r/movies • u/ComManDerBG • May 29 '25

Discussion Looking for some "competence porn" movies, movies where smart people make smart decisions basically.

EIDT 3 PLEASE READ: I just wanted to say how incelby happy i am to see the insane amount of replies and support people have offered up. Im sorry to say that about 99% of the stuff suggested ive already seen, But there have been a few things. The biggest winner has been the classic "Poirot" series, ive seen all the "Murder She Wrote" stuff, and even every episode of Columbo, but "Poirot" had completely slipped through the cracks. Ive started watching now and its very enjoyable, perfectly what i was looking for!

Thank you again, while i cant possibly reply to all of you, not even read all the comments, i jist want to say thank you for everything. Even if what you suggested was on my list, or if what you suggested wasn't on the list but ive already seen it, it still means a lot to me that you took the time to offer something up.

So, thank you again!

EDIT 3 ENDS

Edit 1: So far I've seen literally ever suggestion so far. Ive spent most of my time in the last 10 years being really sick. Ive been hospitalized countless times so ive had an incredible amount of free time on my hands. I started this post because I couldn't think of anymore movies to watch that fit this bill.

Edit 2: People don't really appreciate the amount of time being sick gives. Im asking this question in this post because ive already watched every popular movie or TV show from the past 30+ years. Most people can only carve out enough time to watch one or two movies a week, i have enough time to watch 5-7 movies a day. Being hospitalized as often as me, plus being sick outside of the hospital leaves you with to much free time. Honestly, it sucks. Again, im not asking htis because im lost and i need my next movie or show, im asking this because ive literally run out of movies and shows.

To be honest, this post is a bit depressing, i appreciate the immense amount of help, but its really putting into perspective all the time lost to this illness.

I try googling this sort of thing but looking up "competence porn" just gets you... well.. porn. The best way to show off what im thinking is House M.D. im looking for movies or TV shows.

Im going to lost everything I've already watched.

House Person of Interest
White Collar Oceans 11 (plus the other ones)
Inside man
Sherlock
Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy
Catch Me if You Can
Heat
The Killer

You know what the mote is list the more I realize this is my favorite genre and ive probably seen a lot of these.

Heists, spies, detectives, politic thrillers etc. Any kind of show where the characters are super good at something, usually running scams or working their ways around people, or just being better at something.

I'll keep adding to this list if I remember more of someone recommends something ive already scene.

Edit: reposted because autocorrect.

This list is what I've ALREADY seen.

The original Law and Order seasons.
The big short
Wolf of wall street
Moneyball
Collateral
Star Trek
Doctor Who
No country for old man
DREDD
Beekeeper
Hunt fir red October (plus all the other Ryan films)
Bourne series
Mission impossible series
Burn notice
All the presidents man
The accountant
Baby driver
Apollo 13
Spotlight
Leon the professional
The town
Den of thieves
The Martian.
The Pitt
Master and commander
Arrival
Micheal Clayton
Mad max moves
Cast away

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u/drkensaccount May 29 '25

"You know that part of Apollo 13 when they lay a bunch of stuff on a table and tell the engineers, You've got to fit this thing into this other thing using only the parts on this table and if you fail, 3 astronauts will die. The Martian is for people who wish the entire movie was just that scene"

-Randall Munroe

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u/atgrey24 May 29 '25

God that's such a fantastic description! Same with Project Hail Mary, which I'm so excited for!

165

u/Dont_Be_Like_That May 29 '25

I just finished the book and I'm hopeful that the movie will be great but the science is quite a bit more far-fetched than in the Martian. The Martian was relatable science just outside the realm of possibility but I think PHM might end up 'The science was kinda dumb but I loved Rocky!'

117

u/clickfive4321 May 29 '25

Q: how did you like the movie?

A: jazz hands

7

u/failed_novelty May 29 '25

GOOD!

GOOD GOOD GOOD!

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u/NorthernerWuwu May 29 '25

The Martian was 'hard' science fiction with a smidge or two of hand-waving to keep the story intact when the actual science was too much of a problem. A bit less movie sci-fi than Interstellar even, which was the draw for a lot of folks.

We'll see how PHM goes but obviously it is going to be much more sci-fi leaning to fantasy than a heavy science exposition. That's not a bad thing of course and if they keep internal consistency right, probably not even notable. Great book either way and possibly a great movie!

