Courtesy of Empire and Entertainment Weekly, we now have our first looks at Ridley Scott’s The Martian, based on the excellent novel by Andy Weir. Matt Damon stars as astronaut Mark Watney, who has been accidentally stranded on Mars and must use his engineering and botany expertise to survive the unforgiving Martian landscape. Check out the photos below, and click ’em to see bigger versions.
If you’re a big props and costume nerd, the spacesuit worn by Watney is positively drool-worthy. Even the soles of his boots bear the NASA logo. The suit has the tall bubble helmet design of the Prometheus suits, but everything below the neck has a touch of Interstellar restraint. I love the hubcap design on the rover… it’s all so beautiful. This is the kind of stuff I get lost in when I watch Ridley Scott’s sci-fi films, and if we’re being honest it’s probably one of the reasons I can watch Prometheus without getting mired in its sillier bits. But if The Martian doesn’t wander too far the novel’s structure and tone, it’s likely to blow that Alien semi-prequel out of the water airlock.
We should see some footage from the film pretty shortly, and we’ll see the whole thing on November 25.