We’ve seen teasers, full-length trailers and even viral marketing campaigns featuring the inimitable Neil deGrasse Tyson; now, 20th Century Fox has pumped out the debut clip for Ridley Scott’s The Martian, which sees the Ares-3 crew batten down the hatches in the face of an alien storm.
Arriving by way of Yahoo! Movies, the footage is a tense, nail-biting peak at the calm before the literal storm, where the entire crew are still on the Red Planet before a raging storm brings an abrupt end to their martian mission. With no choice but to uproot and evacuate, Ares-3 inadvertently leave Matt Damon’s Mark Watney behind. Presumed dead, it’s only when the ship returns to near-Earth orbit that they receive Watney’s rudimentary radio signal to confirm that he is still alive, despite the monumental odds stacked against him.
Led by Jessica Chastain’s no-nonsense mission commander Melissa Lewis, it’s then up to Ares-3 to make the arduous return trip back to Mars in order to rescue Damon’s wayward botanist, defying direct orders from NASA and the US government. Kristen Wiig, Kate Mara, Michael Pena, Jeff Daniels, Chiwetel Ejiofor and Community alum Donald Glover round out the cast.
The Martian is due to have its world premiere at Toronto International Film Festival later this month, before opening for a nationwide release on October 2.
During a manned mission to Mars, Astronaut Mark Watney is presumed dead after a fierce storm and left behind by his crew. But Watney has survived and finds himself stranded and alone on the hostile planet. With only meager supplies, he must draw upon his ingenuity, wit and spirit to subsist and find a way to signal to Earth that he is alive. Millions of miles away, NASA and a team of international scientists work tirelessly to bring “the Martian” home, while his crewmates concurrently plot a daring, if not impossible, rescue mission.