The Martian: Book and Movie

***Spoilers***

We've lived here four months and we've only been out on a date once to the Imagine Dragons concert, which now that I think about I'm pretty sure I never posted anything from...so go me.  I've been trying to round up a babysitter.  I live right next door to two teenage girls but they are never outside and the one time I made an effort to found them up to have them babysit they did not have any interest.  There is another girl in my ward who seemed super interested and every time I brought it up she was always like, "Oh yeah I really want to do it," but then when the day would come she just never was available.  Finally the lady I babysit was like "Why don't you try my daughter."  She had just turned 14 but she is super tall and looks probably 18-19.  I can relate, that was pretty much my whole life.  So she came over last week so that J and I could go see The Martian and go to dinner.  We went at 5:30.  Guys 5:30 is an awesome time to go on a date.  It wasn't enough time to go to a fancy restaurant or anything but it was the perfect amount of time to eat at Costa Vida and catch the 7:00 movie.  We were home by 10:00 to find kids already in bed and to catch two episodes of Person of Interest our new favorite show.  It was great.

So here we go, my feelings on The Martian.  The movie was good.  It stays relatively close to the book.  There are a few challenges they don't bother to mention or that they solve with a different solution but the basic story stays the same and nothing integral to the plot changes.  It was nice to see Matt Damon in a good guy roll after Interstellar...I mean that was just ridiculous but do I think it deserves a million awards come Oscar time.  No.  It was highly entertaining but Interstellar was still the better space film and while it was good it wasn't amazing.  Which brings me to the book.  Somewhere out there on the web my friend Bridget said she just couldn't be friends with someone who didn't like The Martian, which makes me a little hesitant to post this, but  I just didn't like it.  The pluses on the book, it is a nice short read.  It takes an interesting spin on the survival story, think Robinson Crusoe, The Swiss Family Robinson, or Hatchet only on Mars.  That part is clever.  The science is  fun.  I enjoyed reading his problem solving.  Ultimately though my annoyance stemmed from two things.  One, I thought he just solved too many problems.  Isn't that terrible?  I sort of ended up wanting him to die though.  It just seemed like too many things had to work out.  My second problem was I had a hard time believing that all these sacrifices would be made to save one guy.  The cost was astronomical.  It was just hard to believe that it would be worth.  So there you go.  I didn't like the book because I'm a terrible person and I felt he should die.  Feel free to judge me.