Ridley Scott Thinks His $630 Million Epic Sci-Fi Is Actually a Comedy
Gladiator’s director thought the Matt Damon-led movie’s plot just couldn’t be serious — the funniest thing is that a major award ceremony got it right.
Considering Ridley Scott’s profound interest in epic historical dramas and sci-fi thrillers, the man was never expected to make a truly funny movie with a somewhat light-hearted plot — yet Scott himself thinks he actually did one like this.
Released back in 2015, the sci-fi epic starring Matt Damon made it to the status of one of the highest-grossing films of the year, also being hailed one of the best movies of the past decade.
However, the film’s stunning success led to the audiences’ major misunderstanding when it was nominated for several Golden Globes in the “Musical or Comedy” categories — as it turned out, the weird occurrence perfectly reflected Scott’s initial idea for the movie.
Ridley Scott Believes ‘The Martian’ Is Actually a Comedy
- On Rotten Tomatoes, The Martian holds a score of 91% from both critics and audiences
- On IMDb, the movie is rated 8/10
10 years ago from now, the movie joined many other previous films about someone being stuck on another planet and trying their best to get back to Earth, also discovering something new about the outer space.
Movies like these have long been considered major pieces where jokes are put aside and the human’s fate is at stake, but Ridley Scott has seemingly thought differently all this time.
As the director revealed in an interview with GQ this January, he always saw The Martian as a comedy — just because the circumstances of such a situation can’t be even funnier than they are.
“A guy gets stranded on Mars, and he actually survives, and they pick him up, and he goes back to Earth. Isn’t that f—— boring, right? But I knew what to do. And I saw it in the early days. I said, ‘Wait a minute, this is a comedy.’ And they said, ‘What? A comedy?’ I said, ‘Yes, it’s a comedy. How on earth could anything where you survive by growing vegetables from your own sh– not be funny?”, Scott acknowledged.
‘The Martian’ Went on to Receive Several Awards as a Comedy
Interestingly enough, Ridley Scott wasn’t the only one who thought The Martian’s plot was more comical rather than eye-opening in terms of someone’s attempts to live on a different planet.
It might be that Scott himself submitted his movie as a comedy for the 2016 Golden Globe Awards, and the voters didn’t intervene, but we still can’t know for sure.
Whatever the reason, The Martian received three nods and eventually won two Golden Globes — Best Motion Picture and Best Actor for Matt Damon. The movie also got seven Oscar nominations, but was left without a single award at the 2016 ceremony.
