Factual error: Towards the end of the film Watney is told to discard the heavy nose cone of the Martian Ascent Vehicle and replace it with a flimsy plastic sheet because the atmosphere is so thin that it will not be damaged despite the vehicle being accelerated to Martian escape velocity - nearly 14,000 kmh. But the storm caused massive damage earlier. It cannot work both ways - if the atmosphere is so thin that it won't dislodge a jury rigged plastic canopy from an accelerating spacecraft, it cannot possibly whip up a storm like the one we see.
Factual error: In the scene near the end where Mark is blasting off from Mars and before second stage engine cut-off, loose bolts are floating around the MAV cabin as if in zero G. With the engines still firing the acceleration would be pinning them to the deck. Even after SECO, it would take some time for the bolts (and probably a lot of Mars dust too) to jostle away from the floor and distribute evenly and randomly through the volume of the cabin.
Factual error: Prior to and during the orbital rendezvous rescue scene, the dialog states that a) the capsule with Watney is on a parabolic trajectory and will drop back to Mars b) the Hermes is on a swing-by trajectory that will carry it past mars c) the Hermes doesn't have the fuel to spare to do more than swing-by, i.e. They can't brake enough to even enter an orbit (yes, when one is on a fly-by, one has to brake to get into an orbit. Watney would be way slower still) d) the relative speed of the spaceships at the time of rendezvous is less than 20 m/s e) the spaceships are at a distance of less than 200m. All those statements can't be true at the same time. What orbit you are on is pretty much defined by your altitude and speed. If the speed and altitude of two spacecraft are the same, they are on the same (general shape of) orbit. Conversely, if they are on the same altitude but one is on a suborbital trajectory and one doing a swing-by, the latter is faster than the former by hundreds, if not thousands of m/s. By comparison, the rendezvous depicted in that scene would be like granny with her walker trying to "rendezvous" with an Amtrak train at full speed.The dialog states explicitly that the Hermes can't brake into orbit of Mars to pick up Watney because it doesn't have the necessary reaction mass to do that and get home too. If they can't even brake into orbit, they can brake to match Watney's speed even less. Even without that dialog, it wouldn't make sense either way. The acceleration required to do that would be measured in thousands of m/s. Translated into fuel, that would be dozens, if not hundreds of tons. No spacecraft this side of complete science fiction carries that much spare fuel, for the simple reason that lofting the extra weight to orbit would be prohibitively expensive.
Suggested correction: The dialogue doesn't state that Watney's capsule is on a parabolic trajectory. In fact, in one scene, Mitch and Bruce explain to Vincent that to allow the MAV to 'escape Mars' orbit', it needs to be made 5 tons lighter to allow it to reach the speed required for rendezvous.
Other mistake: The photo that is taken of Watney doing the Fonz pose is in vertical lines, much like the satellite imagery. However, the camera that took this photo was the pathfinder, which took normal black and white images, as seen in the "Yes" "No" question card scene.
Continuity mistake: When Vincent Kapoor is talking about getting Congress to fund a sixth Aeries mission, he states Aeries 3 evacuated after 18 SOLs. Near the beginning of the movie, after Mark Watney regains consciousness and returns to the HAB, you see Rover 2 parked behind the HAB with the crew cab facing away from the HAB. Later when Mindy Parks is comparing the SOL 18 and SOL 54 pictures, Rover 2, in the SOL 18 picture, is turned 180° (with the crew cab facing toward the HAB) from what we saw when Mark returned to the HAB on SOL 18.
Continuity mistake: During the segment showing the rocket carrying supplies exploding, Teddy is shown in the background walking out of the control room. However in the next scene Teddy is standing with others in the control room.
Continuity mistake: When Bruce Ng is video calling Teddy Sanderson and Mitch Henderson to explain the modifications Watney will need to make to the Ares 4 MAV, there is a point in which the model MAV behind Bruce contains only a chair, all other chairs and the control console having been removed. Then, as Bruce and Mitch explain to Vincent that since Martinez will be remote-piloting the MAV, Watney doesn't need the controls, there is a shot of Bruce pulling several chairs and the control console out of the model.
Factual error: When Teddy is announcing Mark Watney's "death," the American flag is on the wrong side of the podium. This would be quite a goof for a government agency, especially one as image-conscious as NASA. Even in subsequent press conference scenes, the American flag is consistently to the left of the speaker, when it should be to the right.
Continuity mistake: After discovering he is stranded and injured, Watney walks inside the hab and takes off his helmet and hood. His hairstyle changes three times between shots in a matter of seconds.
