S01E22 — The Martian

SPOILER ALERT: This episode and transcript below contains major spoilers for The martian.

Featuring hosts Timothy Haynes, Donna Haynes, Rebekah Edwards, and T. Josiah Haynes.

Spoiler alert: The Martian is (collectively) one of our favorites! Book, movie, whatever… we’re obsessed.

Our family of 4 covers the major changes the filmmakers and writers made from book to movie, including which ones we liked best and the ones we thought were… meh.

Final Verdicts

If you haven’t listened to the episode yet, we recommend waiting to read our verdicts. (But you’re probably grown, so do what you want!)

The Percy Jackson book captures a mischievous 12-year-old’s epic quest grounded in Greek mythology, while the 2010 movie ages everyone up and swaps charm for chaotic plot changes. The Disney+ show gets closer to the heart of the book, with a younger cast and more faithful character arcs.

Tim: The book was better

Donna: The book was better

Rebekah: The book was better

Josiah: The book was better

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Full Episode Transcript

Prefer reading? Check out the full episode transcript below. It’s AI-generated from our audio, and if we’re being honest… no one sat to read the entire thing for accuracy. (After all, we were there the whole time.) 😉 We’re sorry in advance for any typos or transcription errors.

[00:00:00] Rebekah: Hey, before we get into today’s episode, I wanted to ask you for a favor. We’re planning to start a free online group for listeners of the podcast, but first we need to know where you’d prefer us to do that. We posted on our Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram accounts today with polls on whether or not you’d rather join us on discord or in a Facebook group.

We’re excited to connect with you and we want to answer more of your burning questions about us the books and films we review and what you want us to review in the future. Please take just a minute to respond to our poll and then we’ll let you know in the next episode where to join us. And while we’re here, if you have a minute or two, we’d be delighted if you’d take that minute to leave us a rating or review on your favorite podcast listening app.

Every time I get one of these, all five of us celebrated in our group chat and it’s honestly a blast. It also helps us connect with new listeners and families who enjoy the content we produce just like you do. Anyway, thanks. Enjoy the 

[00:00:53] Tim: show. There’s a star man waiting in the sky. Welcome

[00:01:17] Rebekah: to the book is better podcast. We are a family of four reviewing book to film adaptations. Uh, this is a clean podcast, not always appropriate for the youngest listeners, but today we are Super excited to be talking about the Martian. Uh, the book by Andy Weir was adapted into a film in 2015. Am I remembering that correctly?

And uh, we all really love this book and film, I think. So I’m super excited to get started. So before we get into the bones of it, we like to start with a little fun fact about ourselves. Considering. The names of some of the manned space missions since the 1960s. What would you name a space mission that was manned if it was Up to you and why?

So here’s a couple of the names that we’ve had. Freedom 7, Project Mercury, Gemini Missions, the Apollo Missions, Voskhod 1, and then Artemis, which actually launches in September 2025 and another the year later in September of 26. So, I’ll go first. My name is Rebecca. I am the daughter slash sister of the family.

I think that if I was naming a manned space mission, I would name it, uh, Aurora Quest. Because the Aurora Borealis is very pretty and I like colors and I like to go on quests. So that is, that’s what I would 

[00:02:41] Josiah: do. Surprises none of us. I’m Josiah. I am the brother and the son of this family. If I had a manned space You 

[00:02:52] Rebekah: said that like you’re a robot.

I am the brother and 

[00:02:56] Tim: the son 

[00:02:57] Josiah: I’m getting into character. I’m getting into character as the manned mission. As the actual spacecraft. Got it, got it, got it. You have to be 

[00:03:05] Rebekah: the mission. Okay. 

[00:03:06] Josiah: Yes. If I were a manned mission, I would be called Charon. Charon. Charon. Do you remember Karen from 

[00:03:15] Rebekah: Percy Jackson, Percy Jackson?

Yes, I do. I would 

[00:03:20] Josiah: be called Karen, who is the creepy little dude who, uh, escorts you across the river sticks into the underworld. And, uh, everyone, I’m not sure 

[00:03:32] Tim: that would have a lot of luck. Yeah, 

[00:03:37] Josiah: they would, um, almost exclusively, well, it would have to be a manned mission That never came back to earth by design.

Interstellar. Yeah, like by design. I 

[00:03:48] Speaker 5: got it. So I am Donna. I’m the wife and mom and Moomaw of the group, even though no grandchildren are present at the time of recording. Hey mom. So I. Hello Moomaw. You know, this fun fact was mine. So I created this one. So I had some time to think about it. So my. Um, uh, manned mission.

My, um, mission that would have beings on it would be called Angama, Angama, after my two favorite things, uh, that aren’t humans. Um, cows, so Angus and llamas, Angama, and I would think either a cow or a llama should be included on the mission, even though I don’t know how that would work. I mean, 

[00:04:38] Rebekah: every 

[00:04:38] Speaker 5: mission needs a logo, so yeah, that’s what I think.

So would it be the head of a cow and the butt of a llama? I’m thinking the front, 

[00:04:47] Josiah: the front half of a cow, the back half of a llama. Yeah. So a franken logo, the back half of the cow, because then you get a llama with utters. Yes, I like that. Llama with utters. 

[00:05:00] Speaker 5: Yes. And if I got to name it, And they wanted me to have, you know, I got soul input on the logo because I’m so creative.

Um, obviously I think it would pay homage to our podcast if it showed a little bit of butt crack because the butt crack Santa, 

[00:05:17] Rebekah: you always got a nod back to the butt 

[00:05:18] Speaker 5: crack Santa. I’m, I just, how could you not? He’s iconic. Mom, that is so proud to be the patriarch of this family. That’s utterly disturbing.

[00:05:29] Tim: Before you guys go any deeper into this hole, um, my name is Tim. I am the husband and father, uh, of this crew and I am really excited to be here. What are you? I’m actually going to do. 

[00:05:48] Rebekah: Oh, no, she’s lost it. We’ve lost mom. We’ve lost her. 

[00:05:52] Tim: So I would actually, um, I would actually do a throwback. Um, I would call it enterprise because, um, I think Star Trek, I think Star Trek had a lot to do with, um, our Our societal goal of putting a man in space and putting someone on the moon.

I think that President Kennedy made the challenge, but I think for the culture at large, Star Trek had a lot to do with people getting excited about that possibility. And so I would call it an enterprise. Or discover, but we’ve already done a discovery, so. 

[00:06:32] Rebekah: Just as a reminder, if you’re listening for the first time, spoiler warning, we’re going to spoil the entire plot of the Martian, including the book and some things that were not in the film and some things that were in the film, but not in the book.

So, uh, be aware of that as well. We will probably mention Project Hail Mary, which is another, uh, work by Andy Weir. Uh, I will not give plot spoilers for that without giving you a warning. So anybody who’s reading 

[00:06:59] Josiah: her give any spoilers for Project Mary. 

[00:07:02] Rebekah: Wow. Well, Josiah, why don’t you tell us what happens in the Martian?

[00:07:07] Josiah: Mark Watney is an astronaut of the Ares 3 crew to explore Mars in the near future. He’s stranded on the Red Planet through a series of unfortunate misadventures during the crew’s unexpected escape from the planet due to a mission ending storm. Over the next year and a half, Watney displays tenacity and a fierce refusal to give up.

Troubleshooting a myriad of technical issues, farming potatoes, reestablishing communication with Earth, and ultimately returning to Earth after a harrowing rescue from the Hermes crew. 

[00:07:47] Rebekah: Takes 

[00:07:50] Josiah: place, I believe, in 2035, which is about 10, 11 years from now, but 25 years from the original. Publishing that 

[00:07:59] Rebekah: in the book.

I didn’t I didn’t remember 

[00:08:01] Josiah: that there being an actual date given. I had read that. Let me check. 

[00:08:05] Speaker 5: Yeah, I read it. I 

[00:08:07] Josiah: had read that. Let me check. 

