20th Century Fox has released the first trailer for its adaptation of Andy Weir’s The Martian, and it looks damn good. Under Ridley Scott’s hand, the gripping, well-researched novel seems to take on equal parts Gravity (as we watch Matt Damon’s botanist and mechanical engineer Mark Watney get stranded on Mars) and Interstellar (Watney faces the bleak truth that the earliest NASA will return to find him is four years’ time). There’s also some dark humor, as Watney doggedly keeps up with video recording, telling his audience or lack thereof how he plans to “science the shit out of this” in order to stay alive on an inhospitable planet.
Also, the cast looks fantastic: Jessica Chastain, Kate Mara, Oscar Isaac, Sebastian Stan, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Donald Glover, Kristen Wiig. Not to mention the requisite inspiring score as man faces an alien nature. Just watch the trailer already:
The studio also put out a viral marketing video over the weekend, in the form of a faux-NASA webcast introducing the crew. While you don’t need to know who’s who—aside from Jessica Chastain as the crew’s fearless leader, calmly proposing a mutiny—to appreciate the first trailer, it adds an extra dimension to figure out Watney’s relationship to each crew member. Producer Simon Kinberg has also provided a helpful chart for each character’s relative position in space.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CumZP6_9sHU
The Martian comes to theaters October 2.
