10 Reasons The Martian Is Ridley Scott's Comeback

5. Matt Damon Gives One Of His Best Performances...

Look through Matt Damon's filmography and you'll come across a ton of excellent performances: Good Will Hunting, The Bourne Trilogy, The Departed, The Informant, True Grit and so on. His work here joins them without question, all the more challenging because he spends so much of the film as its sole anchor, working on his own and having to carry things by his mere presence alone. Damon is, of course, immensely popular with audiences, and his portrayal here of a likeable, wise-cracking scientist endears him to the viewer almost immediately, as they no doubt become drawn into his desperate and seemingly impossible quest. Though the script may not give him any big Oscar reel moments of over-the-top emotion, he aptly conveys everything anyone stranded on Mars would feel: there are moments of exasperation, terror, panic, anger, and then those lighter instances of relief when Watney manages to solve one of the many problems facing him. Though Damon will probably miss out on awards honours due to his understated work and the Academy's general prejudice against the sci-fi genre, he did a splendid job all the same.