[00:08:10] Speaker 5: Yeah, something else I had seen some either trivia or facts that that referred to 2035 or 36. So either there. Story begins on Sol 6, November 12th, 

[00:08:22] Josiah: 2035. Yeah, it’s in, um, it’s in the novels Wikipedia.

Let me check the movies Wikipedia. It, yeah, it’s, it’s mentioned in the movies and the books Wikipedia, so I assume. 

[00:08:38] Rebekah: Oh my gosh. Okay. This is so cool. I know listeners, you can’t see this, but the book and the front of the book, there’s actually a map of where Mark Mark is, uh, on the planet and like all of the surrounding areas.

That is actually really neat. I just opened it to kind of check that and see if it is listed anywhere, but we listened to the audio book. So it’s hard. Cause like, You know, you may not necessarily know if there’s resources or whatever that would name, that would name that kind of thing. Also, he gives a cut of Project Hail Mary at the end of the book, which I think is interesting.

Really cool. Well, we typically divide, we like to talk about like the changes. of the movie and we like to divide them into categories just to keep our own brain straight. So today we’re going to start out by talking about changes to the plot and timeline of the movie. And then we’ve got a few things for the setting of the movie and then the way that characters are different from book to film, which I’m going to say as a pretty faithful adaptation, there’s not a whole lot to talk about with some of those, but.

[00:09:42] Tim: There’s plenty, of course. First off, the book opens with Watney coming back to consciousness after being knocked out in the accident that prompted the crew’s departure. Later in the book, in chapter 12, we’re described as a flashback, the events that led to Watney being left for dead. The movie begins with the flashback scene leading up to Watney’s accident.

In the flashback described in the book, Johansson He’s a reading that his spacesuit showed his heart rate dropped to zero, leading the rest of the crew to immediately accept that he was dead and return to the M. A. V. The film shows them looking for him and and not noting reliable biomonitor signals signals.

But Captain Lewis nearly allows the M. A. V. To tip by searching for him so long before they depart. So those are some slight changes in when you get the picture of what happens, which makes sense, I think, for the 

[00:10:45] Rebekah: I thought this was an excellent change. Um, I like I’ve, you’re gonna hear this throughout. I love this movie and I love this book, but I thought that this was a really, really good movie change because I immediately was grabbed.

I immediately connected with the members of the crew and in the book, I think that you’re supposed to kind of connect with Mark Watney, really, really root for him. And so by the time they give you the flashback, I want to start say it’s close to when he’s like reestablished connection with earth or is about to or something like that.

And so I think in the book it’s like, we’re introducing you to this person we want you to really root for. And then we’re kind of gonna put in other characters and like other people are going to start to have more agency. But yeah, I really, really liked this. 

[00:11:29] Speaker 5: And I appreciated the fact they showed you.

One the one that came to mind the most was they showed you the captain’s character that she had, you know, great concern for that one person. We don’t want to leave that one person behind. It troubled me at first. It troubled me that like, she almost let them all die there because had the, had it tipped and fallen.

He was like, we would, we can’t recover from that. And they’re trying to water and all that. But I did appreciate the fact it was described well, and Jessica Chastain acted it well, the torment within her tearing at her about this. I did feel like that was, you know, Incredibly effective. Like you were on your seat thinking what what is going on?

[00:12:20] Tim: Yeah, we’re gonna use some some terminology that the book in the film use. The M. A. V. Is the Mars ascent vehicle. So it’s the way to get back to orbit. Um, there are several things in here. that we may have to explain just in case you haven’t actually seen the movie or read the book. 

[00:12:39] Speaker 5: Um, another interesting timeline changes.

It’s not huge, but I, I get what they did with it. Um, the book begins with the crew on soul or Mars day six. Um, it also, he also describes at some point, I think there’s 40 minutes, the Martian day is 40 minutes longer. Then an earth day. Yeah. So yeah, 

[00:13:03] Rebekah: they mentioned it in the context of like the, the character who finds his, like who sees him and stuff.

She has to stay on his schedule. And so throughout the thing, like this poor girl has to literally like change her waking and sleeping times, 40 minutes every single day, even though she’s on earth. 

[00:13:21] Speaker 5: Yeah, it’s really, I thought that was fascinating, but they, in the book, they begin on March day six or soul six, the movie shows the first day is soul 18.

Um, and the reason being Ridley Scott and the screenwriter drew Goddard didn’t think six souls. Was enough time for them to make enough poop for Watney and the crew for later on for Watney to to grow viable plants. And we’ll we’ll get into that a little bit. That’s just part of what he does to to help him survive.

Out of context. 

[00:13:55] Josiah: That is such a weird sentence. Yeah. 

[00:13:58] Rebekah: Okay. Let me just like. Let me just say this because the book gets super into like his botany powers and stuff. So they get into the scientific stuff way deeper as well. But like, if you have not seen this or whatever, Mark Watney is able to basically use.

His and the crew’s, uh, fecal matter, which is not, obviously there’s no toilets exactly on Mars. They have to, and they use that to fertilize live, like, potatoes that they brought because they were going to celebrate Thanksgiving. And so he does this whole thing where he’s got like a little bit of Earth’s nutrients.

Soil with all of the, like bacteria in it that he needs and stuff like that. And he’s able to use the inside of his ha or the like habitation module that he’s in to just like plant hundreds of potatoes and, right. Because anyway, , so mm-hmm. When they use 

[00:14:46] Speaker 5: their, because when they use the bathroom on the ship, it’s contained in like a, a sealed container when they package, flush package.

Yeah. Basically they don’t have water systems, so, right. So he’s got all this. That he has to go through and, and. This was one of the first ones, first changes that I had come across as I was researching and I was fascinated by the fact that they wanted as much accuracy as they could get, not just we’re like they wanted to, I guess, respect the fact that he’d done so much research.

And so for a, for a director and a screenwriter to go, wow. Will that be enough time for them to have produced this fecal matter to do? I mean, to me, that is like, I love that top thinking. It is interesting 

[00:15:36] Tim: that that’s the reason that they did that. For me, I thought that it was, you know, it was nice that they had been there that long, but I, Yeah, it was more of an emotional 

[00:15:47] Speaker 5: reason.

Oh, they’ve been together almost 

[00:15:50] Tim: a month and doing this. They’ve been doing the research and doing the experiments and this, that and the other. 

[00:15:55] Speaker 5: Yeah. And so to keep things as, as real and, and believable as they could do it inside the studios in, in Cordo studios, where they filmed all the interior shots, they put together the room with the potato farm and actually grew potatoes.

To that, all, all that you see, all the filming you see of him going back in and checking in their progress, they’re, they group, that’s amazing. 

[00:16:23] Tim: Yeah. I like that realism. 

[00:16:25] Josiah: I think it speaks to the genuine, incredible nature of the filming process where they weren’t just trying to throw something together.

They wanted it. They wanted to honor the source material. They wanted to honor the science and it shows in the final product as a side note. I love that. 

[00:16:44] Speaker 5: Because sci fi, sci fi books aren’t movies aren’t often looked at as, as big award winners for technical stuff, for lighting, for sound, maybe special effects.

But for this to be a spacey movie, space movie, they, they rewarded it with a lot of other nods. I thought that was, that’s telling as well. Yeah. 

[00:17:07] Rebekah: Well, and I, so I am a huge fan partly of this book and some of the other stuff that Andy Weir has done specifically because of all of this. So if you’ve ever read this book, it gets way more into the science and mechanical engineering side of Watney’s work that he does.

And he has to do so much to stay alive. I mean, the film, honestly, going back and watching it, if you just, like, take yourself out of the entertainment, it feels like he survives too easily, in my opinion. Like, cuz there’s so much going on. They also fudge some details in the film, or, let me say it this way, they don’t fudge them.

My guess is that they figured some things out, but like, for instance, when in the book, Mark Watney is trying to communicate with NASA using the images from Pathfinder, um, they only have like a still camera that they can take that rotates. So he uses like an ASCII table. It’s like this whole complicated thing, but he tries to take a pen outside to write down what they’re saying and the pen explodes because of Mars, Mars is, um, lack of atmosphere and cold temperature and stuff.

