Andy Weir's The Martian

“All the facts about Mars are accurate, as well as the physics of space travel the story presents. I even calculated the various orbital paths involved in the story, which required me to write my own software to track constant-thrust trajectories,” Andy Weir on the scientific and mathematical attention to the book The Martian. There is no doubting Andy’s attention to detail. He used his dreams to create a story and backed it up with hard facts. Drew Goddard’s film adaptation, however, lacked a moral judgement in keeping the ending honest. He failed to incorporate the facts which Mark Watney clearly explained in the novel. Finally, the emotions towards the main character, Mark Watney, was somewhat clouded in the film. Moreover, the movie version of The Martian by Andy Weir is an unacceptable adaptation, because the conflicting purposes caused intense changes to the story.
To start off, between the film and the novel the purposes are largely different.

The author’s purpose is to inform. Andy refers to himself as a nerd that wrote a book about space travel. The goal was not to make the most money. In fact, The Martian was placed on Andy’s website for anyone to read for free. This point is further defended by the amount of explanation on the orbital trajectories and making more water for Mark’s potato crops. Also, Mark took great detail on the math of his probable time on Mars and how to rationalize the food already in the Hab. The film’s purpose was to entertain and make money. This proven by the lack of customizing the rovers, fixing the Hab, when a tear made it useless, and the fixing of Pathfinder in the film. On the other hand, the argument could be made that films have time constrains cause the lack of detail, but dialogue and scenes were already cut to make time for other scenes. The fear of boring the not so brainy audiences also could warrant the removal of this explanation, but the lengths Andy went to get this knowledge is not only outstanding but a crucial part of the book. Despite the conflicting purposes the target audiences were the same, which was teenagers to adults.
Continually, the ending of the film was completely butchered from the book. On a minor note, there was no sandstorm is not a stooping force during Mark’s voyage to Ares IV, but this could easily be due to time constraints of the movie world and the storm is referenced. More importantly, the time during the Hermes and Mark intercept in orbit is disfigured. To start off, Commander Lewis, never went out into space to save Mark. Beck is the one who went out and saved Mark. Secondly, the tether never ran out only became very close to being too short. Thirdly, Mark never cut his glove to get to Commander Lewis. In actuality, Mark listened to Commander Lewis’ order on not cutting his glove due to the risk. Lastly, the novel did not go past Mark’s first few minutes on the Hermes. It left off with a “create your own” ending. These changes were only made to make the scene more dramatic. This actually made the scene less believable by adding too many death-defying elements. The last few minutes of the film was to not leave the audience with cliffhanger.
Simultaneously, the main character, Mark Watney, lacked key characteristics demonstrated in the book. In the book, Mark’s speech was intelligent and had no regard for outer appearance. This point is lost simply because of a scene devoted to him showing, looking at the mirror, and shaving. His humor was very satire, nerdy, and sometimes flat out rude. The Matt Damon version did not go as far as it could with the humor. Continually, Andy’s Mark had excessive foul language use in his logs and communication with NASA. This however could be defended by the fact of the language barrier in films, and the film in fact did drop two f-bombs against the normal one. In the film, Mark had a woe is me undertone, relied on NASA more than Andy’s Mark did, and focused more on being the cool guy. Even though the novel does state Mark was chosen to be the comic relief of the Ares III team, the fact still remains his intense training removed some of this cool guy status. Lastly, this, as a whole, can be defended by the fact of acting. When playing a role, a person never truly loses himself to the role. The actor’s traits still spill through. This does not change the fact that Matt Damon could have improved in his portrayal of Mark Watney.
More importantly, the theme of the adaptation differs from the theme of the novel.

Andy Weir strives for the reader to understand the importance of never give up no matter the circumstances. Therefore, every time Mark had a success he had a fallback to accompany it. When Mark faced a situation, he stopped, analyzed the problem, debated the pros and cons of his solution, and then executed his plan. The greatest example of this is when a tear in the Hab caused part of its extirpation and Mark being catapulted in the airlock. Despite serious time constraints, due to a decrease of oxygen from the breech in his EVA suit, Mark to a moment to contemplate the situation before executing a plan. The film loses the intensity of the point by focusing on fate. They continually brought up the pessimistic side of the condition and odds against Mark. With NASA doing the brute work, from the movie adaptation, Mark’s perseverance is lost. The only counterargument of this is that both the film and book and multiple themes

throughout.
In final analysis, the movie adaptation of Andy Weir’s The Martian is an unacceptable adaption. Firstly, the removal of the science and mathematics caused the loss of the extraordinary characteristic of the story. The changes of the ending made it less believable and added unnecessary dramatic elements. The characteristics of Mark Watney being suppressed caused the audience to lose their powerful admiration of him. Finally, the changing of themes makes the film lose the intensity of one of the greatest life lessons. Therefore, due to the lack of judgement to keep the ending honest for the sake of entertainment, the main character’s aspects being depicted incorrectly, and the themes losing their importance, audiences should be aware of all the Hollywood adaptation’s flaws.