Mark Watney isn’t just a super hero of a character who figured out how to survive on the seemingly fatal terrain that is Mars, he’s the embodiment of the pioneer himself from ages gone by.

A few years ago I was able to watch a Herzog documentary, Happy People: A Year in the Taiga. The film followed a group of hunters and trappers on their journeys into the cold wintery forest of the Taiga, an area in Siberia where most modern technology has yet to permeate their lives even now. We watch on as they are faced with daily challenges that failing is just not an option since failure, in most cases, equate to death as it would have when these lands were first ventured into. These are the stakes that exist for astronaut Mark Watney as he finds himself alone on the surface of Mars as his crew left him after presuming he died in a storm where they were all attempting to flee.

There are two qualities that this film possesses that makes it extraordinary not just in passion, but also in entertainment. This film manages to make clear the world of high stakes and at the same time ground us by having these stakes constantly skirted away to the side as our main character breaks them up into smaller more important challenges, as we do on a daily basis with any large task to be completed. As things stand after the opening of the film Watney finds himself with three main challenges, the ability to survive longer than a month, the ability to communicate his state of being alive and his ability to keep himself upbeat about his dire situation such that he doesn’t fall into melancholy. The other quality is the film’s ability to keep us engaged with Watney’s unending supply of amazement. While almost every feat that he accomplishes while on Mars is amazing to peons such as ourselves who sit behind desks and fill out spreadsheets (or insert any mundane regular day job) with relative safety he amazes himself almost as if we are watching MacGuyver discover how awesome science is and proving theories that he might’ve just read in a text book until now. It’s great. Imagine doing every science experiment and getting successful outcomes, each one is astounding.

The films that come to mind when I think of things that match up perfectly with this one are films like Gravity and 12 Hours. All of these films have the survival aspect at its core and manage to keep us going with our main characters. At times we may doubt ourselves and even question the film’s logic in how it gets us home, but we’re always there. We’re there as we watch Sandra Bullock as she spins uncontrollably through space, we’re with James Franco as he stares at his arm trying to weigh the pros and cons of that decision and eventually we’re with Damon as he wades through shit in order to survive. We are always present in those moments because the films engage us and never make it trite or small any of these decisions. This may sometime leave process in how we enact these decisions on the wayside, but it never forgets it.

The Martian is the best version of this type of story. It keeps us going, the same way that the spirit of our main character keeps going and we’re never able to fully lose hope, and it’s not just because Hollywood doesn’t want us to. Or maybe it is? More on that another time.