In my MMM column for The Martian I wrote the following:
…overall this is a strong campaign that lives and dies on the charm of the actors involved.
Having seen the movie last night I can say that yeah, that’s pretty accurate. The film is light and breezy and very thin on character development but it works because Damon keeps working as hard as he can to keep selling it. And the rest of the cast follows suit, particularly Michael Pena as Mark Watney’s fellow astronaut and Chiwetel Ejiofor who, despite not being given much to do other than make impassioned arguments, keeps the charm turned on and commands the screen, doing more with the bit that he’s given.
One thing I thought was going to be a bigger part of the movie based on the campaign was the idea of “Bring Him Home.” That’s the core theme of the teaser poster as well as some of the on-domain in-world video, so I was surprised there wasn’t more of that in the movie. There were a few shots of crowds gathered during the story’s climactic moment but I was expecting at least some nod to the people using “#BringHimHome” in the news or something like that.
There wasn’t anything I felt contradicted the campaign, though as usual there are a few lines or scenes that are presented much differently in the trailers than they appear in the film. But at no point did I feel like there was anything misleading in the film.
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