10 Movie “Mistakes” That Were Put There Intentionally

4. The Dust Storm (The Martian)

The Martian 2015 Film Dust Storm
20th Century Fox

At the start of Ridley Scott's The Martian, Matt Damon is left stranded on Mars as a result of a raging dust storm that separates him from the rest of his crew.

The storm is seen absolutely battering the crew and damaging valuable equipment, but if you take this same situation and give it a real-life context, then the outcome would not be nearly as devastating.

Dave Lavery, Program Executive for Solar System Exploration at NASA and a consultant on the film, confirmed as much in a chat with IFLScience:

“Dust storms certainly do occur on Mars, they get winds in excess of 100mph... but a 100mph wind on Mars, because the atmosphere is so thin, has the same inertia and dynamic pressure down at the surface as about an 11mph wind on Earth. It’s not going to have the sort of energy to move large objects the way that is portrayed in the book and the film.”

But without a devastating inciting incident, there is no movie, and so - fully aware that a real Mars dust storm wouldn't have the same punch in real life - the filmmakers (and author of the original novel, Andy Weir) chose to include a damaging one anyway, just to move the plot along.

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Danny has been with WhatCulture for over ten years, and is currently Doctor Who Editor and WhoCulture Channel Manager, overseeing all of WhatCulture's Whoniverse coverage. In 2022, he took charge of WhoCulture and has grown it into the biggest Doctor Who channel on YouTube, and one of the biggest Doctor Who communities on the web full-stop. He has been writing and video editing since his early teens, and first got a taste for content creation after making his own Doctor Who trailers, off the back of a burning obsession with the Matt Smith era of the show. Like many his age, he first got into Doctor Who with the 2005 revival, but has since gone back and fallen in love with the classic years too. If you need someone to recite every Doctor Who episode in order, or to give you a random factoid about the making of Gridlock, Danny is the person to ask!