Imagine Ridley Scott’s predicament when, two months before the release of his sci-fi adventure The Martian, NASA informed him on the down-low that it had discovered water on Mars. In The Martian, Matt Damon plays a U.S. astronaut mistakenly left behind on the red planet; forced to improvise, he manufactures his own water by burning the rocket fuel hydrazine to release hydrogen, which then combines with the oxygen in his little laboratory to create condensation. But now NASA has announced evidence of briny water flowing beneath the surface of Mars and wetting the ground, facts that would have been well known to our futuristic hero. These things happen in the sci-fi game, but it’s an unlucky break for a filmmaker like Scott—since the days of Alien (1979) and Blade Runner (1982), he’s put across some truly fantastical conceits by coating his stories with a sheen of hard science. Continue reading >>