(A better) life on Mars

I haven't seen The Martian, but here's one good reason for giving it a look:

The Martian sets its face against the contemporary wave of dystopian sci-fi that delights in creating misanthropic situations to subject our descendants to. Much harder is to produce a compelling, successful, believable film that ignores the zeitgeist. It shows we have the tools and know how to fix seemingly intractable problems, and that our efforts can be successful. In a world haunted by social problems and looming environmental disaster, give me that message over fashionable fatalism any day.

After all, endless dystopias which look disturbingly like the world we live in now can lead to despair fatigue.