Proving conclusively that it really is all about the writing, Ridley Scott’s most enjoyable film in years reassures us that the creakiness of Prometheus, the cack-handed contrivance of The Counsellor and the sheer stodginess of Exodus: Gods and Kings were genetically rooted in their respective screenplays. Scott may not have the best eye for a decent script (he thought A Good Year read like a charming Russell Crowe vehicle), but when the right words are on the page he can visualise them like no other. From the creative back and forth of Hampton Fancher and David Peoples on Blade Runner, through the genius of Callie Khouri’s Thelma and Louise screenplay, to this terrifically crowd-pleasing adaptation of Andy Weir’s book by The Cabin in the Woods creator Drew Goddard, Scott’s greatest debt has always been to his writers. The director may have earned a justified reputation as a “world-building visionary”, but his audiences always demand a good story and that’s exactly what they’ve got here.

Left for dead on the red planet following a scientifically anomalous but narratively necessary windstorm, botanist Mark Watney (Matt Damon, giving Cast Away-era Tom Hanks a run for his money) must hunker down for the long haul, knowing that any rescue mission is years away. Luckily, he is quite literally “the best botanist on the planet”, and after declaring that he’ll have to “science the shit” out of his Robinson Crusoe situation, he discovers that it is indeed possible to grow potatoes in his own poo.

The Guardian film team review The Martian Guardian

This is just the first of many self-help survivalist discoveries that find Watney entertainingly facing up to the challenge of “not dying”. Armed only with recordings of Happy Days and his captain’s collection of old-school floor-fillers (like Guardians of the Galaxy, The Martian takes great delight in its anachronistic retro-pop stylings), our lonely starman pitches his skills against the inhospitable elements, counting the solar days (“sols”) until help arrives even as mission control fight their own battles, practical and geopolitical.

The film revels in the sheer absurdist pleasure of watching human beings outwit the universe with Sellotape and string

Lifting underlying riffs from Doug Trumbull’s Silent Running and third-act visuals from Alfonso Cuarón’s Gravity, with coincidental hints of Interstellar (Damon is once again stranded on a distant planet, a world away from Jessica Chastain – what are the chances?), The Martian delivers on both intergalactic spectacle and feet-in-the-soil character drama. Like Duncan Jones’s Moon, much of the film’s running time finds its leading man basically talking to himself, with video diaries and delayed digital communications providing a handy dramatic framework for his quip-filled soliloquies. Damon makes the most of this “me time”, engaging our interest, winning our sympathy and teasing our anxieties about his perilous predicament. Meanwhile, his former crewmates wrestle with the guilt of his unexpected survival (Jessica Chastain does a very practical line in understated angst and heroic mutiny), while on Earth, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Sean Bean, Jeff Daniels, Kristen Wiig et al argue the whys and wherefores of bringing him home.

Crisply shot by Ridley regular Dariusz Wolski, who also photographed this week’s other eye-catching release, The Walk, The Martian keeps its visual palette positive, the ochre sands of Jordan’s Wadi Rum blending with vast Budapest soundstage interiors to provide a glowing backdrop for the space-suited action. With its seductive blend of hi-tech Nasa chic and Apollo 13-style DIY, the production design creates a lived-in feel that echoes the industrial environments of Alien. For all its technical liberties, the pop science convinces just enough to be both credible and intriguing – younger viewers in particular will be sent away with renewed (if slightly skewed) interests in chemistry, biology and astronomy, the latter further boosted by last week’s real-life Martian news stories, providing the kind of publicity of which PR androids can only dream.

Most important, however, is just how much fun Scott seems to be having with The Martian. While Prometheus was all but crushed by the lumbering weight of its self-consciously portentous dialogue (much ear-scraping exposition about God and interstellar “engineers”), this revels in the down-to-earth details of making a meal out of a potato when you’ve run out of ketchup, and the sheer absurdist pleasure of watching human beings outwit the universe with Sellotape and string. Whether forthcoming projects such as Alien: Paradise Lost or the proposed Blade Runner sequel will be half as entertaining remains to be seen, but for now let’s just be thankful that there is plenty of life on Mars.