Survival stories: The Martian et al

Ridley Scott's 2015 space movie The Martian is totally entertaining and engaging - especially given that you obviously know right from the outset what's going to happen (what? you'd thought they were going to leave Matt Damon to die alone on Mars?) - but still engages our interest all the way. Compared with such grand, boring epics as the recent Interstellar, The Martian is easier to approach because it feels real, almost plausible right from the beginning - there' no super scifi element (frozen bodies that allow for interstellar travel, etc.) - plot is simple - after a Mrtian landing by a crew assigned to examine the minerals and resources of the planet, crew takes off after a violent dust storm, thinking Damon had been killed by debris - turns out (of course) not, and most of the movie captures the many smart things he has to do to survive on the planet, long after his rations would have been consumed. While his survival drama is happening on Mars, we watch the NASA hq suddenly learn that he's alive (there's no direct communication) and wrestle w/ the difficult task of bringing him home alive. Both parts of the drama are quite credible and filled with constant tension and a degree of danger. Man lost in space seems to be an emerging genre - think of Sandra Bullock/George Clooney recently in Gravity - and this genre overlaps with the whole Survivor genre - from Robinson Crusoe through, more recently, the Robert Redford film about the solo sailor lost at sea. There's something eerily frightening about being alone or abandoned in such circumstances, and something reassuring and satisfying about watching the hero (or heroine) take the slow, deliberate steps that can bring them back to safety and civilization. These movies are celebrations of (American) competence - something that I think cheers us and reassures us about the goodness, or blessedness, or our nature and our capacities as a species. Most of us - certainly, I - would not survive a day in most of these circumstances, but to know - or to believe - that such survival is possible with the right attitude, the right "stuff," gives us a (false?) assurance that America will prevail and that all's right with the world, or the solar system anyway.