The Best Space Travel Movie Ever?

Well despite the immense hype that the new movie "The Martian" has gotten over the past few months I wouldn't give it this accolade. In my opinion, it's not even in the top 5. It wasn't bad by any means. Matt Damon did a fairly competent job and I liked the supporting cast. (Though I suppose he can blame it on the writing or directing, Jeff Daniel's NASA Director character seemed a bit too power-comfortable. It's like he was playing the President or something. IRL I don't think the NASA chief could, or would, deign to be so cavalier with orders and omnipotent over the entire space program.)

My main issues with the movie include:

Pacing. Okay, I know, he's stuck on Mars and it's not a quick fix to rescue him but it just seemed so drawn out.

The foolish "ah ha" moment. So we're supposed to believe some lowly astrophysicist in the bowels of some JPL cube farm just gets a Eureka moment one night and realizes that the mothership can slingshot around Earth and zoom back to Mars to save Matt Damon. Um, I thought of this waaaaaay before he did and I'm no astrophysicist.

NASA is the sole manager of these Ares Missions? We get this reference because the Chinese decide matter-of-factly to do the honorable thing and help the Americans out by using their booster whatever despite it setting them back in their own space goals. Well wasn't that mighty white of them.

The reason I find the idea of a solely American funded and coordinated program is, as the movie indicates, the program consists or consisted of at least five manned missions to Mars utilizing an enormous mothership, several lander rockets, habitat bases and rovers and such. The movie never informs us what year this is in the future but based on inferences of style and technology, it seems relatively near future (like maybe 2030s or so). Without any factoring in of inflation, this cumulative mission has to be measured well over a half trillion dollars. I mean really, let's do the math. Here are my present-day dollar estimates:

The Hermes Mothership as depicted in the film: $500 billion
Orion Propulsion Fuel for the 5 missions: $100 billion
Mars lander rockets, one for each mission, totaling: $100 billion
Habitat bases, rovers and other equipment: $50 billion
Astronaut training: $10 billion

Well golly, NASA sure must have lucked out with some incredibly generous members of Congress in the future! 'Cause with their current budget, it ain't gonna cut it.

Matt Damon oversaturation in similar roles. Hmm, Matt Damon as an astronaut stranded alone on a harsh planet...where have I seen this before? Oh yea, "Interstellar" only then he was a whiny evil bastard.

Kristin Whig. I'm sorry, I know she must want to follow in Tina Fey's footsteps but I still see Kristin Whig as too much of a comedic actor for dramatic roles yet. And in fact, I thought she played it a bit too glib.

But these flaws aside, the film was okay. The 3-D (which is how I saw it) was done nicely and not at all schlocky. I actually wouldn't have minded a little bit of schlockiness though like say that tethering belt Damon and Jessica Chastain get tangled in (just like Clooney and Sandra Bullock in "Gravity" hmmmm.) getting "in our face" 3-D wise.

Speaking of "Interstellar" and "Gravity" though, here are some other rippoffs homages in the film:

Astronauts running through a fierce sandstorm to get to the escape ship: "Prometheus"
Astronaut marooned on Mars having to grow food in a makeshift greenhouse for a long time: "Mission to Mars"
Recovering and using electronics from many decades old abandoned Mars rover: "Red Planet" Oh, and BTW, it's the same rover in both films: Pathfinder.
Traveling to and using a rocket-powered vehicle, after stripping it down in order to get into orbit: "Red Planet"

Pointing out all these flaws and ripoffs make me think that the movie wasn't that great after all. Certainly nothing that holds up to all the hyper-hype. I mean read any review and it's like they're all doing an impression that my friend Michelle and I used to do back in the eighties of Roger Ebert orgasmically screaming out the name of his then favorite film "Ran" by Kurasawa.

Rethinking it, maybe the best space travel sci-fi movie was actually this:



Or maybe not.