching.

Tug McTighe (47:32)
Wilmore and Sonny Williams with a test they looked awful after that nine months they were up there

Matt Loehrer (47:36)
I don't know if they use some kind of digital trickery to make him look skinny and gaunt or if he actually lost like 50 pounds. I don't know, but he looked amazingly. Just skeletal,

Tug McTighe (47:42)
Right. Right. Yeah.

OK, so he takes off in the MAV with the tarp on the top. The Hermes find the separation is too great to reach him. They need to make some adjustments to bring them closer, but now the velocity is too fast. There's all these math problems for.

Matt Loehrer (48:02)
yeah, and Mara Kate

Mara is just like doing them on the fly, which again I'd be like they'd be like, can we get him and I'd be like, no, sorry. I don't know. I can't do this math. It did not sign up for math.

Tug McTighe (48:05)
Right, right.

Nah, we gotta let it go. Sorry guys, let's just head home. Let's just head home.

Right? Commander Lewis improvises, they create a bomb and blow a hatch to push them towards Watney. They then get on, she gets on like a tethered, like a space throne, you know, that flies out. The manned maneuvering unit, MMU, they're still too far.

Matt Loehrer (48:17)
you

Right? Yeah.

Well, here's another question.

So remember, Sebastian Stan is out there and he's like flying around on the outside of of their of the vessel. Did you feel like at any point he might have just missed? Like he might not have caught something and just gone flying off into space.

Tug McTighe (48:40)
of the vessel,

Yeah, I-

Well,

yeah, we saw that whole movie Gravity that where that exact thing happened. I'm like, this is terrifying. Why are you adding to the stress? Just just stay inside the thing.

Matt Loehrer (48:56)
It seems super dangerous to me. Right? Or have

like a have a rope or a Caribbean or something, but they didn't do that.

Tug McTighe (49:02)
Yeah, right.

So after all of this science, Watney had said earlier, I'll just poke a hole in my suit in the hand and I'll fly like Iron Man to you. And they're like, are you out of your mind? You could veer wildly off course. So he does do it. And he does fly out. they finally, they catch him. And they,

Matt Loehrer (49:18)
Right. They're like, no, we're not going to need you to do that.

Tug McTighe (49:31)
Embrace he and Jessica Chastain and then Sebastian Stan hauls them in and there's this great reunion and this is just all ridiculous, ridiculous. If this was real, it would have been the most amazing thing to ever have happened. And again, you have to suspend your disbelief that they were able to do this, but because they set up the rules of the world and they are following them. So we are willing to, we're willing to roll with it.

Matt Loehrer (49:47)
Right.

Tug McTighe (49:57)
All right, so we're back on earth. Watney sitting on a bench, a nice scene where he sees the little weed in the ground and it's a little green. He goes, Hey there. And that's what he said to the first potato. Hey there. Yeah. you see that he's now an instructor at NASA, talking to kids and our kids, adults that want to be astronauts in there. He says, yes, I'm Mark Watney. Yes, this happened. He has a really great scene where, where, actually, and then I love this too.

Matt Loehrer (50:08)
That was cute. I like that.

Tug McTighe (50:24)
They kept saying day 568, soul. And then they just said, soul one. So he's back. He gets to reset his clock. And he says, look, yeah, did I think I was going to die? Yeah. Every day. And you're like, something happens. You're like, you think this is how I'm going to end. And he goes, now you can either accept that or you get to work. That's all it is. You just begin. You do the math, you solve the problem, and then you solve the next problem, and the next problem. And if you solve enough problems, you get to come home. And I quite like that.

Matt Loehrer (50:29)
Back on Earth. Yeah.

Tug McTighe (50:53)
And he goes, any questions? And every person raises their hand. And then we cut to Love Train by the OJs, outstanding needle drop.

Matt Loehrer (50:56)
Everybody has to go. Yeah, no, I think.

I do love that song. And yeah, I'm not a big fan generally of the, you know, five years later, but you you did want to know where all these people ended up that Lewis is back with her husband and they're watching the next Aries for. Sebastian Stan and Kate Mara are in the hospital having a baby and they're watching on TV.

Tug McTighe (51:15)
The Aries, Aries IV,

Yeah, you learn halfway,

about halfway through the movie that they're together, which I thought was an interesting, nice, they didn't make a big deal out of it, but it nice touch. And you see that Martinez is back piloting the next mission, which was a little surprising. But then throughout the credits, you see all how everybody, where everybody lands, you see that I'm assuming, I think Rich Parnell was working for NASA. This was a little confusing to me. But then you see him at Jet Propulsion's laboratory.

Matt Loehrer (51:31)
Yeah, that's, that was interesting. I was surprised.

Tug McTighe (51:51)
So first of all, he would have been a famous, famous, famous person. The Rich Parnell maneuver would have made him famous, at least in these circles, but I think he parlayed it into a better job at Jeff Propulsion Laboratory. And again, I like to see Donald Glover at the end. And they did a neat thing, like where they showed the footage of this and they, you know, it says Donald Glover, says Benedict, it says they did it, you know, so that's how they showed the cast.

