It was good. I liked both the book and the film. One of the rare occasions where I don't mind having the end spelled out explicitly. It ran long, but that's the cost if you don't want to cut out any important scenes from the book. Some things were still rushed, but for the benefit of a coherent and manageable story accessible to current filmgoers. And as I said, it was over two and a half hours long already. 5/7, would watch again.
Subema
Yay, guess who's got two thumbs and has a movie date for Project Hail Mary tomorrow 😊
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Did you went to IMAX or to a classical cinema? I loved the book and I'm a little bit worried to go see the movie.
Classic cinema. It has been a few years since I read it, so I can't attest to all the details, but I think the film was less focused on science (barely brushed it, really) and had more funny/honest moments while not sinking into comedy.
I need to give it a chance.
It was a stunning audio-visual experience and I'm glad I went to see it. However, I'm also glad I read the book beforehand, because I think they pretty much gutted it. Rocky's story seems flat without his lore. For example, the movie completely skipped the explanation of why they didn't have the theory of relativity or how they discovered gravity. The feeding part was also turned on its head.
Glad you went and enjoyed at least the visuals. I was thinking about the lore, but I believe it would be near impossible to pass it to the average viewer coherently. The feeding part - I thought it was turned on its head, but then again, it was over in 20 seconds. If they had gone the other way, they would have needed way more time to express the whole process and why Rocky has a problem with it. So yeah, they left a lot of the science/harder-to-understand parts without the option to reread/ingest at one's own pace.
The science being cut out makes sense. That would be difficult to relay to the viewers in any meaningful way, and skipping it completely is better than doing a montage. But Rocky's lore... I don't know, I missed it. Also, I'm not sure if you felt the same way, but the movie just flew by. An extra 30 minutes would be fine with me. And the last thing I really liked was the absence of cringe CGI used just for the wow effect. Of course, there was a ton of CGI, but none of it felt over the top, and the acrylic sheets they used as props felt a little bit like an homage to old Science Fiction/Double Feature movies.
