[Ed note: Caution - spoilers!]
The teaser takes the form of an in-universe "video diary" showing Watney and the rest of the crew of the fictional Ares 3 mission preparing to leave for their trip to Mars on the spacecraft Hermes. Somewhat presciently, it starts out with Watney briefly struggling to set up a video camera—something he’ll likely be doing with great regularity once he finds himself marooned on Mars.
After a brief introduction, Watney introduces the other members of the Ares 3 mission, including mission commander Lewis (played by Jessica Chastain, who along with Damon recently starred in Christopher Nolan’s Interstellar). The video is overlaid with pop-up factoids and Twitter-like interjections and trending topics from the public, some of which contain nods to other works of science fiction (when German astronaut Vogel first appears, played by Norwegian Aksel Hennie, one tweet asks "Vogel has to be the #synthetic right"—a reference to Ridley Scott’s Alien).
We've been fortunate to have a couple of decent Sci-Fi movies like Gravity and Interstellar the last couple years. Let's hope this follows in those footsteps.
(Score: 1) by drgibbon on Sunday June 14 2015, @11:49AM
Yeah, I couldn't understand the hype around it at all. I went to the cinema to see it and I was ready to leave well before it ended. Visually stunning sure, but that's all. I would have preferred it as a pure space 15 minute short (and if there had to be people, no talking). The characters and the story were painfully banal. However it is true that the great majority of people loved it (which I find puzzling), so who knows.
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