Wonderful character development!

Crappy film

The acting is good, and the firecracker script has some excellent ideas.

The best films of this genre always show a path and provide a takeaway for being a better person.

I thought it was a parody. Don't waste your time, the movie can't be more awful!

It tries to be philosophical, but falls short with unoriginal ideas and an overly melancholic monologue throughout the movie.It tries to showcase intense emotional and existential themes as seen well done in "Moon", but fails to achieve this between bad writing, bad directing and on some parts really bad acting. (I'm looking at you Luke Wilson)Lastly.. It tries to base the whole premise on a scientific breakthrough, yet none of the actual elements of science seem at all plausible or sane in the context of a mission to mars.I mean, disregarding the heaps of uninformative science-lingo, the fact that they are sending one man, alone, with what seems to be a basically unverified method of producing water, letting him work on it IN FLIGHT, and expecting him to (once again, ALONE!) start a Martian colony... is just a maddeningly non-scientific way of doing it.And what's the deal with his name... Stanaforth?! That's where you tried to be original?!

The whole idea of this movie is very interesting, the psychological effects of being the first human being that goes to Mars.However, 7 points are taken from Slytherin because this movie gave me the constant feeling that something lacked. Be it realistic communication with Earth, or the way the portrait space missions in the movie's version of the ISS or the fact that they send the main character on a mission to Mars, with 1 self-developed machine that has been tested apparently once (?), at least, it's not working very early in the movie and there seems to be no communication about this or any help from Earth, or any back-up etc etc. Whatever version of NASA this is, they would never-ever let this happen. Furthermore, they would not send two guys from the street to control the ISS, while their mental health is obviously in a terrible state.I mean, Earth-bound colleague Skinny (who also wants to go to Mars) is sitting in his office and seems to be Skyping casually, exclusively and in real-time, with the astronaut about all topics that concern this mission, there is no ground control or a command center as far as we can see. Basically, Skinny is all of those and calls every now and then to help in absolutely no way at all. Said astronaut is the first human being going to Mars, you cannot convince me this is how communications and aid from Earth would look like. They might as well have given him a cyanide pill and save him, and us for that matter, the trouble. The way this movie portrait a possible first mission to Mars is impossibly unrealistic and gives a cheap set-up for the development of the story-line. I would also argue that it takes a dump on the immensely well-developed and elaborate training programs and professionalism of any serious space organisation. I would not recommend, even though its somewhat entertaining at times.

Hard to know where to begin with this one. First, I suppose I'll tackle the mission design, which consists of two separate spacecraft, one containing a lone man and the other a single woman, headed to Mars a couple of weeks apart. Not sure why this would be. Every mission to Mars on the boards consists of at least six astronauts--per spacecraft. Maybe they thought they couldn't keep their hands off each other if they put them in the same spaceship?But then, this mission appears to have been conceived by a wanna-be astronaut who thought it would be a good idea to maroon himself in the desert as a motivational exercise to help him engineer some kind of machine that turns rock into water. If he doesn't die of thirst, first.Second. . . did you know there are mysterious and colorful nebulae floating somewhere between Earth and Mars? Neither did I. But apparently there are--and they look great!That's not nearly as unbelievable, though, as a space station located three weeks from Earth populated by a couple of moping astronauts. But apparently, our Mars-bound spacecraft has to stop there for "supplies"--an utterly idiotic notion for anyone familiar with physics.Did the writer/director of this movie do *any* research at all? I don't see how he could have. Scanning even the briefest article on colonizing Mars would have upended the premise of this film.Look, I'd be willing to forgive all the technical inaccuracies if this movie had a strong story or offered some kind of insight into human behavior, but about two-thirds of the way through it devolves into this rambling. . . I hesitate to call it "philosophical". . . meditation on. . . something. Most of what the protagonist spews out is just oddly random non sequiturs. There are tips of the hat in this film to The Martian, Silent Running, and 2001: A Space Odyssey. The reason this compares so poorly to any of those classics isn't the ultra-low budget of this film; it's the writing.Good performance by Mark Strong, but he just has so little to work with. At least he eventually gets to Mars. As a viewer, I felt as if I was left on the launch pad.