And so in the book he like has to like scrape words into the ground as he’s like trying to see what they talk about. So. There’s a lot of really interesting things that I like. Obviously, I understand why they’re cut from the film, but I like them in the book. Um, but it’s also one of the reasons, and this is not a spoiler.

It’s one of the reasons I love Project Hail Mary, because there’s a lot of like realism in the fictional work. 

[00:18:35] Josiah: Do you remember that urban myth about NASA spending millions to develop a pen that would operate in zero gravity? And then the Soviet Union just used pencils. 

[00:18:47] Tim: Oh, 

[00:18:48] Josiah: that’s an urban myth. It’s probably not super true, but I thought that he could have just used a pencil, 

[00:18:55] Rebekah: but in the film he’s using like a Sharpie, 

[00:18:59] Josiah: a Sharpie, a Sharpie.

It’s liquid. I don’t know. That’s liquid. Yeah. The fiber. Yeah. 

[00:19:06] Rebekah: So, uh, just as a kind of a point learning about the making of the film. So Andy Weir used really, really detailed descriptions of a lot of Watney’s work, but he was still kind of a sarcastic and funny character. So in the film, The goal was let’s take out a lot of the jargon and make him a little funnier, a little more sarcastic or make that a bigger part of his character.

So they did leave some science jargon in the film. There’s obviously lots of engineering stuff that he gets to do, but uh, Ridley Scott wanted to make sure that it wasn’t just some like big, deep sci fi where you can’t really connect with it unless you’re really into the nerdy side. Also, Andy Weir is the writer of The Martian, and he’s also written Artemis and Project Hail Mary are the other two I’ve read.

Um, he is actually the son of an electrical engineer and particle physicist, and he himself has a background in computer science. So he’s basically the perfect person to write a book like this. And that probably part of what his dad did as a career was one of the reasons that he wanted to make everything as realistic as possible, but also giving you characters to really, like, 

[00:20:12] Tim: Yeah.

Yeah. That’s one of the things about, um, about some of the newest iterations of Star Trek and, and other science fiction franchises. They have a tendency to just use a lot of jargon to say, okay, we got from this place to this place, or we got over this problem by doing blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And nobody understands it, but we say, okay, we, we accept it.

So I like the fact that, that he was very big on. Not just saying, okay, Watney survived by doing this thing and just get on with it. I liked the fact that he backed it up with science. In fact, 

[00:20:50] Speaker 5: there was a point where they are going to rescue Watney with this probe that goes out early and they, they build the probe and, and Cut out some of the testing time, unfortunately, um, but the probe launches gets in and before it even gets close to out of the atmosphere, there’s a problem.

It explodes. And after that mission, Teddy reads remarks and. Uh, stands that he has to stand in front of the press, obviously, and give remarks, and he’s got a red folder. But one of the things they did for some effect in the book, there’s a blue folder that has a successful launch beat and then in the red folder.

Not so successful. And it’s, it’s a very kind of an emotional thing. There’s your reading, uh, where he’s got this in his hand and he’s reading his marks. And then all of a sudden you get these notices that this, this probe is going to blow. And, um, I thought that was a pretty cool change in the, it was a pretty cool thing in the book that they could have easily had in the movie with no extra time.

But, you know. 

[00:22:04] Rebekah: One of the cool things in the book, I remember that wasn’t pulled over probably just for time purposes to related to that is at the end when Mark gets home, uh, petty and an Annie, I think have a quick conversation as he’s about to go make his speech. Like when, basically when the mission to get him back on the Hermes is a success.

And she said something, it was either, I don’t remember anyway, it might’ve been Vincent. 

[00:22:29] Tim: Remember that he 

[00:22:29] Rebekah: basically says something about One of the person who’s talking to him says, aren’t you glad you didn’t have to pull the red folder? It’s great to pull the blue folder this time or whatever. And he says, I didn’t even make a red folder like he was not even going to entertain the idea that it could happen.

So I thought that was a cool detail in the book 

[00:22:47] Tim: in the, in the film. Mark is extremely gaunt by the time he leaves for Pathfinder. Um, however, the change in the timeline when the Aries three crew comes back to save him means that he was actually on full rations rather than having to conserve, which we see in the book.

Um, It is mentioned that he may have lost weight because of all the hard labor and reduced gravity, but the film makes it seem as if he’s still on short rations. He’s made a big deal about that, and I thought they did that very well, but it was, it made it more. more vital that he make it, uh, that he get there because he couldn’t have survived otherwise.

However, in the book, Watney says that he was able to test some of the soil and the potatoes after the explosion destroyed the farmland. And as it turns out, some bacteria did live. So he actually could have lasted a little longer if he needed to, uh, but that’s cut from the film. Which simplifies the fact that he didn’t have enough food.

He needed to get rescued and it was get rescued or die on the planet. 

[00:23:59] Speaker 5: You remember that little spot, uh, a spot there in the film where he says, well, so here’s NASA’s plan. This is my normal portion. A day and I’ve already cut that, blah. And now they want me to cut it again. And so yeah, I think that they do want to take advantage of the, the drama that that adds or the anticipation that seems to him being, him being saved, uh, by realizing he’s wasting away.

And yes, and atmosphere is different. It is, uh, 

[00:24:32] Rebekah: yeah, it is crazy. Josh was the one that said that, like, I pointed it out when we were watching the movie the other day. And Josh was the one that said, well, he was on Mars. Like. The gravity’s less, couldn’t that have like contributed to it? Like he’s doing backbreaking work.

Like, so I understand that there’s kind of justification. And when I saw the movie the first time, I remember that it was very, like, it was very impactful. I think when they show him like all skinny and stuff, but 

[00:24:57] Tim:

[00:24:58] Rebekah: think that. It was one of the things going back and reading the book and watching the movie.

It was one of the very few things that I saw that I was like slightly annoyed by, um, because for me, I don’t know. I wish that they would have like tweaked a little more to make it clear as to why he still wasn’t able to like keep weight on because to me it just felt inconsistent. It felt like, um, what’s the right word?

It, it wasn’t the continuity. What’s the word I’m looking for? Anyway, it just, it took me out of it slightly because I was like, wait, that doesn’t make sense because if this thing you just said happen, but then that thing you just said happened, like those things don’t match up. Like with the, Oh, he can be rescued on soul, whatever, but he needs enough food till soul.

You know what I mean? Like they kind of had just made an argument that they confused me with. 

[00:25:43] Tim: Yeah. Well, I, I think that, I think that it certainly could have been the fact that the gravity was different and he was doing backbreaking work, uh, because they didn’t have any kind of exercise equipment in the hab, the, uh, the habitation, but they’d also not planned for them to be there more than 30 souls.

Um, and he was there for almost two years. They had, they had not. devise some kind of a plan to keep them in good physical health so they could come back to earth easily. Uh, they hadn’t yet devised any kind of a plan. So, 

[00:26:21] Rebekah: okay. So there’s a lot that happens in between like Mark wakes up and then Mark decides to take a trip to Schiaparelli.

So if you’ve seen obviously all of this, there’s lots of stuff about him having to find a communications, like something to do communications. By the way, I did not Like mentioned this before, but there actually is a mention in the book that there’s a communications array that was with the hab that got blown away in the storm.

They don’t mention that in the movie. I think they just painted as the Mav was how they communicated with earth. But I did think that that was interesting that they took that out. 

[00:26:55] Josiah: I did read that. Ridley Scott said the scene with the hexadecimal communication system and stuff. ASCII. Yes, he explained that that was probably the most complicated sequence to film because it was hard for him to understand it himself.

[00:27:11] Rebekah: Oh, wow. Which I thought was really cool. I really liked it. 

[00:27:14] Josiah: So I was like, how do I explain this to everyone else? 