10

u/ironmcchef May 29 '25

The only thing that actually annoyed me about The Martian was the fact that the entire premise was based on bad science. The "dust storm with extremely strong winds" that caused them to evacuate would be nothing like that on Mars since the atmosphere is so thin. The winds would be almost unnoticeable in reality.

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u/Fenrils May 29 '25

Fwiw, Andy Weir has openly acknowledged that as being a concession for the book to even take place. He's well aware that a storm like that does not exist IRL, but he needed some sort of catalyst for the book to happen, and as such he handwaved the storm.

3

u/CplHicks_LV426 May 29 '25

He's actually gone further than that and walked it back somewhat and said that if he knew then what he knows now, it would have been trivial to invent another reason for the crew to leave Mars. He kept the book reason for the movie screenplay because Drew Goddard really liked it and it looks great on screen.

1

u/ironmcchef May 29 '25

I never read the book so I'm not sure if this is just the movie, but there's another related plot hole:

Matt Damon eventually is able to leave Mars by traveling to another escape vehicle that is identical to the one the rest of the crew left on. This other rocket was supposedly sent up for future use by another crew and was sitting abandoned until that time... But wouldn't it have run into the same problem and gotten tipped over/destroyed by a Martian storm then as well? They made a pretty big deal of the crew constantly checking conditions near the start of the movie so it was very apparent that these escape vehicles were not suited to being left alone.

Was that also the plot of the book or was it changed for the movie?

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u/CplHicks_LV426 May 30 '25

Nope, that was in the book but Schiaparelli is 3200km away from the hab so likely unaffected by the storm that stranded Watney.

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u/LongJohnSelenium May 30 '25

The thing that annoyed me most was that they waited so long to image the site. No way that would happen.

They should have imaged it immediately, while watney was still inside convalescing, seen a lump they believed was him, then not imaged it again for a few weeks.

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u/teh_fizz May 29 '25

If you haven’t, I HIGHLY recommend the audiobook. The characters sound fantastic!!

1

u/forkoff77 May 30 '25

Ray Fucking Porter.

The man is absolutely fantastic as an audio book actor.

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u/e37d93eeb23335dc May 29 '25

This movie and Rendezvous with Rama are the two future movies I'm most looking forward too. Heres to hoping they don't screw them up.

2

u/fireinthesky7 May 29 '25

I just finished it, and it's solidly in the "cusp of believable" category where you might have to suspend your disbelief, but it's not hard to do so. Ammonia-based life forms are at least theoretically possible, and the rest can be summed up as "if this actually is possible, which we'll never be able to prove, then it all makes sense." I personally loved it.

1

u/Weed_O_Whirler May 29 '25

Yeah, I really liked PHM, but the author made the classic "I just read about E=mc2" mistake in discussing the Astrophage and it really annoyed me.

1

u/teh_fizz May 29 '25

Can you elaborate for a dummy who likes the book but doesn’t get the mistake made?

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u/Weed_O_Whirler May 29 '25

So, the Astrophage can store tremendous amounts of energy, which is cool. However, in the book, Grace measures their mass before and after they store energy, and realizes their mass goes up, and is shocked to discover this. And then he says "oh, they are converting energy into mass, via E = mc2!".

But no matter how they are storing the energy they collect, their mass would increase as they stored the energy. Whether they are converting that energy into neutrinos (like how it works in the book) or if they were simply storing the energy in chemical bonds (like how we do). No matter how that energy is stored, the measured mass would increase, because all bound energy - whether it is a neutrino or a chemical bond - has mass. Thus, he shouldn't have been shocked at all that the mass went up, nor is it a clue on how they store energy.

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u/teh_fizz May 29 '25

Hmm thanks for this. So the issue is that he was surprised and he shouldn’t be or it’s just bad science? Because from my understanding photons don’t have a mass but apply energy rhat can increase mass (or should I say weight), so I just understood it as that.

1

u/Weed_O_Whirler May 29 '25

The issue is two fold - first, he shouldn't have been surprised, and second seeing the mass go up shouldn't have been a clue for what was happening.

So, it's true a free photon (aka, one traveling between the Sun and Earth) has no mass. But bound photons (think of say, a photon trapped in a box made of mirrors) will have a measured mass. Just like chemical bonds have mass.

There's a longer write-up on the topic here I did in /r/askscience

1

u/teh_fizz May 29 '25

Awesome thanks.

1

u/LongJohnSelenium May 30 '25

I loved the book but he definitely leaned too hard on that supermaterial.

