7 movies to watch if you like ‘The Martian’
Add these movies to your must-watch list, if you’ve seen and loved the new sci-fi film starring Matt Damon.
By Hong Xinying
Matt Damon in The Martian (2015), dir. Ridley Scott. Image: Twentieth Century Fox
Unless you’ve been living at the base of a proverbial dark well, you would have heard of this new sci-fi flick The Martian, which opened in Singapore cinemas last week (1 Oct). It’s currently at the top of the Singapore box office and has already earned US$55 million during its opening week at the North American box office in the United States.
Directed by Ridley Scott, the movie adaptation of the Andy Weir novel features a familiar tale of survival, albeit played out on the red planet.
In The Martian, NASA astronaut Mark Watney (as played by Matt Damon) gets stranded on Mars, with the odds stacked against his survival. His challenge: to survive nearly four years on the red planet with limited resources, until the next manned mission arrives.
If you’ve seen and enjoyed this film, here are other space and survival-themed movies to catch:
If you’re feeling a sense of deja vu from seeing Matt Damon in space, you’re not alone. The star also played an astronaut on-screen in Christopher Nolan’s Interstellar last year. Instead of re-watching the Nolan flick, why not catch 2001: A Space Odyssey (directed by Stanley Kubrick), the seminal space movie that inspired subsequent films including Interstellar.
It’s beautiful and enigmatic from start to finish, be it the first sight of the otherworldly monolith to the appearance of the ‘starchild’ at the end. You can still find traces of this film’s cinematic legacy through numerous pop culture references to HAL 9000, one of the most insidious supercomputers to date, as well as its trippy depictions of space travel and many other iconic scenes.
Also directed by Ridley Scott, this film comes with the spine-tingling tagline “In space no one can hear you scream.” As harsh as the conditions on Mars can be, this sci-fi and horror classic almost makes Mark Watney’s struggle seem like a walk in the park. Watch this film to see one woman’s (played by Sigourney Weaver) heart-racing fight to stay alive as an aggressive alien hunts down and kills the crew on board the spaceship.
If you liked The Martian‘s fairly technically-realistic representation of life as an astronaut, you might appreciate this film’s similar attention to historical and factual accuracy. Based on the real-life Apollo 13 mission in 1970, this docu-drama directed by Ron Howard tells of how three astronauts struggle to return to Earth safely after their lunar mission goes awry.
If you’ve had enough of movies about interplanetary travel, then opt for this war film directed by Steven Spielberg. One captain (played by Tom Hanks) brings his men behind enemy lines during World War II, to rescue the movie’s titular Private Ryan. As with The Martian, you’ll be rooting for these men to save Private Ryan (played by Matt Damon), who was believed to be the last-surviving son in a family of four brothers.
The Martian has been referred to as the “Robinson Crusoe”-style survivalist tale set in space. Cast Away is the earth-bound equivalent, with Tom Hanks as the protagonist. If you found Mark Watney a touch too optimistic, this movie (directed by Robert Zemeckis) will show a more emotional take on what it means for one man to live and survive, while alone on a deserted island.
For a movie pick that’s more thrillingly eerie than funny, try this indie sci-fi film directed by Duncan Jones. In this film, one man is on a solitary stint on the moon to mine a new alternative fuel for inhabitants on Earth. As played by Sam Rockwell, the protagonist Sam Bell is near the end of his three-year stint but of course, nothing is as it seems.
You could easily spend a lot of time criticising the scientific accuracy of the scenes pictured in this Alfonso Cuarón film. Or you could just sit back and enjoy its cinematic beauty. In Gravity, Sandra Bullock plays Dr Ryan Stone, a biochemical engineer who gets stranded in space and tries to survive against all odds as she tries to make her way home to Earth.