[00:27:16] Tim: I think actually, um, in the movie, they do mention the fact that it was the communications antenna, a part of that, that went through his suit. And so I got the impression from the movie that they just said.

Basically, the communications antenna was what was broken off and destroyed. Part of it went into Watney and so no communication. They didn’t make a big deal about it, but it is there, I think, in small form. 

[00:27:45] Rebekah: Because I just remember in the book, he was like, his first thing was like, Oh, I got to find the communications array.

And he searches for it and basically gives up. He’s like, it’s gone. Like, I’m not going to find it. So. Before, you know, several of the other things that end up being changed, he also goes and he finds Pathfinder, the probe, the actual real life probe that landed in 1997, I think, on Mars when it ran out of battery.

So he like goes and finds this old thing, comes up with a way to communicate with Earth. They do something where he can communicate in text format eventually. Um, he’s growing potatoes, he’s working on lots of different things. They have all sorts of different plans. And what ends up happening is they culminate in the plan that They were trying to send a supply probe to him.

He was going to wait for the Aries four mission. So he would have had to wait four years. And then he was going to drive to the Schiaparelli crater and meet up with the Mars four crew who was going to land there. But when the supply mission fails, they realized Mark’s going to starve. He’s not going to have enough food because he ends up blowing up the Hab.

Um, so he, Ends up like there’s a, we’ll talk about the Rich Pernell thing in a little bit, but he essentially is going to die. And this guy at NASA communicates with a couple of people. There’s some like behind the scenes things going on. As it turns out, the Aries three crew can actually use the earth for adding some speed to their trip.

They’re going to get another supply probe, which was like a last ditch thing that happened with China. All of this is also in the movie. And once the Aries three crew gets that supply probe, they’re basically adding an extra year and a half to their mission. They go back and they meet mark who’s going to fly up to meet them.

So at the point which mark starts preparing for this trip, so we’re talking about well over more than halfway through the book, the events leading up to that. Uh, the trip to Schiaparelli Crater, this is where we start to see a ton of changes. So for instance, I think the biggest change that kind of cascades into a lot of other changes.

In the book, Watney is basically making modifications to the, to the Rover 2 that he’s going to use as like a trailer for his trip. And they’ve told him like, Hey, use this drill and you’ll drill out all these things and you’ll get rid of the ceiling of the Rover and then you can do this, whatever. He’s got this drill, which, okay, I’m sorry.

I’m a nerd. In the book, it is a huge drill, but it has a tiny, tiny head, and it takes him 120 seconds to drill each hole. In the movie, they just say, I don’t know why, but also that annoyed me a little bit. I was like, come on, it wouldn’t have hurt to like show that it was a very complicated thing, whatever.

In the book, he sets the drill against a bench and basically sends a current through Pathfinder into Unintentionally and he destroys the interior of the pathfinder like the sensitive electronics at which point he completely loses contact with NASA and cannot contact them again until he is at the M. A.

V. in Schiaparelli. So there is like an additional I don’t know, 150, 200 souls where he has no contact with the NASA and they, the film cuts that he just completely is able to talk to NASA the whole time, including during the entire trip. 

[00:31:00] Tim: I don’t know if an audience could have handled that. I think the book was really good, but I’m not sure that the, that an audience could have handled that.

Well, it was a harrowing enough trip. With the things that they did do, I think the reason they cut several things, uh, from it was because they wanted you to have a little bit of hope because every one of those things in the book that went away, you thought, Oh, what’s the other half of the book about, you know, yeah, he died.

And this is how they found it. Yeah, I don’t, I think, exactly. I think it might’ve been a little more difficult for, for a movie audience, perhaps. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. One of the things that changed was the tent that he built, uh, in the book, he built this tent structure that would fold out and be pressurized and have oxygen in it.

So he could get out of the vehicle, the Rover, which is about the size of a minivan with lots of equipment inside. And he could actually stand up straight. He could walk around, he could lay on some kind of a cot or bed. Um, and In the book, I thought, I thought that was one of the things that made it palatable to me because I have a bit of claustrophobia and I’m thinking it would be very difficult to always be inside that minivan.

So I liked the tent, but they cut it in the film and I understand why, but that would have been a nice little thing as well. 

[00:32:27] Rebekah: He’s like just laying on the ground in his space suit a lot during the trip, like while he’s charging the solar panels. 

[00:32:33] Josiah: Yeah. 

[00:32:33] Rebekah: Yeah. Which is interesting. Also, okay, question, help me remember, the air, there was a scene where, and I don’t think this is in the film, but maybe I’m wrong, there’s a scene where the airlock is, one of the airlocks is busted off the hab.

I, is that where the potatoes get killed? So that might be beforehand. 

[00:32:51] Tim: That’s the one where the potatoes get killed. Yeah. 

[00:32:54] Rebekah: Got it. And it wasn’t, okay. It was more complicated than the movie. Okay. 

[00:32:58] Tim: Yeah. 

[00:32:58] Rebekah: Josh, you can cut that. Sorry. I was, I just remembered that scene and I was like, was that in book? Okay. Anyway, continue on.

[00:33:03] Tim: The book does, does tell of a harrowing near miss where a large storm, a dust storm on Mars is going to affect Watney solar panels. They’ll affect it to the point where he simply would not be able to make it to where he needs to get to Schiaparelli. Fortunately, in the, in the book, uh, Mark notices that he’s getting less and less charge and he notices that in the distance, there’s the sky is a little darker, but they were talking about.

On earth in the book, they were that he wouldn’t, he probably wouldn’t notice it in time. By the time he got into the storm, it would be too late to do anything about it. Um, but fortunately he did notice in the book and, and he devised his own plan to avoid this storm. Remember in the book, he doesn’t have communication with NASA.

Um, had he had the communication with NASA, this wouldn’t have been all of that. yeah, all that harrowing to know there was a storm coming. NASA says there’s a storm coming. You need to avoid it. Uh, so I understand why that was cut from the film. 

[00:34:11] Rebekah: I thought it was really clever that like the way even that Mark notices he’s losing solar charge and like he ends up, I think it was, it was almost kind of a, um, an accident that he realizes it in the book because he notices that he’s not able to get quite as much charge on his solar panels.

And it’s kind of like, Um, shifting, you know, he’s like, it’s going a little down, like maybe that, you know, she ends up walking, he walks like away from the rover and he gets up on a ledge and he looks out and he’s like, It looks clearer. And then he looks back and notices that he can’t see the rover as clearly that it’s hazy.

And then all of a sudden he’s like, Oh, I have to like, so it was like a very like edge case where he actually figured out what was happening. I liked 

[00:34:59] Tim: his experiments to find out he drove a distance away from, from the rover and put a solar triangle. He did this triangulation with the solar panels and he had to, you know, record the the amount of this sun that they that they absorbed at a particular time.

I thought it was very clever how they got around that. But 

[00:35:23] Speaker 5: and in the book, I mean, this is just another plot twist, I guess, more ramping up of of the anticipation and the anxiety over him surviving or not, which I agree with what Tim was saying before. I think they picked They, they picked and they chose carefully what they would put in here because assuming not as many people probably read the book if they think it’s sci fi, if they think it’s science, but, but to relate to a large audience who might get bogged down by some of that or might get overly whatever and you know, they’ve, we’ve already seen him extract the metal from his stomach, which every time we, every time we watched it, you know, Tim kind of has to partially close his eyes during that scene, but it’s effective.

So I can see some of the decisions. 

[00:36:18] Rebekah: The last thing that was like a big, Oh my gosh, moment that they cut from the book to film, he is in the Rover and he starts going into Schiaparelli and the whole thing turns over onto its side. side because he hits a soft patch. And he, he remarks in the book, he’s like, if NASA was on the phone, like they would have just told me the exact perfect route.

So then he starts going like five miles an hour or something, or five kilometers an hour. So he goes super slow for an entire travel day and all that stuff. It works in the book. Again, I think Yes, back like as to what you’re saying, everyone really, um, I understand cutting a lot of it because in the book it’s like problem, solution, problem, solution, problem, solution, and I find it really interesting.

