Pluvia said:
skywolfblue said:
I don't think he's really a Mary Sue.
He may not have many character flaws...
But the other characters don't bow down and worship him. They're not mounting a rescue mission because he's just "That damn special", they're mounting a rescue mission because "Science!".
And things don't work perfectly for him because he's just awesome (As per Rey from Star Wars 7). Things go wrong all over the place. He makes a number of mistakes.
Well the other characters do point out that he's basically the funniest guy at NASA, and there's that part where he's better than an entire team of botanists that work at NASA. A team. I mean he's actually bettter than a team of some of the smartest people in the world who have the same degree as him.
Also off the top of my head I can't think of any real mistakes he makes. He forgets to account for the oxygen in the first chemisty experiment he does, despite being a botanist and mechanical engineer, but then immediately fixes it. And uh, that's about it. Any other problems he faces come from things outside of his control.
I mean as far as Mary Sue's go he plays it completely straight. He's literally The Perfect Man.
At the most he was recognized as the funniest guy in the astronaut corps (maybe JPL).
As for him being "better than an entire team of botanists that work at NASA".
He only said he was "the greatest botanist on this planet" (which is quite easy when you're the only sodding person on the bloody planet), and afterwards (depending on if it's the book, or the film) he's either a bit full of himself (it is his words after all), or he's full of himself AND think it's "cool" that he's being micromanaged (that'd be a character flaw IMHO).
As for mistakes.
Well in the book at least he fries Pathfinder with his drill, and he's a lot more paranoid about the RTG, than he needs to be (it's Plutonium, which means alpha-radiation, which means if the casing break all he has to do is stay 10cm away from the bugger assuming it's inside with him in an Earthlike atmosphere).
But he's an astronaut. Do you know what kind of people we choose to become astronauts (this applies for not only NASA, but ESA, CSA, and Roscosmos). Basically you take the top 1% of people who are cool, calm and collected in life-threatening situations (like being stuck on Mars, without enough resources). Then we shave off the bottom 99% of that top 1%, and those are just the candidates. A Mars mission would be so incredibly high-profile that it wouldn't be unlikely that of those candidates it'd only be the top 1% of those who actually got the chance. It is in this echelon of people you find guys and gals like Watney. People who seem calm, suave and debonair when shit has literally hit the fan (if you doubt me, then have a listen at the audio from Apollo 13. The actual mission audio, not the movie. It's a lot more calm than Tom Hanks was in the movie).