The Martian is a movie adapted from the book of the same name by Andy Weir. It follows an astronaut, Mark Watney, who is abandoned on Mars, and the attempt to bring him back to earth. The movie features the themes of individualism and cooperation, which is a rather ironic pairing considering that they are opposites.

For the bulk of the screen time, the movie follows Watney and his attempt to survive on Mars, following his crew’s abandonment of him. Watney begins to talk to himself, makes computer logs, farms, and even cracks jokes when no one is around. This highlights the theme of individualism in the movie, as he becomes completely self-sufficient as his survival is dependent on it. The storyline of Watney on Mars is not the only place where individualism can be seen. It can also be seen by looking at the crew, after they left Watney, as an individual unit. They at one point, defy NASA’s commands by rerouting their flight pattern to return to Mars and recover Watney. Even the commander of the crew, Melissa Lewis, also makes a series of tough decisions in the movie, from leaving Watney on Mars in the beginning to deciding she must save him herself at the end to further highlight this theme.

The theme of cooperation is also heavily explored in this movie. After Watney is found to be alive on Mars, NASA tries to do everything in its power to bring him back; teams in NASA communicate and work together to devise plans for how they should bring him home. One notable occurrence of this is the back and forth cooperation between the NASA administration and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory to construct a vessel to carry supplies in an incredibly short amount of time. There is even cooperation between the CNSA and NASA when the first iteration of the supply rocket malfunctions, and NASA uses the CNSA’s resources to launch another rocket and resupply the Hermes.  The film juxtaposes these themes in a way that provides a rather unique feeling of both individual and group achievement.