I haven't seen The Martian yet, but I find the reviews of it interesting. Why would a robinsonade set on another planet appeal so strongly to people, and especially now?

Well, we can feel the spiritual sickness of living in our world full of parasites and thought police. You have to learn how to manipulate people and keep careful control over what you say and do around them so that you can have a tolerable life - and you don't have access to the most elite people who have the most power over our whole society, like, say, Federal Reserve bankers.

By contrast, it feels more natural and healthier for us to extract our sustenance from nature directly through the use of our own minds and hands, where you don't have to play these ridiculous mind games with idiots. Our ancestors repeatedly had to solve survival challenges posed by new environments and situations by doing their version of "sciencing the shit out of them," and today's movie audiences seem to respond to that by seeing it in a science fictional context.

This could also explain the popularity of those admittedly staged "survival" series on cable, along with the reality series which show blue collar guys working on commercial fishing boats, in logging camps or in gunsmithing shops. We know that we live largely in a simulacrum of reality, especially with all this social-justice make-believe, and the knowledge has become a splinter in our minds.