The Martian, released in 2015, is a sci-fi film by director Ridley Scott that once again shows his talent turn. The story mainly tells the story of astronaut Mark Watney who was forced to stay on Mars due to an accident, and he found life through his own efforts and successfully joined the rescue team. Therefore, the film is known as "Robinson Crusoe on Mars".
The Martian, which won the Academy Award for Best Picture and the BAFTA Award for Best Director, is a testament to Scott's enduring achievements in the film industry. Scott is not only a director, but also a master of combining modern and classical design. He skillfully uses semiotics and aesthetics to create stunning visuals. The continuous progress of society and industrial civilization has promoted the development of visual art design, and in the film, the audience can feel the signs and symbols of industrial civilization throughout the development process of the story, and also change as the plot progresses. From a psychological point of view, this also reflects the change in the mentality of the protagonist Mark Watney.
As a high-concept sci-fi movie, "The Martian" carries a wealth of information. The main creative team not only needs to efficiently convey the information and show the basic plot of the film, but also ensure that the audience feels comfortable in the process of receiving the information, so that the viewing process is full of ups and downs. The theme of the film is the life of the protagonist Mark on Mars, but if the focus is completely on this theme, and he constantly repeats his boring life on Mars, it is easy for the audience to feel bored and aesthetically fatigued. Therefore, in order to increase the interest of the audience, the film adopts a multi-line narrative method, expresses the theme through the contrast of symbolic elements such as time, space, and color, and visually creates a contrast effect, forming film elements with "abandonment and persistence" and "pathos and optimism" as abstract contrasts.
Taking the spatial switching of the film as an example, NASA's layout as a scientific research institution is very neat and organized, and the various equipment in the office such as computers, desks and chairs show cold lines, these symbolic elements express the commander and team's rigorous attitude to the work, as well as the cautious and conservative attitude in the execution of the rescue plan. In such a work environment, people usually put rational thinking first and put personal emotions aside. For example, Superintendent Sanders was hesitant to risk his life for five astronauts to save Mark. NASA is supervised not only by Congress, but also by American citizens, and under great pressure to conduct aeronautical research work, staff must choose every word carefully when interviewing the media. Especially without testing, when the rocket launch failed, NASA's working atmosphere was at a low point.
In contrast, the working environment at the Caltech Laboratory in Los Angeles, an aeronautical research institution, is chaotic. Offices were littered with parts and paper, and researchers even spent the night in the lab. Sometimes small accidents happen when you are tired from work, such as accidentally spilling coffee on a trash can that will leak, leaving a bad impression.
At the same time, Caltech scientists are more emotional, proactive, and passionate in their work, and they are passionate about challenging themselves. To speed up the rescue of Mark, Caltech scientists made a bold proposal to remove the top of the accelerator and cover it with a canvas. This kind of advice may seem inconceivable to the usually cautious NASA staff, but it was this unusual idea that allowed scientists like Panal to successfully rescue Mark.
The Martian is based on Andy Weir's novel of the same name, which was serialized and released on the Internet. During the creative process, the original author Andy Weir consulted the relevant theoretical knowledge while conceiving the storyline. Due to the limitations of personal knowledge, some errors inevitably appear in the novel. As the novel became popular, many professionals discovered errors in Will's work during the reading process, and Will promptly revised it.
This special method of dissemination makes the original more reliable and authentic, and becomes the product of collective intelligence. After the entire story framework was built, many readers with astronauts or NASA backgrounds actively provided guidance to Will, contributed more professional knowledge, and made the storyline in the novel more believable and more detailed. Unlike novels, the image characteristics of movies make each picture more detailed than a text-only novel, and it is easier for the audience to immerse themselves in it.
Film production and communication mainly rely on visual culture as the main communication tool, and the audience intuitively experiences the fictional world of the film by perceiving visual symbols containing different meanings.