Matt Loehrer (51:57)
Mm-hmm.

yeah.

Yeah, their credit, their name was next to them. should they. Yeah, they're closing credits. They kind of showed their name as they were on screen, which is always nice. OK.

Tug McTighe (52:17)
while they were seeing the Ares IV. Right. Right. Right. So

I wanna really nerd out on Save the Cat for a second, because I feel like there's a lot of Save the Cat in this. And I really thought it when I was watching this again in the very end, the Act III. So Save the Cat talks about the five part finale. And here's the steps. The first one is the hero. Okay, you're gonna love this.

Matt Loehrer (52:27)
Do it.

Tug McTighe (52:44)
The hero and the hero team come up with a plan to storm the castle and free the princess who is trapped in the tower. Okay, this is the Purnell maneuver. Two, the plan begins. The wall of the castle is breached. The heroes enter the bad guy's fort. All is going according to plan. They all agree to go. They get back to Mars. Everything's fine. Step three, finally reaching the tower where the princess is being kept, the hero finds she's not there. And not only that, it's a trap. It looks like the bad guy is one. They're too far away from Mark. They're both going too fast.

Ba ba ba ba ba. Step four, the hero now has to come up with a new plan and it's all part and parcel of the overall transformation of the hero and his need to dig deep down to find that last ounce of strength to win the day. They have to make a bomb to move toward Marksley to catch him. They get back down to 12 meters a second. Step five, thinking on the fly and discovering his best self, the hero executes the new plan and wins. Princess freed, friends avenged, bad guy sent back to wherever bad guy goes when they get defeated. Right, but this is still too far away, 312 meters.

Mark does in fact have to pierce his suit to thrust towards the crew. It works. They catch him and he goes home. So this is like a, and people get pissed off at people like me that love Save the Cat. They're like, it's not that formulaic. It is that formulaic in many cases. And we don't care because we love how these stories are constructed. We love all these problems they're facing because we want to see them solve them and win.

Matt Loehrer (54:05)
Right, and if they don't give us some of what we want, we're gonna be dissatisfied. We're gonna say that story's, we don't like that story.

Tug McTighe (54:09)
That's right, that's exactly right.

I mean, it's over in five minutes if he dies. Right? Or sorry, nine and a half. All right, Matt, that was lovely. So send a hitter, send a miss.

Matt Loehrer (54:14)
Pretty much.

Right.

OK, so this is going to be a complicated response, but I'll do my best. I think whether this was a sin hit or a sin amiss depends on the kind of movies you like. If you like movies with lots of Matt Damon, this was one. If you like movies where a person is in a seemingly impossible situation and has to MacGyver his way out of it over and over again, you will like this. For a movie and we mentioned this earlier with a lot of.

Tug McTighe (54:25)
Back to your Arby's, your Matt Damon Arby's.

for sure.

Matt Loehrer (54:49)
technical jargon and physics and things that are not necessarily accessible to everyday people like you and me who are not astronauts or scientists. This was surprisingly to me entertaining like there was some action. There was some some suspense. You know what? What's he going to do next? This could have been really boring and it was not. If you like disco music, you will probably like this movie because there was a lot of disco.

Tug McTighe (54:56)
Astrophysicist, yeah.

Yeah, 100%.

Ha ha ha!

Matt Loehrer (55:14)
I was clapping, you know, I was tapping my toes when the Hughes Corporation Rock the Boat came on. And if you don't mind that you pretty much know how it's going to end from the get go, but it's going to have a happy ending, then you'll probably like this. If I had any kind of quibble with the movie, it's that I like to be surprised and I like the unexpected. And I like a movie where I'm like, wow, I see that coming in this movie. I saw everything coming because.

Tug McTighe (55:20)
That's right.

Right.

You're you're not gonna kill Matt Damon.

Matt Loehrer (55:45)
Right, I hope not. I would have been mad if they did.

Tug McTighe (55:46)
I mean, it would have tested, right, it would have tested

incredibly poorly if they'd killed Matt Damon, right?

Matt Loehrer (55:53)
So it's not

a question of how does he get home? It's a question of how does he get home? not does not does he get home? Because of course he does. So and if you like beautifully photographed. Filmed shots and awesome landscapes and just kind of awe inspiring visuals, you would probably like this too and credits are credits Ridley Scott, cause he does that better than anybody I think.

Tug McTighe (55:57)
Yeah, correct, correct. Not does he get home. Right, of course.

You're gonna get it. Yeah, for sure.

Matt Loehrer (56:20)
I don't think I'll ever watch it again, but I'm glad I did watch it. It was good actor with a lot of other good actors and I like that. So that's my take.

Tug McTighe (56:27)
Yeah. So,

a solid B-.