But in movie form, I think that all of this builds anticipation. Yes, and it allows them to take a lot of liberties. with the rescue attempt because the rescue attempt in the movie was way more unhinged. 

[00:37:15] Tim: Another change that happened because he could communicate with NASA in the film as opposed to the book.

They did have NASA tell him directly that he’d be the man, the fastest man in history when they were telling him about all the modifications that were going to have to be made to the Mars Ascent Vehicle. Um, he was going to have to take the top off of it and one of the side panels. You’re sending me to space in a convertible.

Yeah, you’re sending me to space in a convertible. And they said, they said, well, it does have a tarp. And he said, okay, so I’ve got a rack top. But, uh, they said that you’ll be the fastest man in space. And I loved his interaction in the movie with himself as he’s saying this. He said, they’ve told me that because they think that’s going to make me accept all of these things.

And he kind of keeps talking to himself and says, well, Yeah, I do. It does make a difference. He’s like, that sounds so 

[00:38:09] Rebekah: that was a very, very fun scene, I think. 

[00:38:13] Tim: And I thought that Matt Damon did a, did a great job. I feel like, oh my gosh, I cared for him. I feel like you You really did feel like he had the intelligence and the ingenuity to do the things that he was doing.

Uh, and he was, and it kept, kept it lighthearted. Uh, this could have been a heavy drama if they wanted to make it that way, but the book and the movie keep it lighthearted. And I really liked that. 

[00:38:41] Josiah: Maybe it’s a cliche, but I just can’t imagine any other actor playing this role. 

[00:38:47] Rebekah: Mm hmm. So one of the only things that bothered me, and this has nothing to do with this movie, but this is a very small cast, but not a plot spoiler for the movie Interstellar.

Interstellar and The Martian came out fairly close to each other. What year did Interstellar come out? 2014, the year before. Yeah, yeah. So it came out the year before. And it is a little weird that Matt Damon was cast as the lone person on a planet in a futuristic space movie, but near futuristic, not far futuristic.

And it was, it was, that’s weird. Like it, it threw me off because I saw. Uh, interstellar first because it came out first. And so then when I saw the Martian, it took me a minute to like get out of like remembering that character because again, no plot spoilers. The person in the interstellar movie that Matt Damon plays stranded on a planet.

Yes. Very different person. And so it totally was like, I was like, wait, okay, no, I like this guy. Okay. It’s good. It’s good. It’s fine. So 

[00:39:50] Tim: it did throw me off. It is a little strange for me as well. Uh, when I watch movies, when I. When I talk to people about who this actor was or whatever, I often say, Oh yeah, he played such and such in this other movie because I’m still kind of seeing that.

Uh, and I appreciate movies where I think I don’t see this person at all. 

[00:40:13] Speaker 5: Another scene that they. left in partially to in the film that was fleshed out a little more in the book. Um, as they’re going, as the areas is passing around earth and they’re headed back out to get mark, all of them have conversations with their families.

And you have a few of those in the film. Um, Johannes, um, Martina’s wife is angry for a moment, you know, and, but in the book they have a little bit more banter, but the one con one conversation that they left out, which I get why they did. They didn’t include the conversation with Watney and Lewis in the film.

I don’t think, uh, can you talk to my parents? Because in the book, I, every time I get to that point, I don’t think that was I died doing something I love. Um, but another conversation they left out of the film, I totally understand why, but it was super impactful in the book. It’s when Beth Johanson’s talking to her dad.

Her mom couldn’t even come to the place where they brought her dad to talk to her because her mom’s so anxious and nervous. And why did she do this? And he goes through saying, you were such a good girl. We never had a problem out of you. And now why are you doing this to your mother? And then she has to say, Hey, I’ll make it home.

Tell mom I’ll make it home. And he presses and she he’s like, I’ve never pressed into your business before Beth, but I’m going to now. And she was basically like, dad, if the Faye, if this fails, everybody would commit suicide and then I would eat them. I’m like, I never, the first time I read the book, I could think, Think about, oh my gosh, I never even considered that kind of thing that would happen, but she was like, that’s what happens on a space mission.

One of us, one of us has chosen that if something goes wrong and any of us can live, it would be one. And this is what would happen. I totally get why they wouldn’t put that in the film. 

[00:42:20] Tim: Yeah. Yeah. This is also the script for a horror movie if someone wants to slightly adapt it. 

[00:42:26] Josiah: Yeah. I think I read somewhere that Ridley Scott agreed to direct this and left a Prometheus sequel project.

[00:42:37] Speaker 5: Oh. Wow. Smart for him. 

[00:42:42] Tim: Another change because of the timeline and, uh, and the plot. This one was a little, was a little strange to me. Uh, and I really, really paid attention to it after I’d read the book. Cause I’d, I’d watched the film first, but in the novel, in the final part of the rescue, back. Pulls Watney into the Hermes.

He doesn’t let him unstrap until he’s inside with him inside the Mav and he’s not going to allow him to get unhooked until they have him attached already. However, Um, in that in the book, he has no agency. He doesn’t do anything once he straps himself into the math. Mark is not in control of anything. He doesn’t pilot the vehicle.

He doesn’t do anything until they literally attach the tether. to him and take him back to the Hermes, but in the film it has Commander Lewis as the one who suits up because she knows that it’s going to be a little too far, a little too risky and so she doesn’t want to risk anybody else in the crew, but she gets into.

What one might call a space theater chair or, uh, for those who are much older, the real 

[00:43:54] Rebekah: name of it, . 

[00:43:56] Tim: I would say that it looked a lot like Captain Kirk’s seat on the original Star Rek. That is 

[00:44:02] Rebekah: also not the official name of the thing that they used at the Real Thing. . Yeah. 

[00:44:06] Tim: The real name is the Manned Maneuvering Unit or the MMU.

And she flies out to get Mark. I mean, she flies out to get Mark. Uh, she’s still tethered, uh, to the ship, but she’s in this little vehicle. Which is 

[00:44:22] Rebekah: the thing, like, so Beck was also tethered to the ship on it, in the book. Right. Okay. I do have a comment on this. All I could think as Lewis was like, no, I’m gonna go do it, was, uh, Okay.

Mm-hmm . You’re Harry Potter and you have a saving people thing. Yes. You almost killed everyone to try and save Mark at the beginning. And now you, who is not the MAV, or sorry, you who is not the EVA specialist is deciding to do the final EVA and it very much made me think. You have a saving people thing like it.

It bugs me that they because she was a good captain, but in the book part of why she was a good captain is because she had the ability to like, trust people to do what they were good at. 

[00:45:06] Josiah: Yeah. True. And I think that it is a fact that in actual NASA missions, the commander needs to stay in command, not actually doing the little missions like that.

When Mark cuts a hole in his suit, this is in the movie. Mark says that he could do this. Mark. Yeah. Punctures his suit in the movie. Yeah. To fly like Iron Man. In the book, he never does this. He references it as a passing joke. Lewis immediately shoots him down. Uh. 

[00:45:39] Rebekah: But it does give them the idea to use, uh, Atmosphere’s thrust to slow down the ship.

So it like gives her the idea just the same as book to movie. So it’s still 

[00:45:48] Josiah: part of the plot, but in the movie I, I can imagine a situation where Ridley Scott or the screenwriter. It’s just reading that part of the book and saying, gosh, that would make a great shot though, 

[00:46:01] Tim: if he 

were 

Iron Man. I think it is interesting because, um, Lewis, Commander Lewis ends up short, she can’t get to the unit to get him.

So somehow he has to get to them and so it gives them the opportunity to do the Iron Man thing where he’s flying wildly. And I 

[00:46:23] Rebekah: think that it’s It’s all, I think that this is the reason that they cut all of the problem solution stuff from so much that Mark was doing on his own. You connect with more of the characters and yes, in the book, like you’re obviously they save Mark and like, it’s great and you’d like them, but in the movie, even though you get less time with them in some ways, you’ve connected with them at this point where like you’re cheering all of them on and they again can become very unhinged.