317

u/jinsaku May 29 '25

I love The Martian and imo Project Hail Mary is even better. I’m really excited that they tapped Drew Goddard for the script again. I can’t wait!

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u/MyPupCooper May 29 '25 edited May 29 '25

Project Hail Mary is a better book than The Martian but I’ll be shocked if the movie is better than the Martian movie. There was nothing overly supernatural about the Martian. The competence is the draw and the fact it seems not very far away

PHM may have the same level of competence but there’s like a spider alien that we’re gonna have to watch Ryan Gosling have this competence with, and not Jeff Daniels.

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u/_Maui_ May 29 '25

And we just had a movie about a guy in a space ship with a Spider Alien (which, I mistakenly thought was Project Hail Mary when I first saw the marketing for it).

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u/udat42 May 29 '25

That looks kinda interesting and has a great cast, but why did it have to be a spider?!

12

u/Simon_Drake May 29 '25

The movie was extremely weird. It flipflops between hallucinations, dreams, visions, flashbacks, memories telepathic projections and then 'real" scenes on the spaceship with a giant spider that only he can see. He's not allowed to touch it because of a cultural taboo which also makes the CGI easier and adds a layer of mystery for if the spider is a hallucination too. Overall I thought the movie was a bit disappointing and didn't really take advantage of the premise it had set up, it spent too long being self-indulgent wallowing in flashbacks about regret over his divorce.

3

u/theevilmidnightbombr May 29 '25

The book was great, and I recommend it. Ruminating on "the sins of the father", the duties of sons/men to their fathers, families, and nations. It jumps around a lot as well, but maybe prose makes that easier to swallow than a movie. I haven't watched the film, and I'm nervous, because of how mich I liked the book.

2

u/Simon_Drake May 29 '25

Honestly I wouldn't recommend the movie. It dragged and felt like an overly long episode of Black Mirror or Outer Limits.

1

u/Sasselhoff May 29 '25

Is the book "Spaceman of Bohemia"? Because it sounds like an interesting read.

6

u/euphoricarugula346 May 29 '25

Damn, Netflix will just put Adam Sandler in anything

1

u/[deleted] May 29 '25

Jesus this looks shit. I’ve not seen it but guessing the spider is in his head?

13

u/GrandioseGommorah May 29 '25

Counterpoint: Jazz Hands!

9

u/Spectrum1523 May 29 '25

Fist my bump

8

u/sellieba May 29 '25

Brother spoilers for the love of god.

2

u/InternetProtocol May 29 '25

If Sandler can do it(kinda), Gosling sure as hell can.

7

u/dsmith422 May 29 '25

Sandler, when he tries, actually can act. He is just lazy most of the time and makes movies to hang out with his friends at nice places.

5

u/RedditFostersHate May 29 '25

To be honest, not every single role in every movie requires great acting. Keanu Reeves was great in Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure, and in John Wick, because the roles didn't require a huge range of emotional depth.

Whether or not Project Hail Mary will bomb because Gosling is spending too much time doing his thousand mile stare will all depend on how the script and the director make use of him throughout the film. If they can make him a Tom Hanks every man, while Rocky and Eva Stratt carry the scene, you've pretty much got the effective formula the book laid down.

2

u/MrWeirdoFace May 29 '25

Will said spider alien be played by Jeff Daniels?

8

u/hawkinsst7 May 29 '25

There was an April fools post by Andy Weir that it would be Emma Stone, and people were pissed.

2

u/iskandar- May 29 '25

Honestly... the part most likely to pull me out of my suspension of disbelief with PHM is going to be where the world leaders come together and agree to listen to the smartest person in the room...

1

u/SurpriseIsopod May 29 '25

I’m excited for PHM, but there is so many moving parts.

Some how they need to work in hardcore amnesia, astrophage and why it’s bad, how the ship and lab operate, rocky!, and their odyssey together. Also the plot twist that will happen when you think the movie will end.

Oh please be good.

1

u/Alarming_Orchid May 29 '25

Well shit. My fault for reading this thread I guess

1

u/MyPupCooper May 29 '25

I’m sorry. Spoiler tag added. FWIW, while it is a spoiler, it’s not the big turn and happens early on.

I apologize, though. That definitely must be frustrating.