Matt Loehrer (56:34)
I'd give it a yeah, you're a B. I'd give it a B again. It's Arby's man. I should. I mean I should like it.

Tug McTighe (56:36)
Yeah, yeah, give it a solid B.

Just put some RB sauce on it and some horsie sauce, you're good to go. Yeah.

Matt Loehrer (56:45)
Maybe I'm just

like, yeah, maybe something else. Maybe not this movie again.

Tug McTighe (56:47)
I think I

like it more than you do because all of those things I like, including disco. But yeah, I don't mind. I read so many fantasy novels that I freaking know, Matt, that Luke, I know Luke's gonna win. Let me just see how he wins, right? So that's okay by me. But he might lose a hand. A lot of right hands getting chopped off. But you know, I...

Matt Loehrer (56:54)
Okay.

I lose a hand though. I get a hand chopped off.

Tug McTighe (57:16)
For me, it's become a bit of a rewatchable, is the rewatchables is also a great pot. I wonder if they've done The Martian. Go check out the rewatchables if you like movies. But I like the cast. I like the characters. I really had never thought about until you said it. A lot of people that could have been lost in the shuffle, but didn't because they're such, it was so well written and such great performances and they were all different in their own way. I think that was interesting. It sent a hit for me. And yeah, I'm glad you saw it too. A lot of interesting stuff.

Matt Loehrer (57:22)
Mm-hmm.

Tug McTighe (57:43)
It makes for a good conversation, right? That's part of the part of the reason we're doing this. Yeah.

Matt Loehrer (57:45)
Yeah, for sure.

One other thing I would say, I probably watched too many sci-fi movies, because I did keep expecting, somebody's going to freak out and try to murder all of his crewmates. I just, and of course that never happened. I'm like, Sebastian Stan's going to lose it and he's going to shoot somebody out of the airlock like in 21, right?

Tug McTighe (57:58)
Right, right.

Right, he's gonna hit somebody with a wrench.

Okay, easy to watch The Martian. I watched it on Macs. I also saw it's on You Can Rent It Anywhere. I think it's even on Netflix as well right now. And again, like I said, even on basic, no Netflix, four bucks. So maybe not that easy, but it's always on Amazon as you know or Apple. But I cut it on Macs.

Matt Loehrer (58:11)
Okay.

It is not on Netflix because I would have watched it. I would have watched it for free. I paid four bucks. Yeah.

Tug McTighe (58:29)
so listen, if you like what we're doing here, please email us ideas, feedback, et cetera, at cinemuses at gmail.com. we might give you shout out.

And please subscribe on Spotify or Apple Podcasts. And please, please give us a review and tell somebody else about the show. It really does help us grow the audience.

Matt Loehrer (58:47)
One other thing I want to mention, too, for people that are Twitter people, is an account called All the Right Movies. Kind of like all the right moves, but it's all the right movies. Yeah.

Tug McTighe (58:55)
I picked up on that.

Matt Loehrer (58:57)
Check it out because they do kind of what we do for all sorts of different movies. So it'll be like a thread of 40 posts about the making of a movie or what went on behind the scenes. There's just so much cool stuff there. So all the right movies, those guys do a really good job. You should check it out on Twitter or X or whatever it's called. Yeah.

Tug McTighe (59:16)
That's awesome. I love giving a shout out. Okay,

so Matt, we for our next movie, we have pre-decided that we are going to celebrate the life and career of recently passed Val Kilmer. It will be our 10th episode of what we're calling for whatever reason, season one of Cinemisses. So we're gonna, like I said, celebrate the life and work of Val Kilmer.

Matt Loehrer (59:33)
Blessing.

Tug McTighe (59:43)
May he rest. We're gonna check out a movie neither one of us has seen, but many, many people, including our friend, Eric Malin have not shut up about for many years, which is Shane Black's Kiss Kiss Bang Bang starring Robert Downey Jr. and Val Kilmer. 2005 American sort of neo-noir black comedy crime film written and directed by Shane Black in his directorial debut. This will be the first time we cover a film that

neither one of us has seen. So I'm interested to figure out just how that is gonna work, I'm pumped to see that because that is a lot of people have told me that's a great flip and sad to see Val Kilmer go when I sort of went back and looked at his filmography, you're like, man, Val Kilmer has done a lot of work and been with us for a long time.

Matt Loehrer (1:00:26)
yeah, he's, I think the first thing I saw him in was Top Secret, which was awesome and real genius. you know, he was in a lot of stuff. People remember him from Top Gun, but he was in a lot of movies. Pretty good, pretty good Batman.

Tug McTighe (1:00:34)
Yo, top gun for sure, but a lot of stuff, including Batman Forever, oh boy.

Yeah, not the worst one for sure. All right, I'm done.

Matt Loehrer (1:00:44)
Yeah,

I'm back.

Tug McTighe (1:00:46)
Thanks for being a part of Cinemassage. We'll see you guys next time.

Matt Loehrer (1:00:49)
Yeah, thanks guys. See you bud.