"I Knew About the Water On Mars Months Ago," Says Ridley Scott, Yawning
Ridley Scott’s new movie about Mars won’t feature the planet’s running water, as announced Monday by NASA, but it’s not because he didn’t know it was there. Because he did, months before you, actually, so thank you for asking.
It’s unclear how the New York Times discovered Scott had an inside track at NASA—maybe the reporter asked him, “Did you know about the water on Mars ahead of time,” or maybe Scott, I don’t know, humbly volunteered the information. But either way, Ridley Scott definitely knew before you did, in case you were wondering.
NASA surprised the world on Monday with its announcement that it had found water on Mars. This wasn’t news, though, to the director Ridley Scott, whose latest film, “The Martian,” opens on Friday, and revolves around the struggles of a stranded astronaut and botanist, played by Matt Damon, to survive on the red planet by himself for more than a year.
Mr. Scott said in an interview with The Times on Monday that the head of NASA had shown him the photos of the water about two months ago, and that had the news come out before production of “The Martian” began, it probably would have affected key plot points in the film.
In fact, he tells Yahoo News, he kind of helped find the water: “When I first talked to NASA, we got into all kinds of stuff and I said, ‘So I know you’ve got down there [these] massive glaciers.’ And he said, ‘Yeah, that the massive white thing [on the surface of Mars] that gets covered with dust, we think that’s ice,’And I said, ‘Wow! Does that mean there was an ocean?’ Are we right now what Mars was 750 million years ago?’ And they went, ‘Uh, good question.’ So they want to go up there and find out.”
See—even though Ridley Scott’s Mars movie is technically inaccurate, it’s not because he didn’t know in advance about the water. Because he did. He knew the whole time. So crazy, right?