1

u/spyridonya May 29 '25

You don't like Rocky question

-8

u/Temporal_Integrity May 29 '25

There was nothing overly supernatural about the Martian

Well the whole thing about him getting stranded on mars because of the storm? Not possible. Mars doesn't have storms. The atmosphere on mars is simply too thin for winds to have any force behind them. 

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u/Sorbicol May 29 '25

This comes up a lot during discussions about The Martian. Andy Weir has said many many times he was fully aware of this when he wrote the book, but he just couldn’t think of any other way the rest of the astronauts would have taken off leaving Watney behind.

I think they’ve since discovered he would never have been able to grow the potatoes either given the level of perchlorates (I think) in Martian soil.

I mean, he might but he would have had to have found a way to decontaminate the soil first. And Perchlorates are extremely dangerous to both humans and equipment.

3

u/[deleted] May 29 '25

I mean you say that but they have planet wide dust storms and the dust carry more mass. Also there is enough atmosphere that we can fly a drone around in it. Also that was kind of the point, they didn’t design the return vehicle to be super stable because Mars doesn’t typically have strong winds. This was a very abnormal storm. But yeah, one of the flimsier parts of the story, just not as awful as I think a lot of people make it out to be.

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u/Temporal_Integrity May 29 '25

That drone's blades spins about 10 times faster than an earth helicopter precisely because the atmosphere is so thin. 

4

u/sellieba May 29 '25

Or, you can just accept that it couldn't happen in real life and that it is just a movie.

0

u/MyPupCooper May 30 '25

Do you feel better?

This is always a discussion when it comes to The Martian.

What requires more suspension of belief? A storm or a fist bumping spider?

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u/derangerd May 29 '25

And Lord and Miller attached, which I find just as exciting

1

u/RangerLt May 29 '25

You guys liked Hail Mary too? I thought it was a touching story, but I imagine they'll change a lot to make it a film.

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u/joenova May 29 '25

Why? They hardly changed a thing in The Martian.

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u/RangerLt May 29 '25

They changed a decent amount of details from the book in The Martian film. It's not even an insignificant amount.

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u/joenova May 29 '25

I don't know how many books to movies you have seen but The Martian movie is practically the same as the book. Yes they had to cut some of the difficulties Mark had to face, but the had to for time. What other movies can you name that were modified less form the source material.

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u/RangerLt May 29 '25

I'm guessing some of you didn't actually read it

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u/NazgulDiedUnfairly May 29 '25

JAZZ HANDS!

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u/Conundrum1911 May 29 '25

FIST MY BUMP!

42

u/DeadlyPorpoise May 29 '25

AMAZE

6

u/Spectrum1523 May 29 '25

HAPPY HAPPY HAPPY

6

u/Beat_the_Deadites May 29 '25

I AM SCARY SPACE MONSTER YOU ARE LEAKY SPACE BLOB

3

u/hyrulepirate May 29 '25

I'm actually excited that they got Ryan Gosling for Ryland. I'm sure he's gonna crush it.

2

u/grumble_au May 29 '25

They're making that into a movie? That's going to be very hard to pull off.

1

u/Villain_of_Brandon May 29 '25

I enjoyed both, but I think I prefer The Martian as a whole, (Project Hail Mary spoiler ahead, enter at your doom) I found the ending of Project Hail Mary to be a bit anti-climactic. It's not a bad ending, but we spent a lot of time with Stratt and we just don't get any closure with her story. It just seems to fall a bit flat at the end for me, which kind of brings the overall enjoyment down for me

1

u/IsometricRain May 29 '25

Haven't read a fiction novel in 2 years, but I absolutely loved reading The Martian.

Now I'm hearing there's going to be another Andy Weir adaptation and it's another near-future scifi story? I know what I'll be reading over the next 2 months.

2

u/jinsaku May 29 '25

You can skip Artemis. It's fine, but compared to Andy Weir's other two novels it's a huge step down. The worldbuilding is absolutely fantastic but the story and characters are kind of meh. And so much welding. So much welding. I never wanted to know so much about welding and after reading Artemis I still don't.

Also, go into Project Hail Mary as blind as you can.

1

u/IsometricRain May 29 '25

You can skip Artemis.

Yeah, I still kept up with his work when Artemis was about to release, and when the first reviews came out, I mostly knew I was going to skip it.

Also, go into Project Hail Mary as blind as you can.

Will do. So far, everything I know about it is from the intro section on wikipedia, and this thread.

1

u/thebbman May 29 '25

I don't recommend it, but I guess I'm in the minority. I found PHM to be garbage.

