No movie has completed the film critics’ gauntlet until it’s had its sins score tallied by Jeremy Scott and Chris Atkinson of YouTube channel CinemaSins. The latest film to have its cinematic Pascals wagered by the duo is Ridley Scott’s 2015 film, The Martian, which was based on Andy Weir’s eponymous best-selling novel. But in order to pass judgement on the hardest of the hard sci-fi, Scott and Atkinson tapped none other than the Head of the Hall of the Universe and overall cosmic sherpa, Dr. Neil deGrasse Tyson.
In the 15-minute video (which is really more like 12 minutes), The Martian is torn apart beat by beat by the CinemaSins squad, although much of what Tyson adds to the mix is actually praise, as well as exact quotes from tweets that he wrote last year:
The @MartianMovie — where you learn all the ways that being Scientifically Literate can save your life.
— Neil deGrasse Tyson (@neiltyson) October 2, 2015
The @MartianMovie — where you experience Love, Hate, Envy, Anxiety, Pride, & Heroism, all through the lens of science.
— Neil deGrasse Tyson (@neiltyson) October 2, 2015
Surprisingly, or maybe not, considering how faithful the movie was to the book and how faithful the book was to science, The Martian earns a relatively slim sin score of 90—much of that, of course, based on subjective and ironic criticisms. One of the film’s genuine scientific inaccuracies, that whole fictional giant dust storm that catalyzes the stories in both the movie and the book (remember that Mars’ atmosphere is only about 1% that of Earth’s, and as a result only has very light dust storms), isn’t touched in the video. But then again, Mark Watney not using his olive oil and salt on his potatoes is counted as a sin, so maybe this review isn’t all about the science.
What did you think of this CinemaSins review of The Martian? Has it made you look at the movie in a whole new light, or is the gravity of the film still the same for you? Let us know in the comments section below!
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Images: Fox
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