Matt Damon talks to Dominic Corry about why playing yet another stranded astronaut isn't giving him complex - just a chance to put some science back into sci-fi.
The last time we saw Matt Damon on the big screen, he was playing a Nasa astronaut stranded alone on a barren planet in Christopher Nolan's Interstellar. For his new film, The Martian, he plays ... a Nasa astronaut stranded alone on Mars. But this is no retread.
"I had taken a year and a half off and the only thing I did was that little cameo in Chris' movie," Damon tells TimeOut.
"So when I went to see [director] Ridley [Scott] about this, I said, 'I just played a guy stranded on a planet by himself. Am I gonna follow it up with another guy stranded on a planet by himself?'
"But they're so different, the movies are just apples and oranges so I felt like it was okay."
Adapted from Andy Weir's runaway bestseller, The Martian follows Mark Watney, a botanist and engineer on a Nasa expedition to Mars who is presumed dead and left behind following a mission-threatening accident.
"Dr Mann in Interstellar was very cynical, he does something that's very selfish. What he does makes total sense in human terms, but Mark Watney in The Martian is doing what he has to do survive and it's seen as very heroic. So the film's treatment of the characters is very different."
Watney's struggles on Mars go far beyond having enough oxygen - he has to not only devise some method of letting Nasa know he is in fact alive, he has to figure out a way to grow food on the barren planet to survive long enough for them to get the message. The character's resourcefulness is severely tested, and survival will come down to his knowledge, not his will.
Matt Damon features on the cover of this week's TimeOut:
"Andy Weir, when he wrote the book, said 'I'm gonna let the science dictate what happens'.
"And so Watney kind of works through each of these problems one by one and just stays focused on the task in front of him. I talked to the screenwriter, Drew Goddard, and he said: 'I just see this as a love letter to science'. It really is a celebration of human ingenuity and that kind of pioneer spirit that has taken us where we are. It's Robinson Crusoe, you're with the guy the whole time as he's trying to survive against these impossible odds and that's exciting."
We are with Watney, but he's not with anyone - Damon spends pretty much the entire movie alone.
"That was one of the reasons I wanted to do it. Acting really is about the other person, if you're doing it right. You're listening to them and whatever you're getting, it's changing you. And so the concept of doing something by myself was a little alarming. I thought James Franco and Danny Boyle did a really good job in 127 Hours in the way they solved a lot of those problems. I'd never done a movie without anyone. I had Ridley, though. In terms of those individual scenes, it was me and Ridley and that was really cool."
A scene from The Martian starring Matt Damon.
Damon describes Scott as his scene partner in the film.
"We laughed every day. Ridley's just fun to work with because he's very gruff and I love that. He doesn't spend a lot of time coddling anybody's feelings. So if you try something as an actor, he's not afraid to tell you if it doesn't work. Which is great. Because you get to the solution a lot quicker when somebody's honest with you."
The film isn't all Damon all the time, however - the murderer's row supporting cast includes Sean Bean, Kristen Wiig, Kate Mara, Jeff Daniels, and Jessica Chastain as the captain of the ship that abandons Watney.
"We're lucky in the sense that we have a story to cut back to. So we have planet Earth trying to save Mark Watney. Then the other half of the movie is me on Mars just trying to figure out how to save myself and keep myself alive until they can get to me. So the structure of the story kind of gave us a lot of support."
Coming as it does on the heels of a mild boom of space-centric movies, Damon says one of the ways this film sets itself apart is with its degree of authenticity.
"This movie is supposed to be set a few years in the future so they talked to everyone at Nasa about the direction some of this stuff might be going in and they tried to base it in reality but not make it utterly realistic because it's supposed to be a few years in the future. And also it's gotta have that Ridley wrinkle."
Said wrinkle led to the Budapest-shot film almost being made down our way. "In fact, this movie was almost shot in New Zealand. We were between New Zealand and Budapest, but the largest sound stage in the world is in Budapest and Ridley couldn't resist it. He wanted to go to New Zealand particularly because Weta was there, and Ridley was all like 'Weta's the best in the world', which is true. And so we almost went just for Weta. But he couldn't resist this giant sound stage in Budapest. I think Ridley just fell in love with that. Given that a lot of the movie takes place on a sound stage, Ridley wanted the biggest one."
One of the ways Watney passes time in The Martian is by watching a cadre of old 70s TV shows that are stranded along with him. What shows would Damon himself choose to watch if he was lost in space?
"Not the 70s TV shows. I could go with The Wire and Game of Thrones. I love Game of Thrones. House of Cards, I love that one. Breaking Bad. We're in the golden age of TV and I'm on Mars watching reruns of Three's Company."
Who: Matt Damon What: The Martian, directed by Ridley Scott When: Opens in New Zealand on September 30.
