The Martian
2015 · Directed by Ridley Scott
Woke Score
CriticCritic Score
Audience
Based
Critics rated this 58 points above its woke score. Among Based films, this critic score ranks #77 of 345.
Representation Casting
Score: 55/100
The cast includes Black, Latino, and female characters in positions of authority and responsibility. However, they are presented as naturally integrated rather than highlighted for representation purposes, and the protagonist remains a white male.
LGBTQ+ Themes
Score: 0/100
No LGBTQ+ themes, characters, or subtext are present in the film.
Feminist Agenda
Score: 25/100
Jessica Chastain portrays a competent mission commander, but her role does not interrogate gender dynamics or patriarchal structures. She functions as a capable character rather than as a vehicle for feminist commentary.
Racial Consciousness
Score: 15/100
While the film features people of color in substantive roles, it displays no explicit racial consciousness or commentary on race, identity, or systemic inequality.
Climate Crusade
Score: 0/100
The film contains no engagement with climate change, environmental degradation, or ecological themes.
Eat the Rich
Score: 5/100
The narrative celebrates institutional science and international cooperation but offers no critique of capitalism or corporate power structures.
Body Positivity
Score: 0/100
No body positivity themes are present. The film features conventionally attractive actors in roles that do not engage with body image or physical diversity.
Neurodivergence
Score: 0/100
No neurodivergent characters or themes are portrayed in the film.
Revisionist History
Score: 0/100
The film does not attempt to reinterpret historical events or challenge established historical narratives.
Lecture Energy
Score: 10/100
The film contains minimal preachy exposition about social themes. Technical problem-solving is explained to the audience, but not in service of progressive messaging.
Synopsis
During a manned mission to Mars, Astronaut Mark Watney is presumed dead after a fierce storm and left behind by his crew. But Watney has survived and finds himself stranded and alone on the hostile planet. With only meager supplies, he must draw upon his ingenuity, wit and spirit to subsist and find a way to signal to Earth that he is alive.
Consciousness Assessment
The Martian presents itself as a hymn to rational problem-solving and international scientific cooperation, qualities that sit comfortably within both pre-2015 liberalism and contemporary progressive values. Ridley Scott's film features a reasonably diverse ensemble cast where characters of color occupy substantive roles without the narrative stopping to comment upon this diversity, which is to say the film treats them as people rather than representations. The NASA team includes Michael Peña and Chiwetel Ejiofor in positions of genuine authority, and Jessica Chastain commands the bridge as mission commander. Yet none of this serves as the film's thematic engine. Rather, the film is preoccupied with the triumphalism of human ingenuity and the capacity of science to overcome hostile nature through bootstraps and perseverance.
The film is not interested in interrogating systemic power but rather in celebrating individual exceptionalism, specifically the white male individual who solves problems through wit and determination. The film's optimism about NASA and institutional structures, while refreshing in its earnestness, carries no critique of those institutions or the ideological assumptions they represent. There are no lectures about representation, no examination of how gender or race shapes experience within scientific hierarchies, no reckoning with environmental collapse or the costs of space exploration. The women in the crew are competent and present, but their competence exists in service of rescuing the stranded white man.
The Martian is a film of 2015 that reflects 2015's sensibilities without anticipating the cultural preoccupations that would define the discourse of 2020 onward. It assumes a diverse, functional meritocracy without irony, but it harbors no self-consciousness about representation, no investment in structural critique, and no appetite for the kind of cultural reckoning that would come to characterize the era. It is, in other words, pleasant and humanist in a way that feels almost quaint when measured against contemporary standards of social consciousness.
Analysis generated by our Consciousness Algorithm
Critic Reviews
“It takes a genuine master craftsman to take something as complex and difficult as this and make it look easy, but it also takes an artist with a great ear to take something as dense with exposition as this is and make it practically sing.”
“What’s so fascinating about the film is that it truly turns on the solving of problems, and its chief solver, stuck on Mars, manages to be so funny, interesting and infallibly likable that you’re invested in his predicament at every moment.”
“Scott’s sci-fi adventure is the kind of film you leave the theater itching to tell your friends to see. Like Apollo 13 and Gravity, it turns science and problem solving into an edge-of-your-seat experience.”
“The new Ridley Scott movie is fascinating and charming and crammed and overstuffed, and it’s a curious case, too. It gets all the seemingly hard things wonderfully right, but then caves in at points that should have been easy.”
Consciousness Markers
The cast includes Black, Latino, and female characters in positions of authority and responsibility. However, they are presented as naturally integrated rather than highlighted for representation purposes, and the protagonist remains a white male.
No LGBTQ+ themes, characters, or subtext are present in the film.
Jessica Chastain portrays a competent mission commander, but her role does not interrogate gender dynamics or patriarchal structures. She functions as a capable character rather than as a vehicle for feminist commentary.
While the film features people of color in substantive roles, it displays no explicit racial consciousness or commentary on race, identity, or systemic inequality.
The film contains no engagement with climate change, environmental degradation, or ecological themes.
The narrative celebrates institutional science and international cooperation but offers no critique of capitalism or corporate power structures.
No body positivity themes are present. The film features conventionally attractive actors in roles that do not engage with body image or physical diversity.
No neurodivergent characters or themes are portrayed in the film.
The film does not attempt to reinterpret historical events or challenge established historical narratives.
The film contains minimal preachy exposition about social themes. Technical problem-solving is explained to the audience, but not in service of progressive messaging.