The Martian: Chicago Cubs, Beer, and the G2
The Martian as a political parable: the Chicago Cubs metaphor, NASA's impossible mandate, and the film's vision of US-China cooperation.
The Martian (Dir. Ridley Scott, 2015)
The film works as pure problem-solving entertainment. Botanist Mark Watney (Matt Damon) is stranded on Mars and survives by growing potatoes in his own fecal matter, doing orbital mechanics in his head, and maintaining the morale of someone watching their situation improve one small decision at a time.
But three things struck me that the reviews didn't spend much time on.
The Chicago Cubs Metaphor
When Mission Director Vincent Kapoor explains to Congress why attempting to rescue Watney is worth the cost and risk, he invokes the Chicago Cubs — a baseball team that hadn't won the World Series in over a century, and whose fans kept showing up anyway.
At the time, this was a joke about hope in the face of futility. Two months after the film's release, the Cubs won the World Series for the first time since 1908.
The metaphor's point: some things are worth attempting because the attempt itself matters, not just the outcome. Watney's survival isn't just about saving one man — it's about the kind of species we decide to be.
NASA's Impossible Mandate
The film is quietly remarkable in its portrayal of NASA. The agency is shown as competent, adaptive, and genuinely motivated by the mission. In an era when American institutional confidence was at a low point, this felt almost radical.
But the film also shows why public-facing institutions struggle: the moment the story becomes public, communications imperatives override operational ones. Director Sanders (Jeff Daniels) spends as much time managing media and Congress as managing the actual mission.
This is a structural problem that no individual leader can solve. The tension between "what's true" and "what can be said right now" is built into the role.
The US-China Angle
The film's most interesting political moment: the Chinese National Space Administration offers to share a classified booster design to enable the rescue. They do it quietly, without asking for credit.
In 2015, this felt like aspirational fiction. The actual US-China relationship was already deteriorating. The film imagines a world where geopolitical competition pauses for genuine human stakes.
Whether that's naive or visionary probably depends on which decade you're reading this in.