The Martian

The movie opens with 6 astronauts already on Mars, busy doing their various research.  Mark Whatney (Matt Damon) is happily noting the consistency of the dirt.  He is the mission botanist.  It is then that a sandstorm is spotted with sufficient severity that the mission needs to be aborted.  During the evacuation, Whatney is struck by debris and thrown into the darkness.  With all signs indicating he is dead and the storm threatening to topple their only means back to space, the other astronauts lift off.  When Whatney awakens to an alarm on his suit, he soon discovers his dire situation.  He has no way to communicate with Earth and his food supply is limited.  It will be four years before another manned-mission arrives and he has less than a year of food.  And so begins the problem solving.

 

The movie is like Apollo 13 on steroids.  Houston, we have lots of problems!  But, step by step, inch by inch, Whatney overcomes his problems.  And new ones arise.  With the notable exception of the storm that starts the ball rolling, the science is great.  It really did have that Apollo 13 feel as Whatney and NASA worked through every problem, figuring how to put a square peg in a round hole.  The geek references were always fun; the Council of Elrond was played quite nicely, especially since Boromir (Sean Bean) was in attendance.

 

Though the cast is extensive, the movie is entirely focused on Whatney.  Where Ed Harris shared dominance with Tom Hanks in Apollo 13, in this movie, everyone else was secondary.  Looking at the billing, it is surprising that Kristen Wiig was listed third when she had such a minor role.  Here is a movie about making tough decisions or solving difficult problems; her character did neither.

 

It is a long movie but never boring.  Thumbs up.

Elysium

The movie is one long, screeching attack on America.  Max (Matt Damon) is a former car thief who is now working at a robot manufacturing center.  He manages to get a lethal dose of radiation and has only 5 days to live.  Well, he has had this life long dream of getting to Elysium (read America), an Eden-like space station where all the rich people live and greedily keep the good healthcare for themselves.  Max knows Spider, a coyote-like criminal (he smuggles non-citizens onto Elysium) who could get him there so he can be cured.  Earlier in the movie, we saw the shuttles launched from the slums of Los Angeles, one of which landed on Elysium.  Spider has a hair-brained scheme to steal billions from an industrialist, who is evil-incarnate (see, he's a capitalist and rich, so he must be really evil and bad and icky).  Protecting Elysium from illegal immigrants is Delacourt (Jodie Foster), who runs Homeland Security.  Really?  Not Elysium Security?  No, it's Homeland Security, just in case you missed the hammer blows of a political message so far.

The setting, though well done, can't possibly exist.  Spider has a seemingly endless supply of shuttles that can fly into space but lives in a slum.  You know, those things can't be cheap.  He has an impressive computer array with pristine monitors in the middle of a rundown slum.  You know, that isn't cheap either.  He couldn't spend a bit on some paint, maybe some nicer furniture.  One of his lieutenants does brain surgery on Max and also goes on the mission as a gunman.  If this thug can do brain surgery, how is there such a healthcare problem?  At one point, several shuttles are headed toward Elysium, filled with illegal immigrants.  The ONLY method for stopping them is to destroy the shuttles.  Really?  It's either let them land or kill them all.  Wow, let's not make the choice too stark there.  Of course, our Homeland Security Leader blows them up and is disappointed one got through.  Evil-incarnate, don't you know.  Max gets onto the station and, thanks to the effects of his brain surgery, is able to reprogram the computer system ("What are you doing, Dave?") to view every single person on Earth as a citizen of Elysium.  Suddenly, all those robot soldiers/police that seemed nowhere to be found while Max was penetrating to the central computer system are bullying the snooty Elysium citizens and providing free healthcare to the people back on Earth.

The message that is pounded again and again is that the United States should have open borders that offer immediate citizenship and free, universal healthcare.  Oh, and capitalism is bad and mean and yucky.

Going on a tangent, Matt Damon is a resident of "Elysium" who - though crying from the rooftops that public schools are the best and should be supported with more tax dollars - is sending his kids to private school.  His actions seem to be in opposition to his words.