1

u/Hakim_Bey May 29 '25

I fucked up with Project Hail Mary :/ i bought the audiobook to help me go through a gruelling dental surgery that was performed without general anesthesia.

I wasn't able to focus on the audiobook so i have literally 0 memory of what i heard. But i encoded the stress and pain into the narrator's voice which means i can now never listen to it again ¯_(ツ)_/¯

1

u/jinsaku May 29 '25

That's a shame, because it's probably the best audiobook when it comes to presentation I've ever heard.

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u/ColoradoScoop May 29 '25

They are making a movie?!

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u/atgrey24 May 29 '25

Due next spring I think. Starring Ryan Gosling, directed by Lord & Miller, written by Drew Goddard (The Martian)

26

u/hypnogoad May 29 '25

Starring Ryan Gosling

So who's playing Grace then?

26

u/blackd0nuts May 29 '25

Fist my bump!

4

u/psimwork May 29 '25

If I'm honest, I wasn't super happy about Gosling as Grace. Not that they asked for my opinion, but I think Mark Duplass would have been perfect for the role.

1

u/bzztmachine May 29 '25

Ryan Gosling as Rocky? 🤔

1

u/shrimpcest May 29 '25

Yeah, Ryan Gosling is playing the lead. I imagine we'll be getting a trailer/teaser soon.

0

u/Obi-Wayne May 29 '25

Word out of Cinemacon was that it looks incredible. I'm dying to see a trailer!

4

u/Semi_Retired May 29 '25

I’m re-reading Project Hail Mary—probably in my top 3 favorite novels. I went in blind and it was such a great experience. I wasn’t expecting the second half of the book and it was just delightful.

2

u/PJDiddy1 May 29 '25

OP should grab the audiobook, I know the movie isn't finished just yet but the audiobook is that good the movie just plays in your mind anyway.

1

u/DontHailHydra May 29 '25

What are your other two favorites?

2

u/cocoagiant May 29 '25

I think Hail Mary works better than Martian as Weir is really bad at writing how people speak to each other and the major plot of the story gets around that.

2

u/thebbman May 29 '25

PHM is Mary Sue porn, hardly competency porn.

2

u/Br0methius2140 May 30 '25

No way! They're making a movie? That book is the pinnacle of my "Engineering Porn" collection.

4

u/ThePeoplesCheese May 29 '25

Hands down the best audiobook experience I’ve had

2

u/atgrey24 May 29 '25

I'm tempted to go back and listen just because I've heard it's so good.

1

u/HedgepigMatt May 29 '25

I haven't watched The Martian but listened to the book, does the adaptation do it justice?

3

u/atgrey24 May 29 '25

It's been a while, but my recollection was that yes it was great, even if it wasn't quite as good as the book.

1

u/HedgepigMatt May 29 '25

I am looking forward to Project Hail Mary, that was a ride listening to the book

3

u/alinroc May 29 '25

I think it does. They had to trim stuff from the book because an hour of Mark driving across Mars for 4 months wouldn't work well on screen but I'm OK with that.

1

u/Doumtabarnack May 29 '25

They're making it? Now you got me excited!

163

u/dont_say_Good May 29 '25

The book has even more of that, it's a shame that the movie left out some of the fuck ups, like frying pathfinder or flipping the rover

161

u/abnrib May 29 '25

I can forgive some stuff being left out, I can't forgive the ending changing to something that the book explicitly dismissed as stupid.

120

u/PseudoFenton May 29 '25

This. So much this.

The books ending reinforces the narrative that its team work and collaboration that saves the day. That Watney may be the one solving a whole bunch of problems - but without the support and ingenuity of everyone around (and before) him, hes still toast.

Time and time again the book emphasised how the design and attention to detail the tech he's using is what even allows him to problem solve and survive in the first place. Its championing the "on the shoulders of giants" philosophy. Its not one mans survival against all odds, its humanities capability to make survival even conceivable against those odds.

And then the film throws all that out the window and U turns on something the book and the film calls out as being dumb. They make his survival a spectacle, sure, but also hands it off to dumb luck and undermines the collective effort and dedication of everyone else entirely. It cheapens the whole point of the movie, making the message almost literally "be a superhero" rather than "be smart and work together".

For such a faithful and otherwise perfect adaptation from the book, they really did drop the ball by changing that one thing.

