Genre: Sci-fi
Premise: When a resilient and clever astronaut gets stuck on Mars, he must use every trick in the book to get rescued.
About: The Martian is one of the most anticipated movies of the fall. It’s got a great story behind it, too. Andy Weir self-published the book when he couldn’t get any publishers to bite. When it still didn’t sell, he was devastated. But then, just when he believed the book was a failure, sales began to pick up. Good old word-of-mouth propelled the book into a phenomenon, and Ridley Scott and Matt Damon came on in one of those rare “fast-track” scenarios that all writers dream of. The Martian is adapted by Drew Goddard, who’s become one of the biggest screenwriters in the business. He wrote for Lost, Cloverfield, World War Z, Cabin in the Woods, and Netflix’s Daredevil.
Writer: Drew Goddard (based on the book by Andy Weir)
Details: 10/4/13 draft
Last year, I wrote an “Adapt This Book” post about The Martian. The consensus I came to was that this would be a tough adaptation. You have one character, all by himself, in a tiny tent, doing math for hundreds of pages. How do you make that interesting?
But watching the recent trailers, I was surprised to see just how GOOD this movie looked. That seems to be the consensus of everyone who’s seen the trailers. People are REALLY FREAKING PUMPED for this movie! And it’s a reminder of just how much of a mind-fuck this business is. Why is it only obvious in hindsight how cool a movie can be? Because the idea of being stranded on Mars isn’t all that original. I’m sure someone’s thought of it (or something like it) before. Yet it’s this simple idea that’s captured the world’s imagination, and will probably make The Martian this year’s “Gravity.”
But for our sake – that sake being “how good is the f’ing script?” – I wanted to know how they’d tackled those “book-to-script” issues that worried me so much when I read the novel. So, let’s take a look…
For those who know nothing about “The Martian,” it follows Mark Watney, who was left for dead on Mars when his team had to make an emergency evacuation after a storm threatened to destroy their rocket home.
Word gets back to NASA that Watney didn’t make it, and the world is devastated.
There’s only one problem. Watney is very much alive.
Watney, a botanist, knows that the next mission to Mars is in four years. Which means he needs to figure out how to sustain himself for that long, which includes finding a food source on a dead planet. In his words, he needs to “science the shit out of this.”
Meanwhile, NASA’s Mars satellites pick up movement on the planet, allowing them to realize that Watney is still alive. After freaking out, they start designing a plan to save him.
When word arrives on the Mars mission ship heading back to earth that Watney is still alive, they decide to go against orders, turn around, and save him, despite the fact that they have no way to get back down onto the planet and actually pick him up. Will they succeed? Will Watney live? Is this script any good? I would answer these questions but I’d probably be spoiling the movie for you.
Okay, so my first adaptation worry was that Watney was communicating through a written diary. That doesn’t work in movies. So for the script, they went the Avatar route and changed it to a video-diary. This is probably the easiest solution when it came to the adaptation.
The next problem was you had 50-60 page chunks of Watney doing math. How oxygen needed to be coagulated to stabilize nitrogen and how that helped grow potatoes. Thankfully, Goddard got rid of all that. Which probably wasn’t an easy decision, since it’s the heart of the book and what Weir prided himself on (the realistic approach to the science side of the problem).
I was a little surprised at just HOW MUCH of this they cut though. Goddard makes the bold move to jump exclusively from major plot point to major plot point, skipping all that personal “I’m lonely and stuck on this planet” stuff in between. For example, whereas it would take 100 pages to get from Watney’s tent blowing up to him going out to find the Mars rover, here in the script it would take about 12 pages.
If there’s a lesson to take away from this script, it’s that. Screenplays aren’t made to explore the nuances of an event. You’ll have time to sneak a few in there. But ultimately, you have to keep the story moving, and we see that here.
Another thing that really surprised me was just how much time earth gets in this adaptation. In the book, it’s all about Watney. I’d say we stay with him about 70% of the time, and then cut back to earth 30% of the time.
