I love a good science fiction movie and novelist Andy Weir and scriptwriter Drew Goddard have done it again. A decade ago, Weir’s first book “The Martian” was turned into a script by Goddard to produce a most enjoyable film with Matt Damon in the eponymous role as the left-behind astronaut. This time, Weir’s third novel has been crafted by Goddard into a hugely entertaining feature, on this trip with the immensely-watchable Ryan Gosling in the main role as a junior high science teacher. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
The stakes are higher this time, much higher – not just one life at stake, but ultimately the whole of humankind. And, on this occasion our reluctant hero is not alone: a charming alien is around to show that friendship can cross life forms. It’s a exciting drama but leavened with humour.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Visually the film is stunning and the sound is wonderful, so I was delighted to be able to see a 70 mm IMAX version of the movie on the biggest screen in Britain. Plot-wise, however, the film is a bit of a stretch both subject-wise and time-wise, but you just need to go with it. The problem is the dimming of our sun, caused by a microorganism known as an astrophage (Greek for ‘star-eater’) which will cause Earth to suffer global cooling (and you thought that global warming was our problem). There might be a solution in a star system some 12 light years away (that’s about 70 trillion miles). <\/p>\n\n\n\n
You’re wondering how humans could possible make such a journey and how one could persuade a mere school teacher to go on such a suicide mission (did I mention that the fuel that they’ll use will only be enough for a one-way expedition?). Go see this fun movie.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I love a good science fiction movie and novelist Andy Weir and scriptwriter Drew Goddard have done it again. A decade ago, Weir’s first book “The Martian” was turned into a script by Goddard to produce a most enjoyable film with Matt Damon in the eponymous role as the left-behind astronaut. This time, Weir’s third […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-30101","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-cultural-issues"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30101","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=30101"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30101\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":30102,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30101\/revisions\/30102"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=30101"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=30101"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=30101"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}