Ridley Scott’s The Martian

Man of Honour
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I got that :p But why is it called a sol?

Pirate ninja.. yes. That was earlier this week, I've already forgotten :p

Short for solar day, and it's what's been used forever.
Even NASA uses it for it's rovers. To express how long a rover has been on the surface.
 
Soldato
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Bought the book on the basis of the how good the trailer looked, got a feeling it's going to get my hopes too high as Scott's recent movies have been underwhelming to say the least.
 
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I'm about 3/4s of the way through the book and really liking it. I think the author has tried a little bit too hard to make Watney 'cool' though. Some of his messages are just a bit stupid and it does take me out of the suspense. Then again, if Chris Hadfield's book is anything to go by, all astronauts are super-positive, super-intelligent, super-energetic, super-fun, super-humans all of the time :p

He has to be, otherwise the character would roll over and die, or just cry himself to death. The story only works because Watney is a total geek, completely task focussed, with a skill-set that allows him to take on everything Mars throws at him despite being all alone.

They used to say that astronauts had to be like that, because otherwise instead of doing their work, they would spend the whole time looking at the stars and thinking about the majesty of space. They had to be able to do their work despite being presented with awe-inspiring workplaces.
 
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Bought the book on the basis of the how good the trailer looked, got a feeling it's going to get my hopes too high as Scott's recent movies have been underwhelming to say the least.

Will be interesting to see if he can make a worse film than Prometheus, or if he's "peaked", so to speak :p
 
Soldato
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I'm about 3/4s of the way through the book and really liking it. I think the author has tried a little bit too hard to make Watney 'cool' though. Some of his messages are just a bit stupid and it does take me out of the suspense. Then again, if Chris Hadfield's book is anything to go by, all astronauts are super-positive, super-intelligent, super-energetic, super-fun, super-humans all of the time :p

I know what you mean, but to me it felt more like the author was trying to create a character who was trying to be 'cool'.

He's definitely meant to be a very likeable guy, with a positive, quirky attitude, who ends up doing lots of cool things - but I'm not sure he is meant to be thought of as a naturally 'cool' guy, particularly when he's interacting with others.
 
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Soldato
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If you have any intention to watch this, read the book first. I read it on holiday last year and it's definitely one of the best books I've read in a while.

Have been looking forward to the film since, but I fear it may follow in the footsteps of World War Z and be a massive let down.

Sorry , i'll have to disagree with this . I did this once , and will never do it again . Picked up star trek :- generations on hardback before the film release and read the thing. Then watch the film ... loads of scenes from book missing , and even one line in the film is said from the book , but makes no sense as that scene building up to it wasn't in the movie :(
 
Soldato
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Just finished the book on holiday and cant wait to see it on screen, judging by the trailer it looks spot on imo! Never resd the book first so im excited to see it from that side
 
Soldato
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Sorry , i'll have to disagree with this . I did this once , and will never do it again . Picked up star trek :- generations on hardback before the film release and read the thing. Then watch the film ... loads of scenes from book missing , and even one line in the film is said from the book , but makes no sense as that scene building up to it wasn't in the movie :(

I'm not sure I follow your logic?

Surely the line in the film still wouldn't have made sense, even if you hadn't read the book?

It sounds like you're basically saying don't read the book first, because it'll make a bad/average film seem even worse.

The point I was making is that the Martian is an excellent book, well worth reading - as was World War Z.

But World War Z was a terrible film and would have probably put a lot of people off reading the book, if they hadn't already read it first. Having read the Martian, I would definitely recommend reading it, but because I can't see the film doing it justice (I hope I'm wrong), then that's why I'd say read the book first and don't risk having a potentially bad/average film spoil an excellent book for you.

I get that you can only experience a 'story' for the first time once, and without seeing/reading both you can't be sure which you'd have preferred to experience first - but having read the book, I can say it is very good. We can only speculate on the film, but a very high bar has already been set, so it'll struggle to beat the book (imo).
 
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Soldato
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Sorry , i'll have to disagree with this . I did this once , and will never do it again . Picked up star trek :- generations on hardback before the film release and read the thing. Then watch the film ... loads of scenes from book missing , and even one line in the film is said from the book , but makes no sense as that scene building up to it wasn't in the movie :(

Erm, ST:G wasn't a movie adaptation of a book, the book was a novelization of the film.

The point is valid though. I remember seeing Jurassic Park having already read the book and there was a fair bit cut out. Some little details did grate a little, such as making the girl the computer geek instead of the boy just to be a bit more "trendy".
 
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Man of Honour
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well it's looking excellent, for those who haven't read the book. it's a shame they're showing so much off in the trailer, like usual.
 
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Cheers for the heads up, won't be watching that trailer. The one I watched a couple of months back gave enough away.

Sure I've read the book, but it's nice to leave some of the depiction of it as a surprise.

Total Martian black out until I'm sat in the cinema.
 
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The book was good, but it did annoy me at times. Spoilers below.

I realise Watney wasn't supposed to have much personality but this made it feel a bit soulless for me. It felt to me that it's a story very much written for an American audience. It's overwhemlingly "If you want something hard enough, you can make it happen". America's culture is very much in to self-improvement and there's a belief that there's a fix for every problem, if you want it enough; in my opinion most Brits aren't quite like that. I realise the book would be a bit less exciting if it weren't for the repeatedly "fix-it" nature of the plot, but it just seemed that toward the end I felt like I wasn't worried anymore because there would always be a solution no matter how dire a situation he seemed to find himself in. I found the ending particularly underwhelming, as it had seemed obvious that he would surivive from about the middle of the book. Maybe the point was that you were supposed to be excited about how he would work out a way to survive, but I was more excited by whether or not he was going to surivive at all, and it felt like a certainty far before the final chapters. Even the miraculous scientific solutions didn't prove interesting to read towards the end, as they seemed to come completely out of nowhere. The suspense that existed in the beginning and middle of the book ran out of steam to a point where by the end, I was hoping for things to go wrong just for there to be a bit of uncertainty :p

:edit: Reading this brought back strong memories of a book I read as a child. It was about a boy on holiday with his parents in the country that somehow gets left behind. I'm not sure how the parents don't instantly notice that they don't have their child with them... but anyway the kid has to fend for himself in a shelter/cave/something, he finds food in a nearby farm, generally overcomes his fears and grows as a result of the experience. Parents come back and take him home, the end. I can't for the life of me remember the name of this book or find anything about it after googling quite a lot about it. I remember specifically there being quite a bit of detail about some cheese that he steals/acquires. Am I mad or is this a real book?!
 
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