Like this is so everything about. The rescue in the movie is like very anti NASA in the book. It was like we were kind of on the line of this is insane, but we would let them do it like we don’t have control. Whatever 

[00:47:03] Tim: limits of what we could do, 

[00:47:04] Rebekah: right? The move felt like, uh, this is not realistic anymore, but they end up 

[00:47:12] Speaker 5: Well, she turns off the calm from all of the world listening and says, Hey Vogel, can you come in and build a bomb?

[00:47:22] Rebekah: Yeah. Yeah. So, and she does that in the book, but it’s like, I don’t know, it’s just interesting to me. They kind of go unrealistic, but in the novel also, as Watney gets back into, um, the airlock with. With Beck, he makes a comment as like in his, you know, mind thing that the book is. He says, if we were in a Hollywood movie, the entire crew would have met me in the airlock.

His mind thing. Sorry, I couldn’t think of how to say it. He was thinking like, uh, if we were in a Hollywood movie, the whole crew would have met me in the airlock. We would have high fived and had tearful hugs. But we don’t because that’s unrealistic because the rest of the crew was like doing what they needed to be doing in the other parts of the ship, which is exactly what they did in the film.

They all made an airlock and they laugh and cry and make comments about how a baddie smells to me at the calm. 

[00:48:08] Speaker 5: I mean, who cares? Who’s up there at the front of the ship 

[00:48:11] Josiah: has to be tongue in cheek of like, yeah, we know this is in the book and we’re making a joke. 

[00:48:17] Rebekah: I hope so. It 

[00:48:18] Tim: is funny. Well, it works. It for sure works.

It’s okay to do 

[00:48:22] Josiah: things like that, right? 

[00:48:23] Tim: Yeah, 

[00:48:24] Josiah: whatever, whatever. The book ends with Watney being rescued. Watney is reflecting on the ability for humanity to unite to solve problems, paralleling how he problem solved to save his own life. And it’s very inspiring. It kind of makes me tear up to think of how much of a uniting experience this must have been for the world.

Like he doesn’t really have to say it. I can imagine. Yeah, I can. See people from all over the world watching screens and hoping for this guy to get rescued. I can imagine that my head so the film Is a little different on the ending it adds scenes of him reuniting with the crew and teaching a class talking about Solving one problem at a time in your own life The other crew members and NASA folks are doing their thing during the Ares 5 launch the next You Mars mission, 

[00:49:20] Rebekah: Johansson are having a baby as they watched on the TV stuff with his 

[00:49:26] Tim: dozen children is going on the launch of 

[00:49:32] Rebekah: also Martinez, who also has a dozen children is again leaving his family to go back.

[00:49:39] Tim: There’s one thing in, in that whole segment where he’s going to teach where he’s sitting down on the bench and he sees that tiny little plant that is reflective of what happened when he saw the very first sprout from the potato plant on Mars, which reminded him, I thought it was a very cool visual connection.

I liked that. 

[00:49:59] Josiah: I think that there’s a lot of good things from the book and movie ending. I kind of prefer the book ending to just kind of sum it all up in that way. But the film does have more of a montage approach, kind of saying, Hey, Watney wasn’t the only main character. There are other people who have endings.

[00:50:18] Rebekah: I liked the film ending being different. 

[00:50:20] Speaker 5: Yeah. His, the way they changed his appearance just enough, he grew his hair out. He’s just, he’s in civilian clothes. He does look a little older, which he should, um, you know, I mean, that should have aged his body. And I thought some of those things were, you know, touches.

And then when the recruits and the students were jogging past and they all start jogging. Oh my gosh, I’m it makes me tear up every time. Sorry. 

[00:50:51] Tim: There’s a reason why you don’t watch romance movies. 

[00:50:53] Speaker 5: There is. I would have 

[00:50:56] Rebekah: to have medicine for that. There weren’t a lot of changes to the setting in the Martian from the book to film.

Um, very few. 

[00:51:04] Tim: And in the spaceship. We both had the same. It’s 

[00:51:08] Rebekah: like, what were you going to do? Put him on, like, a different planet? Pluto, 

[00:51:12] Tim: which is not a planet. 

[00:51:13] Rebekah: Yes, yes, yes. Uh, so One of the small setting changes that they made that I noticed the first time I watched the movie, cause I think I had read the book before watching the movie, was that the space suits are all different.

So in the movie, Mark Watney wears like a thin, like orange and gray space suit when he’s outside on Mars, but he wears the really thick, bulky, really, What we would consider like a traditional space suit when he gets in the MAV and like goes back up to the ship. However, in the book, they make the point to say that his Mars ascent vehicle space suit, the one that he wears to go up and down is actually the thin one and he has to wear the bulkier space suit when on the ground.

So I, I noticed that and I thought it was very interesting. So in the film they reimagine and uh, the one that he wears is like I said, thinner on the ground, thicker when he gets. 

[00:52:10] Speaker 5: So the costume designer, Jante Yates, worked with NASA, just like a lot of the writers and other crew did. And she said they were bend over backwards helpful to, to assist her in the suit, in the suit design.

They originally aimed for a design similar to A NASA spacesuit design that’s, that’s coming in the future called a Z one and a Z two prototype. That’s what they are at the moment. But because of their odd appearance, Ridley Scott and the design team wanted to go another direction. Do me a favor. 

[00:52:46] Rebekah: If you’re listening to this or the people on the podcast, go look up what the Z one and Z two prototypes look like because they are weird.

They’re very weird . 

[00:52:55] Speaker 5: So that helps that That does help. ’cause I have not looked at the, I’ve not looked at them, so I was kind of trying to just think about that as I’m reading. Do you remember, did you see Megamind? Did you see 

[00:53:05] Rebekah: Megamind? Ye yes. Yeah, like the cartoon. Okay, so his best friend who is like his head lives in a pod and then he has like a mechanical body or whatever.

It looks like that head. Like that’s, that’s like what it made me think of was the weird, um, the weird way that he looked. They’re very bizarre looking. 

[00:53:25] Tim: Well, that makes sense why NASA was a significant consultant, the making of the film, because they wanted the technology and science to appear real and as accurate as possible.

Um, they already do have working prototypes of the Habs, the habitation unit. where the astronauts would cohabit while on the planet, including the airlocks, the water reclaimers and oxygenators. So all of that technology, if not usable at the moment, is already In prototype form. 

[00:53:56] Rebekah: I think it’s cool to think there’s a point in the movie where, and I don’t think that this is a book quote.

I think that they added this to the movie. Uh, there’s a point in the movie where Teddy played by Jeff Daniels, the administrator of NASA makes a comment. Uh, I think he’s talking to Mitch Henderson because he was upset that Mitch like Put the Aries crew in danger by telling them about the rich Pernell maneuver.

And there’s a point where he, I don’t remember the line, so I’m not going to be able to quote it perfectly, but he basically says every time something goes wrong, like they ask us why we like. He gets challenged on the fact that like NASA exists. It’s a huge investment and all of this stuff. He feels like he’s constantly having to like justify what they do, what they spend money on, who they are, whatever.

So I think it’s really cool that their experience on the film set was that NASA wanted to be really helpful because I think that if you’re NASA, It probably matters to you a lot that like you help people do things in a way in entertainment. Yes. That when you’re trying to do real missions and real things in real life, that like the kind of feeling people have about NASA is positive, like that it really is important.

And so I think that that’s really cool because I feel like that was lived out in real life in the way that they helped the film crew. 

[00:55:15] Speaker 5: I completely agree with you based on the fact that on the NASA There’s a document where they tested out Rich Pernell’s maneuver. 

[00:55:26] Tim: Wow. 

[00:55:27] Speaker 5: Um, I, I saw it on a fandom page and thought, there’s no way that dude is lying.