Continuity mistake: In the shot where Matt Damon finally gets captured by his rescuer, he is face to face with the woman astronaut and when he smiles his upper teeth are Hollywood white. In earlier shots, his teeth were shown stained and nasty. Also, shots soon after the rescue "white upper teeth" shot again reveal stained teeth.
Continuity mistake: When Watney is putting duct tape on the plastic patch over the hole where the Hab airlock blew out, the first shot shows him outside the Hab putting the last strip in an evenly distributed set, from about the 10 o'clock position down to about the 4 o'clock position. Then (after a quick reverse shot from the interior), suddenly he is placing a new strip up from the 8 to 2 position, covering a spot that was already covered when he did the 10 to 4 strip, but which is now suddenly blank.
Other mistake: When Watney is in zero-g there are loose bolts floating around him. There is no way he would have left loose pieces in the MAV's cabin. Things left unsecured in microgravity tend to float around and damage delicate electronics. If something is not being used it's lashed down or secured in a cabinet. He has one chance to to get rescued and he wouldn't risk dying after over a year of surviving on Mars on something so foolish as unsecured equipment in the MAV cabin. He would have cleaned out every last bit of loose gear before launch.
Factual error: Teddy tells Purnell that he is the "director" of NASA. The chief of NASA is referred to as the administrator, not director.
Suggested correction: This could be a deliberate mistake. Is common in business for an "administrator" to be a clerical / entry level role (I've worked in such places). Referring to the character as Administrator of NASA could cause confusion in people not familiar with NASAs structure. By contrast, Director is likely to be understood by everyone as someone in charge, even if it's officially incorrect.
Revealing mistake: When Mark builds his HAB greenhouse, he surrounds the growing area with sheet plastic. Later, when making his first attempt at lighting the hydrogen to produce water, there is a small explosion, which throws Mark back across the HAB. Given that an open-air explosion will produce a 360 degree shock wave, there should have been a noticeable disturbance to the plastic sheeting throughout the HAB, but the only disturbance we see to the plastic sheeting is the location where Mark is blown into it.
Continuity mistake: After Matt Damon has had to ration his food, a double who is thin and emaciated and whose face is not shown is used to replace Damon in some shots. But Damon's real upper body, as muscular and big as ever, can still be seen in some other shots.
Continuity mistake: When he pulls the metal out of his stomach, the wound changes position slightly to the left and back to the right.
Factual error: When we return to Watney waking up in the sand after the storm, the sands have various patterns and hollows in them which would have been erased by a storm that caused as much trouble as this one.
Other mistake: Upon arriving at the MAV, when Watney opens the door to exit the rover to head to the MAV, the home-made balloon on top of the rover does not deflate, as it should when interior pressure of the Rover is absent.
Plot hole: Rich Purnell started his calculations that required the Hermes to dock with the Tieyang Shen well before Teddy, the Director of NASA, found out about the confidential information about the Tieyang Shen even having enough fuel to be the booster.
Suggested correction: I don't think that is correct. When he first comes up with the idea to reroute the Hermes back to Mars he was thinking about/ working on the calculations for the original probe before it blew up.
Continuity mistake: When Vincent draws the line on the Martian landscape picture and comes to the conclusion Mark is heading for Pathfinder, in the long shot, Mindy, who is standing next to Vincent, holds her left hand up by her face and her right arm down by her side. As Vincent begins to walk away, the camera instantly cuts to a close up of Mindy's face and now her right hand is up by her face and her left arm is down by her side.
Suggested correction: Mars' atmosphere works very differently than Earth's. Near the surface, there are often heavy storms and winds. But go up near the edge of the atmosphere, it's drastically thinner. Earth's atmosphere doesn't differ THAT much; your logic would make sense for Earth. However, for Mars' atmosphere, the movie was accurate.
Absolute rubbish. It is a well established fact that the atmospheric pressure on Mars is 610 pascals, 1% of that on Earth. A 170 kmh wind storm on Mars (specified in the film) would be like a gentle, 18kmh breeze on earth. There is absolutely no way that a storm like the one we see at the beginning of the film could occur on Mars. The storm would barely scatter small pebbles about, let alone throw a spacesuited human body around. As for the atmosphere on Earth not differing form that on Mars... good grief, are you serious? Anyway, don't take my word for it. "No, it's not accurate!" Goddard cheerfully informed us (The Radio Times). "It's the one big buy of the movie, that because of the atmosphere, or lack thereof, Mars would never have a storm that big. But if we didn't do it, we wouldn't have a movie. It sort of kicks off the movie." You think Mr Goddard would be in a good position to comment. He wrote the screenplay.
You need to take the thickness of Mars' atmosphere into consideration.