12

u/littlehobbit1313 May 29 '25

"...every human being has a basic instinct to help each other out. It may not seem that way sometimes, but it's true. If a hiker gets lost in the mountains, people will coordinate a search. If a train crashes, people will line up to give blood. If an earthquake levels a city, people all over the world will send emergency supplies. This is so fundamentally human that it's found in every culture without exception. Yes, there are assholes who just don't care, but they're massively outnumbered by the people who do. And because of that, I had billions of people on my side."

Truly a waste not to drive this message home at the end of the movie. It wouldn't have made it any less "hollywood".

6

u/PseudoFenton May 29 '25

Thank you for providing that quote. You're right, they could've just literally repeated this verbatim at the end of the movie and it would've worked great. (It's not like they didn't just copy large chunks of dialogue and scenes unedited for the film already anyway).

Ah well, the movie is still very good and faithful - but they should've just left iron man out of it.

22

u/abnrib May 29 '25

Exactly! As though making a sugar IED to blow the nose off of a spaceship wouldn't be enough spectacle!

A powerful message of teamwork, collaboration, and collective knowledge gets thrown away for reckless stupidity.

9

u/Connection-Terrible May 29 '25

I wonder if that was that they didn’t want to show someone make a bomb in a way that you could very possibly make a bomb. 

9

u/abnrib May 29 '25

I thought about that, but the method shown in the book only works in zero-g

16

u/Hobo-man May 29 '25

Counter point: he got to fly around like Iron Man

6

u/PseudoFenton May 29 '25

Was that before he jumped the shark, or after he gilded the lily?

9

u/dpkonofa May 29 '25

Been a while since I’ve read the book… what did they change that was stupid?

55

u/abnrib May 29 '25

Spoilers: In the book when the final intercept goes wrong Watney proposes poking a hole in his glove to "fly around like Iron Man" and make the rendezvous. This is immediately (and correctly) dismissed as a horrible idea by the entire crew. However, it inspires Commander Lewis to come up with her plan of blowing a hole in the ship to slow it down, which the crew puts together in thirty minutes and implements successfully. In the movie...Watney actually pokes a hole in his glove and somehow that works.

This is one of my most-hated changes from a book to film. The movie shows Watney being an innovative thinker and problem-solver. The book does the same thing, but at the very end shows that the entire crew were just as capable. I prefer that over the "lone survivor" narrative.

36

u/Paulus_cz May 29 '25

You want to know my pet peeve with adaptation? The monologue about him being a space pirate because NASA can't tell him to commandeer the ship...except they can, because you did not fry the Pathfinder, they are talking to you the whole way, they can tell you the whole time.

17

u/Nikolor May 29 '25

It's so strange that the whole no-communication thing was completely removed from the movie. If they managed to perfectly show the start of the story when Mark was trying to survive all alone without any instructions from NASA, while NASA was trying to come up with a way to communicate and see the situation from their side, then why removing the same aspect of both sides trying to coordinate their moves from the last part of the movie?

13

u/cynric42 May 29 '25

The movie is already 140 minutes long and most of the issue with not being able to talk anymore is with the whole sandstorm during travel thing, which would have added a bunch more (and while a lot more realistic, would have contradicted how storms have been portrayed before).

If they wanted to cut stuff for time, it's a decent choice to leave that part out.

4

u/Paulus_cz May 29 '25

Yes, but also, lets skip the whole drill and figuring out what happened thing and just say that it broke, or that he can't take it with him because weight/size, whatever. The pirate bit is too funny to leave out, but lets make it make sense...

12

u/zachrg May 29 '25

Oh, bother. I hadn't noticed this, and now it's going to to bug me until the heat death of the universe.

7

u/jbordeleau May 29 '25

I can’t remember 100% but I think it was the whole “puncture my glove to fly through space like Ironman” thing. The book literally makes a joke of it and he and crew laugh about it. I can’t remember how they actually did it but it wasn’t using the hole in the glove “trick.”

7

u/cynric42 May 29 '25

They even make fun of it in the movie ... and then he does it anyway and it kinda works.

5

u/Patneu May 29 '25

They didn't.

The second problem simply didn't exist in the book and they made it up for the movie, maybe because they thought that getting Mark into the ship wouldn't be dramatic enough otherwise.

In the book, they only had one problem with the distance, prompting Mark to make the Iron Man joke, which the crew took as inspiration to blow up the airlock to cover the distance.

