2,0 de 5 estrellas
Puerile voice and immoral actor - nothing inspirational here...
Revisado en el Reino Unido 🇬🇧 el 21 de noviembre de 2017
I loved the Martian, Andy Weir’s first book, and have read it twice and watched the movie twice. I did not love Artemis – in fact I really disliked quite a lot about it, and in this review I’m going to try and say why.
First off, I loved The Martian most of all because somehow it felt important. I’m a sucker for last person alive stories – they’re a crucible for showing the human spirit, and in The Martian the human spirit was never more alive and kicking. Mark Watney, abandoned on Mars, was an incredibly competent, highly skilled astronaut who had given his life over to the pursuit of extreme science. He was also an unashamed nerd with a metric ton of character – coming through in his immensely likable voice.
“Science the shit out of this,” was his whole raison etre and rallying cry. He didn’t let events crush him, even though they were damn hard to face. He dealt with his challenges, namely staying alive and seeking an impossible extraction from Mars, with a dry and silly wit. He had fun with making air, with planting potatoes. He called himself Blondbeard the pirate. When things were serious and his life was at risk, his stoic persistence to crack a few jokes made him all the more likable.
Artemis takes the voice of Mark Watney and cranks it up to eleventy-stupid. Jazz Bashara is all sass, all the time. She is almost never not being sarcastic, cynical, cracking wise, making puns, dropping silly and crass witticisms, being crude, and generally being rude and taking nothing seriously.
When not only her own life, but the lives of everyone in Artemis Moon city’s bubbles are at risk, because of conditions that are her own fault, she cracks wise. When about to cause millions (perhaps billions?) of dollars of damage for no other reason than to enrich herself, while also (again) endangering every life in the city, she cracks wise. Perhaps then is the appropriate time to enjoy herself standing atop a moonraking mining truck, saying something like- “Onward, bold steed!”
She is literally never serious. Every interaction she has with other characters, who are all pretty thin, mostly comprise of her throwing vague, scattershot sass in their direction. It is exhausting, and it’s hard to call it anything other than unreal and childish. Her sense of humour is reliably puerile, juvenile, sophomoric and crass. We keep being reminded, basically, of what a slut she is. Sadly, this is one of her defining characteristics, in her own view (reminding us she hasn’t seen much of a particular hotel room before, because last time she was there she was mostly looking at the ceiling), in other people’s views (a guy asks her to test out his re-usable condom, then keeps asking about if she’s tried it yet, every day), and just in her unconscious thoughts (in that, in one particular short section in the book’s middle, the word ‘boobs’ got used three or four times in close proximity. Once, Ok, it’s silly and fun. Comparing the bubbles of Artemis to boobs, OK. But then something about Jazz’ boobs. Then a character calling her ‘my friend with boobs'. Come on. These are supposed to be adults. Tell me you other adults don’t really talk like this?)
That lack of seriousness, and fixation upon sex (no one ever says ‘willy’ then giggles, but probably only because they’re all American) and sexuality (a gay character takes the chance to every now then remind everyone he’s gay, by saying things like- ‘I’m gay and even I didn’t notice…’), just make everything seem unimportant. It doesn’t matter to Jazz, and it doesn’t matter to the people around her, so why should it matter to us?
So – voice. A surfeit of voice.
Secondly, and working in perfect tandem to make Jazz the smuggler and general loser and disappointment even more unlikable, as well as everyone else involved, is the central role she plays in the plot. Which is to say, a billionaire hires her to commit massive-scale industrial sabotage (destruction) upon the industry responsible for providing oxygen to Artemis.
She is supposed to destroy it completely, so the billionaire can take over. Nice for him. At this point, Jazz is not even really aware the current industry is run by criminals (after a fashion – they seem pretty decent in their moon dealings). But still, for the right price, she says yes!
The billionaire claims to have a stock of oxygen on stand by. She takes his word for it. He says he can get production of oxygen running again quickly. Again, she believes him. She risks every person’s life in Artemis, for her chance at a little payday.
It’s just revolting behaviour. It’s millions or billions of damage, just to enrich the billionaire and herself. And it’s just stupid, for the billionaire to hand over his entire plan to this loser Jazz. None of it makes any sense. And we’re supposed to enjoy this? To root for Jazz? To indulge her as she bitches and moans about her life?
I hated her, pretty much.
Look again at Mark Watney. A noble guy, only trying to survive, while minimizing the survivor’s guilt his team feel. He ‘voice’ and humor get him through. Then we have Jazz, moaning her way through a task Mark Watney wouldn’t go near. It’s just wrong, and I couldn’t get past that. It was incredibly selfish.
Then the plot goes awry. Jazz ropes in a team. The reason they are all helping finish her sabotage now is that they have to, because if they don’t, the criminals will come to own Artemis. But the fact is – these criminals have done nothing as criminal or as foolhardy as Jazz! Jazz and her cabal are worse! Still she gets all upset that one of them tried to kill her while she was in the midst of her sabotage! I would have killed her too, to save everybody's lives.
She’s just on the wrong side of all of this. Her voice and her motivation are all mixed up. It’s hard to imagine the guy who wrote Mark Watney also wrote Jazz Bashara. I don't get it.
Still, there are things to like. The moon rendered as a tourist location is good. The sciencey bits are good, but not as entertaining or as important-seeming as in The Martian. If you like silly, frothy antics, they're right here.
To sum up, I wish this tale had added up to something more, and given me some sense of human ingenuity overcoming the trials of space, like The Martian did, instead of just human crassness overcoming the trials of morality. A shame.
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