Since 1910 Mars has been a recurring cinematographic element. First, with the short film A Trip to Mars Thomas Edison, released in 1910. Then, during the decades of the 50s and 60s, with The Terror from Beyond (Edward L. Cahn, 1958), The Angry Red Planet (Ib Melchior, 1959) or Robinson Crusoe on Mars (Byron Haskin, 1964). And those that came thereafter: Mission to Mars (2000) Red Planet (2000), The Last Days on Mars (2011) and the most recent, rescue mission (2015), directed by Ridley Scott and based on the novel The Martian science fiction, Andy Weir.
Rescue Mission shows the struggle for survival astronaut Mark Watney (played by Matt Damon), Mars presumed dead after being swept by a sandstorm . While his teammates return to Earth, Watney, botanical NASA has to rely on his wits waiting to be rescued: solve everyday problems, rationing their supplies, create a virtual diary where you record in a camera, try to . overcome his loneliness in an uninhabited planet and plant a crop of potatoes to prolong its existence
The film takes several scientific licenses: storms on Mars are actually much less powerful than recreating Scott, the ability to grow potatoes on a ground laden with heavy metals and bacteria free is impossible in the eyes of a scientist and the gravity is much lower. However, Scott’s film is interesting for experts in photography of landscapes, a timeless, red and sandy horizons.
The filmmakers have always been much speculation in scientific terms and have played with elements Fantastic: giant trees and evil monsters, lifestyles dangerous and hostile, hurricanes disappear astronauts, characters who walk without spacesuits without artificial oxygen, springs sprouting like on Earth
. But for scientists, Mars is a little bored with what they have believed the filmmakers. Today we know that the radiation would kill a human being and that the atmosphere is unbreathable. These doses of imagination are not free. They are explained by the lack of data and real images of Mars for long decades. Scientists have completed empty filmmakers with his fantasy.
As says Germán Chaparro, an astrophysicist at the University of Groningen in the Netherlands, and professor at the University ECCI, the interest of humanity by land unknown will never disappear and the few victories of science.
For example, “Mars and Venus were meat science fiction for long. Venus, for its brilliant light resembled Paradise. Instead, its red light, the imagined Mars as a primitive version of Earth, “says Chaparro. A Venus ran out of time in their fourth film since his little paradise conditions were discovered, “with clouds of sulfuric acid and temperatures of nearly 500 degrees F to melt lead. From that time Mars was prominent as our second home in science fiction, “confirms the expert.
The first steps of man on the moon and the space race between the Soviet Union and the United States during the 60s also marked the development of Mars in film. The satellite travels and lunar missions were extraordinary images that substituted different life forms to ours. Manuel Kalmanovitz, film critic, argues that the proliferation of these films during that time due to “be close, be the neighbor, our tendency to imagine in the lives of our neighbors. Many of these films were cheap and today they are more comical than anything else. “
However, did the current task is film tracing with pinpoint precision scientific discoveries? Although the first feature films were exempt very erudite explanations, partly because there were too many studies on the planet, today movies that happen in space must be faithful to reality?
According Kalmanovitz, “the It fluctuates science and what we know is changing. Wait scientific rigor of movies is a bit absurd. The world of fiction requires a certain level of acceptance of things we never see in everyday life. It does not seem outrageous films with imagination fill the gaps in knowledge that he had. Or ignore the evidence to create a world that fits with the story they want to tell. “
So the creative license that these films are made, including rescue mission , fall in inaccuracies or “scientifically incorrect” statements. Despite this, “the important thing” as astrophysicist Chaparro says, “is that while you do the exercise as a viewer to suspend disbelief, the filmmakers do not overdo it with the errors so they bring to one of the narrative.”
This time, NASA and Fox studios seem to have agreed to make a box office planet Mars. Just as the space agency announced the discovery of Martian saltwater last September 28, rescue mission was opened to the public on October 2. In fact, its director Ridley Scott said in an interview with The New York Times that NASA images showed him two months before them known to the world, by the close cooperation it had with the . space scientists
It could be a coincidence or could be planned as well. The truth is that the plot is based on a novel “where the only problems are scientific, then undergoes a fundamental blindness about the human dimension of what it shows, but it’s something the film inherited from the book,” says Kalmanovitz. And Chaparro, ultimately, what “always valued is a story well told.”
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