Chinese/American solidarity in The Martian (2015)
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The Chinese come to the rescue of NASA and the movie literally concludes with one of the American heroes fist-bumping a Chinese astronaut on a joint mission back to Mars. It's a sad reminder of how bad the new cold war has become in just a few years.

2015: :wholesome: We can explore space together! :solidarity:

2022: President Xi is going to invade Taiwan at any moment LAUNCH THE NUKES NOW! :guts-rage:

:sadness:

  • GrouchyGrouse [he/him]
    ·
    2 years ago

    I enjoyed The Martian. I dunno if I'd ever read the book again but I might re-watch the film some day.

    • joaomarrom [he/him, comrade/them]
      ·
      2 years ago

      I really liked it, and the book was very entertaining. It perfectly straddles a line between being appealing to redditors and being enjoyable to regular humans.

      • TheCaconym [any]
        ·
        2 years ago

        It perfectly straddles a line between being appealing to redditors and being enjoyable to regular humans.

        From the same author, Artemis was OK; but Project Hail Mary was above The Martian, and also extremely entertaining. They're easy-to-read books that are fun - not much more than that but that's perfectly fine.

        • joaomarrom [he/him, comrade/them]
          ·
          2 years ago

          Exactly! The Martian was a very comfortable read, just a dude trying to survive against ridiculous odds through his own ingenuity, while the world works together to assist him. It's such a positive, enjoyable story.

          • CommunistBear [he/him]
            ·
            2 years ago

            The audiobook version of The Martian was fantastic since it was iirc mostly audiologs in the first place

        • il4vayWRYW0SDoqKfBua [none/use name]
          ·
          2 years ago

          ugh i hated project hail mary, the insufferable bazinga I FING LOVE SCIENCE affect that was barely repressed in the martian comes out in full force

          • TheCaconym [any]
            ·
            2 years ago

            I get that; I was cringing more than once. But if you can tolerate that: the book is still very fun IMO.

            • il4vayWRYW0SDoqKfBua [none/use name]
              ·
              2 years ago

              i could not tolerate it, i really loved the martian and even enjoyed artemis well enough but project hail mary just seemed to be a distillation of all the worst parts of the author's previous works

      • Crucible [he/him, comrade/them]
        ·
        2 years ago

        The amount of gravity on Mars is also quite wrong- Mars is closer to the moon's gravity than it is to Earth's, but it would've been a pain to film and make look right

      • Cromalin [she/her]
        ·
        2 years ago

        plus iirc a bunch of minor details about the surface of mars that were speculation at the time but were found to be false after the book was written

          • Cromalin [she/her]
            ·
            2 years ago

            yeah, i'd never expect something like this to be 100% accurate. and i've never heard of anyone being angry about it, so i assume it's close enough for all the space nerds to enjoy as well.

    • hexaflexagonbear [he/him]
      ·
      2 years ago

      I liked the book when I read it, but man is the prose and narrative style annoying in retrospect. You really needed the brain disease you get from currently doing a stem undergrad to enjoy it.