Ridley Scott Reveals One of His Sci-Fi Classics Was Actually a Comedy

Ridley Scott just reclassified one of his own hits, and it actually tracks: he says 'The Martian' is, at its core, a comedy. Not exactly how most people file it, but when the guy who made Alien calls his stranded-on-Mars movie a comedy, you listen.

"Wait a minute, this is a comedy... How on earth could anything where you survive by growing vegetables from your own sh-- not be funny?"

That line comes from a new GQ chat where Scott walks through how he approached the movie. He basically shrugs at the straightforward logline — guy gets stuck on Mars, somehow lives, gets rescued, comes home — and says the humor is the engine that makes the whole thing work.

This came up because Scott was talking about his next project, 'The Dog Stars', which stars Jacob Elordi alongside other A-listers. He compared that script to 'The Martian' in the way both could look like one genre on paper, but he prefers to come at them with a fresh perspective rather than staying in the lane the logline suggests.

Worth noting: this isn't the first time someone tagged 'The Martian' as a comedy. Back in 2016, the Golden Globes put it in the Comedy or Musical categories, where it won Best Motion Picture and Matt Damon won Best Actor. It was a whole awards-season oddity at the time, but given Scott's take, maybe it wasn't so off-base.

• Quick refresher: 'The Martian' is based on Andy Weir's 2011 novel; it stars Matt Damon as astronaut Mark Watney, who is hit by debris during the Ares III mission and left behind when his crew thinks he's dead. Watney survives solo on Mars using botanical hacks (yes, including the infamous fertilizer) and fights to reestablish contact with NASA until a long-shot rescue finally brings him home. The film is widely regarded as one of the best sci-fi movies of its generation, even if Scott says the secret sauce is the comedy.

So if Scott leans into the same genre-bending vibe on 'The Dog Stars', don't be surprised if it doesn't behave like the post-apocalyptic drama you expect. He clearly enjoys playing the premise one way on the page and another way on screen — and in 'The Martian', that approach paid off.