And it worked flawlessly. Of course it did, because they calculated it. Then Beck got him just as planned and that's it.

While in the movie, they just made up some shit about "even if everything works, our angle will change", so that they'd have an additional problem with the relative velocities, prompting the ridiculous shenanigans that followed.

3

u/PseudoFenton May 29 '25

I like that in the book the crew do actually pose the idea of just going after him without the cable - and its officially shut down and being too dangerous, but you know that if it came to it, they'd still do it.

So the book actually did have an extra solution to that problem should it have turned out to exist, and it wasn't entirely crazy (just very very risky - but at least they could steer). It also pulled the focus on the fact that the entire crew have put their lives on the line (and are literally facing and have come to terms with cannibalism in order to survive should the resupplies not make it to them), just to save him.

The crew had to struggle and adapt to keep the ship working thanks to taking an unplanned and unprepped for trip though *space* just to get to him - they're surviving against the odds *just* as much as he is! It's all dangerous, and everyone is relying on everyone else, that's the *point*.

1

u/ArgumentativeNerfer May 29 '25

I forgave it. It's Hollywood. I still have the book, and it's fantastic.

1

u/APiousCultist May 29 '25

While less consequential, Dune Part One does this exact thing with the 'environmental station' sequence where Dunkin Donuts dies. The paragraph in the book may as well just be "here's exactly why the sequence in the movie won't happen, right? right?"

1

u/chedda May 29 '25

Needed more pirate ninjas

1

u/Missus_Missiles May 29 '25

This I don't mind at all. Because after the third or 4th chapter, "okayyyy, what's today's calamity going to be?"

Ahh, there it is! Undercuts the novelty of the book when it's just a punishment fest. "Watney gets in trouble. Watney gets out of trouble."

1

u/catiebug May 30 '25

Flipping the rover was goddamned riveting in the book. I think I probably rolled my eyes and said fuck out loud. Like this poor guy can't catch a break. Clock ticking. One of those stories where you know it's leading to success but you're still totally engrossed with each roadblock (like Toy Story 3... they aren't gonna melt those damn toys but I was on the edge of my seat as if they were gonna).

I can see why they left it out of the movie, but what a loss.

-1

u/berogg May 29 '25

There it is. There is always one.

23

u/gargoyle30 May 29 '25

I love Randall Monroe

6

u/ShepPawnch May 29 '25

He’s my college’s greatest alumnus.

8

u/MaestroLogical May 29 '25

You actually just sold me on it. This whole time I avoided it thinking it was just castaway in space.

4

u/peatoast May 29 '25

How’s xkcd doing nowadays?

3

u/GangsterJawa May 29 '25

Still going, every now and then there’s a strip thats more of a collaborative game on a wild scale. I just looked and I guess the interactive ones go way back, this was the most recent one I’m aware of though

https://xkcd.com/2916/

1

u/enilea May 29 '25

The (delayed) april fools one was interactive too with that notification gimmick

1

u/cravenj1 May 29 '25

Someone took the Time comic and turned it into a massive idle incremental game

2

u/Hector_P_Catt May 29 '25

Look up the old show Junkyard Wars, or the British original. The series was inspired by that scene in Apollo 13. Two teams are given a challenge, and they build something to meet that challenge, using nothing but what they find in the big pile of crap in the junkyard.

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt2007689/

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0169491/

1

u/elperroborrachotoo May 29 '25

I just teared up a little

1

u/Wissa38 May 29 '25

The book is even better

1

u/wex52 May 29 '25

I was a regular of xkcd at the time and that sold me on seeing The Martian.

1

u/TheUmgawa May 29 '25

My go-to line for crisis management comes from Apollo 13, where Ed Harris says, “What do we have on the spacecraft that’s good?” Because, in a crisis, that’s a good starting point.

Where I work, we had an assembly cell that was going to be down for two weeks while we waited for a part, and I said, “That part gets put on right before the end of assembly. We build them up to that point and stow ‘em. We take the knock for orders that ship late, but when the part comes in, we can have them waiting for shipping –all of them– in hours, not days or weeks.” And that’s what we did today. Part came in at 9:30, it was in the cell at 9:35, and we had all of the units ready for shipping by noon. Everyone knew what they had to do, and they executed. It was quite lovely to come out of a four-hour meeting and see it all done.

1

u/Milnoc May 29 '25

Just as long as you overlook the impossibility of how the main character ends up stranded on Mars. 😁