Talk:The Martian (film)

Adding individual opinions to the accolade section

Someone added an individual's opinion to the accolade section of this film, even though that section is reserved for award giving organizations such as the academy awards, the golden globes and such. The critical reception section is where we often find professional film critics opinions and review aggregation companies results. If people arbitrarily add individual opinions to the accolade section the wikipedia will just become more disorganized. Thanks. User:Wikieditor1377 01:15, 22 September 2020 (UTC)

The poster is referring to this. It was the opinion of US President Obama at the time the sitting president. This opinion is notable for a couple reasons. He wrote the budget for NASA and if he said something about a film in relation to Mars it is relevant because the film clearly influenced him enough to say something about it. NASA helped develop the film, the President funds NASA, and the President said something positive about the film. Next the accolades section is just that, it includes notable opinions and reviews. If Wikieditor1377 only wants professional film commentators fine, but Wikipedia is not limited to that. Wikipedia is not that structured, each article is free to include whatever information is relevant to the topic. -- GreenC 01:49, 22 September 2020 (UTC)

I moved it to the budget section we'll see if that sticks. There is a definite connection between the President who makes the annual NASA budget request to Congress, NASA who helped develop the film (which costs money), and the President's positive shout-out about the film which is positive PR for NASA. Similar government/hollywood relations exist with military themed films. -- GreenC 02:08, 22 September 2020 (UTC)

Scientific Accuracy - Mars' Atmosphere

I have no problem with sci-fi movies shading the facts, as long as correcting/removing the misrepresentation wouldn't require a major plot change. However, this movie plays fast and loose with Mars' atmosphere in far more serious ways than the article and the cited Time magazine reference admit. In fact, the reference, despite the pedigree of its author, is wrong in one important aspect. It states that Watney's plastic sheet and duct tape repair to his living quarters would be OK in the real Mars' atmosphere, i.e. near vacuum. It would not - see below.

Incidents for which Mars needs an atmosphere, with pressure and density a significant fraction of Earth's (which is fiction)

The initial dustorm that isolated Watney from the crew. As the article states, that would have required a dense atmosphere.

The band-aid repair to the living quarters - The opening that Watney sealed had an area of approximately 4,000 sq. in. I doubt that Watney's repair could take a force of more than 200 lb. before breaking, but I'll be charitable and assume 500 lb. That's a pressure differential of 0.13 psi. Assuming that the air inside the living quarters was at least 12 psi in order to be breathable, then the ground level Martian atmospheric pressure would have to be at least 11.87 psi, or 80% of Earth's.

Incidents for which Mars' atmosphere needs to be near-vacuum (the reality)

Damage to Watney's spacesuit causing a critical loss of his suit's oxygen partial pressure.

Rupture of the living quarters' wall causing explosive decompression which leads to the destruction of Watney's "farm".

Taking off from Mars' surface with only a "tarpaulin" sealing the nose of the rocket.

The movie can't have it both ways, and changing to a uniform atmosphere at all times, preferably the real near-vacuum, would be a plot-killer. Nigelrg (talk) 17:12, 7 July 2021 (UTC)Nigelrg (talk) 18:18, 7 July 2021 (UTC)

Budget and Box Office error

It says that the budget of the film is $109 billion while the box office is $630.2 thousand. The source it was taken from says that both are supposed to be millions only.

Obvious vandalism was reverted.[1] If you see such obvious vandalism you can revert it without discussion. -- 109.79.177.125 (talk) 23:03, 26 March 2022 (UTC)

RT

@FlightTime: What is your objection to my amends please? Changed raw numbers to pull from Wikidata so updated by bot so more likely to be up to date Indagate (talk) 21:25, 26 March 2022 (UTC)

My objection is, you have no consensus for your changes. - FlightTime (open channel) 21:28, 26 March 2022 (UTC)

But why need to get consensus for such a minor change before making it? Don't need to get comment on every change before making. Please don't revert just because not discussed before making amend, only revert if you disagree with amend. Please advise why you disagree with my amend. Indagate (talk) 21:30, 26 March 2022 (UTC)

I'm fine with Indagate's edits. I'm not sure what argument there would be against using these inline templates? They're narrowly used so the numbers are dynamically updated without editors needing to check manually. Erik (talk | contrib) ^{(ping me)} 22:26, 26 March 2022 (UTC)

My first objection was that Indagate rewrote the descriptive text of Rotten Tomatoes but did not provide edit summary to explain why. He should explain that he is promoting the use of {{Rotten Tomatoes data}}. If there is actually a consensus behind greater use of the {{Rotten Tomatoes data}} template then it would be better if RottenBot be allowed to do what it was made to do, and make edits on a large scale instead of having individual edits doing it piecemeal. My other objections are that it is strange to take the number that Rotten Tomatoes calls "average rating" and change the label to "average score" for no apparent reason (other editors have done this too but I've never seen a good reason for it). It is also a bit much to describe the selective sampling and subjective interpretation and quantization that Rotten Tomatoes does as "reporting", they don't report the scores and stats like a football game, they create them. -- 109.79.177.125 (talk) 23:03, 26 March 2022 (UTC)

I don't know why {{Rotten Tomatoes data}} has not been implemented in a widespread manner. Perhaps no one has made such a bot request yet or tried to get the consensus to carry out the request? I think it works at this time, and wherever it's implemented, it can save editors time in updating scores. In any case, how to word Rotten Tomatoes has always been a messy business. Personally, I think it needs to be made clear that the percentages come from Rotten Tomatoes always assessing a review as positive or negative, never in between, and I find the average ratings more appropriate for an encyclopedia than the percentages. I even tend to write the breakdown Metacritic has for a film (in this case for The Martian, it would be 40 positive reviews and six mixed, out of 46). I'm not going to fuss about the wording here, personally. Feel free to hash out what it should be here, but honestly, someone will likely come by and overwrite it in due time. There are certain editors with a cookie-cutter mentality that think the Rotten Tomatoes and Metacritic writings should be done one way, and they have the time and energy and obsession to do it. Erik (talk | contrib) ^{(ping me)} 23:34, 26 March 2022 (UTC)

IIRC the bot received permission for a limited trial run then stopped. It might be still running in limited capacity, it might not, but if you are enthusiastic about more articles using the template it seems strange not to ask the bot author first and find out.

Erik says "cookie cutter" (and has said it many many times before) and I say a bit more consistency would be nice. I am not hung up on one true way of doing it but I am trying to do it more or less the same as it has been done by many other editors before me. (I don't see why some people write "The review aggregator" but other things being equal I wouldn't bother to change it either.) There's more than one way to do it but there are more than a few ways that are worse than others, so if we could try to avoid some of those it would be a good start. -- 109.79.177.125 (talk) 02:10, 27 March 2022 (UTC)

It's my favorite go-to description! Feel free to have at some ideal language, but like I said, it may be a waste of time if you move on and someone else comes along and overwrites it with their version. Erik (talk | contrib) ^{(ping me)} 12:53, 27 March 2022 (UTC)

Erik suggested "I even tend to write the breakdown Metacritic" but this adding even more verbose detail does not seem like a good idea when some editors are already complaining about the alleged emphasis on review aggregators.

There have been many discussions about ideal language (several past discussions can be seen at Wikipedia_talk:Review_aggregators) but despite what some people might think I'm not trying for "ideal language", I'm merely trying to avoid making things worse.

-- 109.79.176.100 (talk) 13:46, 27 March 2022 (UTC)