Reasons To Watch The Martian For The 47th Time, Ranked

You deserve it, buddy.

brian grubb

28 Jan 2026 — 3 min read

Here we go...

TEN: It is a good movie

NINE: It has that thing a great rewatchable movie has, where knowing all the little twists and turns somehow takes away from your enjoyment of them exactly zero percent, which always feels like sorcery when it works, especially when it's a movie you wouldn't typically see a trailer for and think "I gotta watch this opening weekend"

EIGHT: Matt Damon is funny in The Martian, like legitimately funny in a way you can forget he has in his toolbox if you’re mostly thinking of him from like the Bourne movies or something, and it’s even crazier because most of his funny parts aren’t even him playing off anyone as he’s just looking into a camera on Mars and talking to no one

SEVEN: It is always wild to see Jeff Daniels playing Mr. Serious NASAMan when your first notable exposure to him was a movie where he played a doofus who had a bout of explosive diarrhea into a toilet that doesn't flush, and yet it still kind of makes sense and works, which makes for a kind of career arc very few actors can match

SIX: The movie gets right to the point in a way too few successfully pull off, realizing that this is not about his life at home or what made him want to go to space as a child or anything, and just jumping straight to “whoops they left him on Mars and now he’s gotta figure out how to live and get home,” which I appreciate because I am not made of time

FIVE: Look, everyone knows they’re gonna play Starman at some point, even if it’s their your time watching the movie (just because, like, how could you not play Starman in this movie???), and yet it still hits like a hammer when those opening notes drop

FOUR: What a cast, holy Toledo, with Jessica Chastain and Kate Mara and Sebastian Stan up in space and Chiwetel Ejiofor and Kristen Wiig and Mackenzie Davis on the ground and then, sure, why not, plop in Donald Glover as a little science dork charisma bomb in a scarf halfway through to give us the solution to all our problems

THREE: It is very nice to watch a movie about a group of people working together to solve a problem in a satisfying way that ends with Matt Damon returning home after growing potatoes on Mars for a little bit

TWO: I want to eat a Mars potato

ONE: You deserve a little break, go have a snack and watch The Martian

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STUFF I CLICKED ON

— Howard Beck wrote about tanking in the NBA (with 76ers in the URL lol)

— Carly Lane profiled Tom Hiddleston

— Daniel Fienberg wrote about the new documentary from John Wilson, from the incredible HBO series How To With John Wilson, which is still just sitting there on HBO Max waiting for you to watch it

— Ryan Coogler loves talking about movies so much