THE MARTIAN

Part of Science On Screen® 2026

During a manned mission to Mars, Astronaut Mark Watney (Matt Damon) is presumed dead after a fierce storm and left behind by his crew. But Watney has survived and finds himself stranded and alone on the hostile planet. With only meager supplies, he must draw upon his ingenuity, wit and spirit to subsist and find a way to signal to Earth that he is alive. Millions of miles away, NASA and a team of international scientists work tirelessly to bring ‘the Martian’ home, while his crewmates concurrently plot a daring, if not impossible rescue mission. As these stories of incredible bravery unfold, the world comes together to root for Watney’s safe return.

“A smart, exhilarating, often disarmingly funny return to classic adventures of yore…. Damon embodies just the right measure of confidence and self-deprecatory vulnerability to make his character a slightly goofy Everyman — even as he's expertly MacGyvering his way from one outlandish work-around to the next…. Chief among its many strengths may be that THE MARTIAN is the only sci-fi action ad­ven­ture in cinematic history to reference both the hexadecimal numeric system and the Algonquin Round Table.” —Ann Hornaday, Washington Post (Oct 1, 2015)



“Of all the stories you’ve seen about astronauts coping with the aftermath of disaster…THE MARTIAN is the most relaxed and funny, and maybe the warmest…. THE MARTIAN makes the future look at once spectacular and mundane. For all its splendors, the world that enfolds the characters is simply reality: the time and space in which they happen to be living.” —Matt Zoller Seitz, rogerebert.com (Oct 1, 2015) 



“What’s so fascinating about the film is that it truly turns on the solving of problems, and its chief solver, stuck on Mars, manages to be so funny, interesting and infallibly likable that you’re invested in his predicament at every moment.” —Joe Morgenstern, Wall Street Journal (Oct 2, 2015)