And I went and just pulled up NASA document, Rich Pernell maneuver, and it’s there and it’s on, it’s on NASA’s, it’s in their archives. And, um, and, um, Um, the quote, the, the quote in the conclusion, I mean, it’s a pretty long, it’s a long paper, but in the conclusion, they say, however, since Rich Pernell Maneuver, well, let me preface that, the conclusion starts by saying, basically, aside from some minor, some testing they would need to do on just a couple of parts of it, the numbers and the maneuver would work and they said, however, Since it would result in Hermes transitioning well within the orbit of Venus, that would expose the crew and the spacecraft to a lot of radiation and high temperatures, which could have some, some other effects that rescue scenario may not be.

A possibility. But at the same time, the numbers and everything that’s within it that we’re wrote, it’s a solid maneuver. 

[00:56:41] Tim: I understand that the only scene that the book author Andy Weir had hoped would make it into the film was one of the audio log entries. It’s after Teddy. Wonders what Mark is thinking about up on Mars because this is a very serious thing.

Mark’s entry reads or it’s when they’ve lost communication, lost communication. I wonder what he’s thinking and it’s a very serious situation. And Mark’s entry says, how come Aquaman can control whales? They’re mammals. That makes no sense. So it’s one of those, keep it light and you know. I wonder what he’s thinking in this moment of desperation.

He’s thinking about the fictional character of Aquaman. 

[00:57:25] Rebekah: Very little was changed from the character’s point of view. And I, I really like that they kept, they stayed true to the characters that Weir had created. Cause I think that they were very good. Like he, he did a great job. One of the only things I noticed that stuck out to me that they changed in the movie slightly in the book.

They mentioned that Mark. And everyone on the crew were double specialties. So all of them were very like specialized in two areas. In the book, Mark Watney was their botanist and their mechanical engineer. So he was the perfect person to have been left on Mars because he was the person that would have been able to fix everything, jury rig everything, like modify everything.

The film just mentions him as a botanist and leads into the really funny line about like Mars will come to fear my botany powers, which I don’t remember if that’s in the book or not. So, um, it’s interesting because he does a lot of engineering work, but I guess because they took out. A lot of the, like, specifics or the nuances of all of that, maybe that’s why, um, that’s why they didn’t really emphasize the mechanical engineer thing.

[00:58:34] Josiah: Also, I don’t think it’s in the book or movie, but just for context, I do believe Andy Weir has gone on record saying there is a hierarchy to the crew. Where it’s Louis obviously and then I think it’s Martinez Martinez and then Watney is at the bottom. 

[00:58:51] Rebekah: Yeah, he’s the last on the 

[00:58:53] Josiah: hierarchy. You know, 

[00:58:53] Rebekah: I think that was mentioned in the book.

I want to say like in passing it was mentioned. That’s really cool. Well, 

[00:58:58] Tim: the only other change really was, uh, the book refers to Kapoor as Venkat as his first name. Um, and he’s fully Hindu. In the movie, his name is Vincent Kapoor, and he says that he’s half Hindu and half Uh, Baptist, uh, black men. So, uh, when they, when they say pray, pray for this mission and pray for what we’re getting ready to do, uh, he mentions that that’s, that’s the context for that.

The only other little thing about the characterization was not a change. It was just, um, I thought it was, it was very fun. They had a character named Tim. You don’t have those all that often. I don’t think. Um, but this guy was just a smart aleck, um, pain in the rear, um, kind of character. He was very intelligent and he knew his job, but he worked at NASA.

And every, every time he spoke, it was something sarcastic. And they said, people don’t really like you. Do they? No, they don’t. 

[01:00:03] Rebekah: Incidentally played by Nick Muhammad, who plays, let’s just say a similar character in the hit television show, Ted Lasso, which is really good. If you haven’t seen it, you should. 

[01:00:14] Josiah: I still haven’t seen it myself.

[01:00:16] Rebekah: No, you should. 

[01:00:17] Josiah: I know I need to get on Rebecca’s Apple TV to watch it. 

[01:00:21] Speaker 5: We won’t talk about hacking into your sister’s Apple. So. The book, The Martian, was released in 2011, uh, as a self published work, and then in 2014, by Crown Publishing. 

[01:00:38] Josiah: Yes, it was originally self published, which, as a self published author myself, I thought was very inspiring.

[01:00:47] Rebekah: Love 

[01:00:47] Josiah: it. He initially published his book online for free, one chapter at a time. Mm hm. At his website, he’d been turned down on prior books by publishers. So he just wanted to go self published route. And I think that his fans were demanding an ebook version. So he released an ebook for the lowest possible price on Amazon, 99 cents.

Wow. And when he, when he started to sell it for 99 cents, it sold more copies than it had been downloaded for free up to that point. 

[01:01:25] Speaker 5: Dang. Like 36, 000 or something. It was crazy, really crazy number. 

[01:01:32] Josiah: Yeah. And so the print release did not come out till 2013. And before that, an audio book edition came out narrated by R.

C. Bray, who is a, who’s awesome. Well, yes, the audio book came out before the print edition. And all of that was before Crown Publishing. Brought bought the print rights to the Martian, which was, I do believe Andy Weir was in talks with, uh, who bought the movie rights Warner brothers. I don’t know. He was in talks to sell the movie rights before he was published by crown.

[01:02:13] Rebekah: That is so funny. That is so cool. 

[01:02:16] Josiah: So inspiring. Paperback went to the top of the New York Times bestsellers list for like one week. It was at the top, which is crazy to me that it was only one week and the hardcover never made it to number one. Because I’m, I’m thinking here, I mean, honestly, it’s one of the best books I’ve ever read.

[01:02:36] Speaker 5: It really is. Listeners, if you’ve not read it, please take the time to read it. It is not a super long audio book read. Uh, it, you know, it’s, it’s several, I mean, it is hours of reading, but it’s not super long, like other things we’ve covered. And if you like that, or if you’d rather skip the Martian, go read Project Hail Mary.

It, It’s so good. I’m telling you, you will not be disappointed. It’s amazing. So the, the movie release began in the Philippines on September 11th, 2015. Then two weeks later, on September 30th, they released it in the UK. And then three days later, they released it on October 2nd. 2015 in the U. S. 

[01:03:23] Tim: Is that not the strangest of the of the movies that we’ve looked at independent 

[01:03:28] Speaker 5: film?

So I was kind of like, 

[01:03:30] Tim: no, I mean, the U. S. Is the last of those two to release that. That just seems rather strange. 

[01:03:36] Speaker 5: So the book rating on Goodreads was 4. 41 out of five. And that was a million, uh, 1. 1 million writings. So it’s a solid, that is a solid ranking for the book, uh, more so than if it had been a couple of hundred people that read it.

But obviously we know that’s not true. Uh, the movie rating on, uh, Rotten Tomatoes was a 91 percent fresh. It was also an audience, it also had a Flixster audience score of 91%. The production cost was 108 million. And 

[01:04:10] Tim: a little fact, Matt Damon’s solo scenes were filmed in a five week time period. The total film time was 72 days.

Two million dollars was saved by completing filming ahead of schedule. 

[01:04:26] Speaker 5: And I did read a little bit when I was looking at some of these facts that it was kind of weird for Damon because his scenes were By himself. So he didn’t have a lot of bonding time with the cast until they got closer to production or closer to release.

And they started doing some touring together, uh, opening weekend in the U S 53. 3 million, the USA Canada gross 228 million 433. So just, just almost a two 28 and a half million. And then internationally. 402 million. So yeah, almost twice the size of the USA Canada gross. So the whole thing to the, to date, the total gross for the movie is 630 million, 620,000.

[01:05:15] Tim: Oh. I think it was probably a success. 

[01:05:17] Speaker 5: It made a 

[01:05:17] Rebekah: profit. Well, and that speaks to the fact that when Andy Weir sold the movie Rights for the Martian, he made a hundred. Let’s see. He, I just found mid six figures for book sales and movie rights. And just, I mentioned a hundred thousand dollars he got for print rights, but he sold the project Hail Mary movie rights for 3 million.

