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Just re-read 'The Martian' and then re-watched the movie. The book's internal monologue is SO much better.
I read the book again last weekend and noticed how much of the humor and problem-solving is in Watney's head. The movie is great, Matt Damon is perfect, but it has to cut SO much of that internal voice to fit the runtime. The book lets you sit with the sheer scale of each disaster and the clever, step-by-step fixes. The movie's montages can't really capture that. Anyone else have a book adaptation where you missed the character's inner thoughts this much?
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black.mark1h ago
The 14 minutes Matt Damon spends staring at a potato in the movie doesn't compare to the 14 pages of him calculating soil nutrients in the book. @ellis.rose nailed it with the "arguing about lunch" bit because that's basically my brain too, except Watney's version actually accomplishes something. The movie turns a three day problem-solving session into a ten second montage set to disco music. I get why they had to cut it, but it feels like reading a joke where someone skips the setup and just tells you the punchline.
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Honestly I used to think the movie was just as good. But you're right, the book's inner voice is the whole point. It's like half the story is just him talking to himself in his head.
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ellis.rose15d ago
Yeah, and I'm over here realizing my own internal monologue is mostly just me arguing with myself about what to have for lunch. Makes Watney's survival calculations look pretty good. But seriously, you nailed it with the step-by-step fixes. The book has that long part where he's just doing math on water production or explaining the potato plan. The movie turns that into a quick shot of him looking at plants. You lose the feeling of how much work each tiny win was. What other book adaptations do you think got hurt by losing that inner voice?
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