We recently chatted with Drew Goddard, the Cabin in the Woods filmmaker and former Daredevil showrunner, on his screenplay for the new Matt Damon sci-fi blockbuster The Martian , and how he gave up the director’s chair – only to be replaced by his hero Ridley Scott.

Loading

Loading

Loading

The thing I love about the book is that it has this spirit of optimism in the face of tragedy. It’s a man who’s stranded by himself on Mars and I think in most other people’s hands that would be very dour. And in [author] Andy Weir’s hands, it’s much more optimistic – and funny, in a way. And I liked that. It’s not what you usually see in science fiction.Right! And I love those movies too, don’t get me wrong, but I felt like I hadn’t seen this positive side before.So much of this one was more about protecting rather than inventing. The book’s great and so it was more about how do we shape this into a movie that isn’t nine hours long. The good news is, when you have so much great stuff, that’s a good problem to have. It’s all about making hard decisions on what to cut.Andy Weir is much smarter than I am, so in terms of the specifics of the science, he just nailed all of that. To me, I feel like I understand how scientists sound. I grew up around them and I don’t think they’ve ever been portrayed the way my experience has been listening to them. They’re much funnier than you realize. There’s a much more deadpan humour to scientists that I find pretty consistent and it was very important to me to convey that onscreen.Look, it falls under the category of good problems to have, in that I had three projects all get greenlit at once – Daredevil, Sinister Six and Martian – and I had to make some tough decisions. With The Martian, Fox was great and we all just sat down and said, ‘We want to make this movie,’ because Matt Damon had a window and that doesn’t come up that often, and you tend to want to make movies when you can. So we said, let’s try to find a director that we’re all excited about. If we don’t, we’ll wait and Drew will do it then… Ridley was the top name on our list and we sent it to him - and he said yes that night!No, he’s ready to go! You usually get a quick answer one way or another. And when he said yes, we all immediately relaxed and thought, this is going to work out fine.The thing I think Ridley doesn’t get enough credit for, is the humanistic spirit that’s in his movies. Look at Blade Runner – my favourite movie of all time – and it’s just people struggling to live longer. Gladiator – it’s just a guy who wants to get home to his family. Thelma and Louise, Alien, they’re about people struggling to survive. It’s a theme he keeps coming back to – I’m not even sure he’s aware of this! But it felt like exactly the right fit for The Martian.For sure, you have the technical side – it’s space and there’s nobody better. But I don’t know if people appreciate how soulful [his films are]. I think people appreciate him on a gut level, because we keep watching his movies over and over, but I don’t hear it talked about on an intellectual level.Look the simple answer is, that it wouldn’t have been as good! He’s a much better director than I am. He just made this movie sing, man. I don’t know that I could have done that with those sequences of this movie, especially in the back half – like, I keep forgetting that he didn't actually go to Mars! It’s got this epic, David Lean quality to it that I know I wouldn’t have captured the way Ridley did. It’s hard for me to think any more what I would have done, because what I’m watching is so much better!No! We knew he was doing a movie but I don’t know that we knew it was that specific. But the truth is, we didn’t care. He let us know – and [Interstellar co-star] Jessica [Chastain] too – but we just knew that this movie was special and unique and nothing else was going to be like this movie. Everyone wants to work with talented actors. And if you rule out doing a movie because it’s like something they’ve done, your list is going to be pretty short, pretty quickly.The Martian is now playing.