So the performance he had made it more worth their time. 

[01:05:44] Tim: So around the time of when he’s, when he looked so emaciated was actually the first scene that was filmed when Watney is shaving his beard. Um, and he’d supposedly, you know, let it go the last 100 days or so on Mars. They had Matt Damon grow his beard several weeks before shooting was to begin.

So this was a nerve wracking scene to film because it had to be perfect in one take because they couldn’t put his beard back on once he actually shaved it off. I 

[01:06:18] Rebekah: always wonder about that when I see shaving scenes in movies. 

[01:06:21] Tim: Yeah. 

[01:06:22] Rebekah: Another single scene take, which was really cool, um, there was a teary eyed scene between Watney and Lewis.

It’s the first time in the story that like Watney would have heard a human voice other than on like recorded stuff, you know. TV shows and whatever. It was the first time he would have heard a voice, not just read words in the year and a half that he’d been stranded on Mars. And he gets to in the, he’s in the MAV and he has his communications on and Watney hears Lewis’s voice as they prepare to lift him into Mars orbit.

And every time I watch this scene in the movie, I cry like literally every single time because it’s just like, I’m so invested. That was an absolutely genuine sob because according to Damon, he thought about the characters journeying alone to Mars for two years. And when he heard Chastain’s voice, which by the way was prerecorded at this point, it wasn’t actually a live take, obviously it caused him to tear up and Ridley was so impressed that he used the single take of that scene.

[01:07:23] Tim: Very nice, 

[01:07:24] Rebekah: which I loved. Also, oh, there was another single scene that I liked. Donald Glover did a great job as the very side but important character of Rich Pernell. And, uh, Rich Pernell’s character is like ultra nerd man. And, uh, his, Title in the movie is an astrodynamicist. I mean, like, have you ever met an astrodynamicist?

I do not think so 

[01:07:48] Tim: that even other nerds have trouble getting along with him. 

[01:07:51] Rebekah: Exactly. So Donald Glover was, uh, having this epiphany about what to do, like how to save Watney. And, um, And he jumps up and goes like to find out if he’s, you know, if he’s able to figure this out, he slips and falls in the scene, which I just assumed like, Oh, he did that because he was trying to show like how uncoordinated and nerdy he is in this whole thing.

But actually Donald Glover fell for real. Like it wasn’t on purpose. It was an accidental fall. And then he jumps up. And stays on character and just like continues with the scene and they ended up keeping that version in the final cut because they liked the way that it reinforced his character. Uh, there is a cast deep dive that, uh, said her Nels character in the book is a highly functioning autistic person.

So like the kind of uncoordinated movements would technically work into his character. I 

[01:08:48] Josiah: think I agree. 

[01:08:50] Rebekah: All right. I think we’re at a point where we can give our final verdicts. What do we think? Was The Martian the book better than the movie or did the film win out? 

[01:08:59] Speaker 5: I’ll start. This is probably the hardest one I’ve ever ranked.

In this, in this category, in this question, because I’m not, I’m not into super techie reads like, but what, the way Andy Weir crafted this thing and, and again, the same, the, the way he crafted, um, Project Hail Mary, it’s completely different from the Martian. It is not a Martian reboot at all. So 

[01:09:30] Rebekah: different.

[01:09:30] Speaker 5: Yeah. But the way he does it, you, You don’t mind what he pulls into it just draws you into what’s going on all the more. And so I’m going to say, I’m going to say this is a 50 50 split for me. I, I love, I’ll read the book again. I’ve read the book several times. I’ve watched the movie several times, so this is 50 50 for me.

[01:09:52] Josiah: Well, I’m going with the movie slightly edging out the book. I think it’s one of the best books I’ve ever read. I think it’s a fantastic movie. Wouldn’t really change much about it. And the thing that kind of seesaws me towards the movie is that The book goes back and forth between Mark Watney’s logs and more traditional third person prose, and I think that you can do anything.

Do whatever tells your story. I get it. But it was unfortunate that he, he could not have worked in a fully epistolary format where like, not only Mark Watney’s logs, but then the logs from the Hermes crew, as opposed to just narrative of this person walked over here and said this to this person, which is fine, but going back and forth structurally, I think the book, because the movie was more internally consistent with its format, I’m going to edge it out for the movie, but I do think both the book and movie are 10 out of 

[01:11:04] Rebekah: 10.

[01:11:04] Tim: Nice. I fully enjoyed, uh, the movie and the book. I watched the movie, uh, When it first came out and thought it was a great movie and I’ve I listened to the audio book as as we were preparing for this and the book adds details that are not in the movie. But the movie is very faithful. It’s very much like the Lord of the Rings trilogy for me.

Um, it Changes things and changes enough things to make it work for a movie, but it’s very faithful to the feeling, uh, and to the intent of the book spirit. Yeah, the spirit. That’s it. The spirit of of the book. So I would say, um, I really enjoyed the movie in. It is a visual medium. So that, uh, that for me was a little bit better.

The book had more detail. I’m, I’m a toss up whether, which, which is better. If you do better with visual, the movie was better. If you do better with books, the book was better. Um, I like both of them pretty much equally. Well, 

[01:12:09] Rebekah: I love both book and film as well. Um, definitely 10 out of 10s for me, similar to Josiah in terms of I’ll watch the movie again.

And I’ll definitely, I’ve read the book several times at this point. Um, for me, the book is better just because I absolutely salivate over the nerdy, like science y things. I love space stuff, like, there are, there’s a reason a lot of the things on the list of what we cover are in space, um, or in some way affected by space.

Um, I really enjoy, like, space themed stuff. And I really love getting to like the gritty parts of the things that Watney has to like repair. And I love that it feels real. Like, I don’t, I’m not an astrophysicist. Obviously I’m not an engineer, but a lot of the things he goes through, like it’s apparent that real science and real technology is It’s inspiring.

You know, the things he comes up with to fix this problem or that problem. And, um, I like the addition of more chaos. Um, it feels true to the plot to me that like there’s more things that go on. It seems a little far fetched in the movie that suddenly like he’s able to make this grip that I think took him what, 50 days or something, 50 souls to make.

It feels a little more real to me in the book that there were like several issues that he encountered along the way. And I like that realism part of it. Um, however, I. Absolutely love the movie as well. I think a lot of the changes that they made were perfect sorts of changes, uh, to transition it to the visual medium.

I love the way that they started the film. I loved the way that they ended both of the start and end were obviously different. And I think, I think that both of them were, were great. excellently thought through for the visual medium. I love that they were able to use the like cameras to film him instead of like reading out logs.

Like he got to film the video logs and stuff. So 

[01:14:10] Josiah: it was so great. 

[01:14:11] Rebekah: Yeah. I thought a lot of those things were just really, really well done. This is one of my favorites. Like I said earlier, project Hail Mary. that he wrote later is genuinely my favorite standalone book. But I would say the Martian is up there probably in my top five, just standalone, no other, um, you know, not a series or whatever book.

So I’m a big fan. Wow. All right. Well, I think that that is it for us today. If you enjoyed this episode, we would really appreciate a five star rating or review. Those good reviews help us out so much. If you have feedback or thoughts, feel free to email us with ideas for what you want us to cover too. At book is better pod at gmail.

com. You can also find us online most places at book is better pod. And until then to Mars and beyond folks.

[01:15:06] Josiah: You know what they say when you’re on Mars? No one can hear you. Marine. Oh dear , 

[01:15:15] Rebekah: Marine. I don’t understand. I wanna laugh, but I don’t get it. When Get in 

[01:15:19] Speaker 5: space no one can hear you scream. 

[01:15:22] Tim: Oh, 

[01:15:23] Speaker 5: right when you’re on Mars, no one can hear you, Reem. 

[01:15:26] Tim: Oh dear. Get 

[01:15:26] Speaker 5: with the program.

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