I remember worrying about this when reading the book. I wondered how you could stay on a guy in a tent for 20 minutes at a time. Goddard and the producers appear to have had the same worry. Back on earth, lots of huge plot decisions are being made (the main one being how the hell are they going to save this guy before he runs out of food), so I guess they figured if that’s where all the action was, that’s where they needed to be. This has left us with a new ratio of 55% to 45% in favor of the earth scenes!!
But my spidey sense tells me that when Matt Damon came on (this draft was written a year before he became attached) he likely ordered more Watney time, and that appears to be what the trailers suggest. Still, it was interesting to see the script go away from Watney so much, almost as if they didn’t trust the movie to sustain itself when we were just with him.
Another adaptation issue I worried about was time. As you’re no doubt tired of hearing me talk about here, I believe that URGENCY is one of the key components to making a script work. Most movies you see take place within a 2-week period, and there’s a reason for that. It gives the story a sense of “SHIT NEEDS TO BE TAKEN CARE OF NOW.” If a story drifts on for too long without anything pushing it, the audience gets bored and loses interest.
But the one thing I keep forgetting is that a story needs to be as long as it needs to be. If your main character is stuck on Mars? And our scientific limitations say that we can’t get to him for another four years? Well, then that’s the time-frame you have to work with. As long as it makes sense to the audience, they’ll go with it.
And I liked the way Goddard handled time in the script. He wouldn’t make a huge deal about the passing time. We’d simply cut to a title: Sol 37. Then a few pages later. Sol 49. It was very unobtrusive and, in a way, made it so you weren’t even aware time was passing. That was clever.
Another thing I noticed – piggybacking off of yesterday’s post – is how much humor plays a role in Watney’s character. Watney has a very casual sarcastic sense of humor about the whole ordeal, and just like the humor in M. Night’s The Visit allowed us to fall in love with those kids, the focus on humor here ensures we fall in love with Watney.
A lot of energy in the screenwriting community is spent on determining how much you need to worry about making your protagonist likable, and my response to that is always: It depends on the movie. If you’re writing a movie where a serial killer is your protagonist, it doesn’t make a whole lot of sense to make the guy likable.
But in a movie like this, where your main character is all by himself with no one to talk to and you’re asking the audience to care enough about him for the world to spend 10 billion dollars to save him, then yeah, he’s got to be likable in some capacity. And giving your hero a sense of humor is one of the easiest ways to do that.
I’m going to finish up by saying something controversial but it’s something I’m feeling stronger about every day. The self-published book is the new spec script. With Hollywood terrified to take a chance on anything original, the self-published success story is the best of both worlds. It takes no money on your end to write and put the book up online. And when it sells a lot of copies, Hollywood gets their “proof-of-concept” they need to pull the trigger on a sale.
I say that to encourage you guys to try different avenues to get into this industry. Ask yourself if your idea would work as a novel and, if so, consider writing it as one. Even if you only do it once, you’ll have something tangible to point others to. In a business where a lot of writers don’t feel like “real” writers because they haven’t “made it” yet, this small victory can make your profession feel more real.
[ ] what the hell did I just read?
[ ] wasn’t for me
[x] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: When adapting a book, write out all the major plot beats in the story. In your script, you’ll hit those plot beats every 10-15 pages – so fairly frequently. Here we had…
1) Watney is presumed dead and left on planet.
2) Watney needs food – starts growing potatoes.
3) Watney needs to communicate with Earth, goes on journey to find Mars Rover.
4) Watney’s decompression bay blows up, destroying his tent and all his food.
5) NASA tries to send Watney a supply ship.
6) The supply ship blows up on launch.
7) The Mars Mission crew decides to turn back and rescue Watney.
And so on and so forth. While a lot of the introspective stuff in between the book’s major plot points is great for novel readers, it’s not necessarily great for movie viewers, who want the story to move quickly. Which is why you see so much of that stuff excised in the screenplay version of “The Martian.”
