I waited to review this one and then got caught up with not being at the computer. I'm guessing that anyone reading this has either seen the movie, read a review, or both. So it's not like I'll be saying things other people haven't said. I'm adding a part at the bottom about the book, which I read after seeing the movie - the order I recommend. The movie review will NOT have references to what was in the book.
The Movie
The premise of the movie is that there's something taking energy from the sun and it's going to drop Earth's temperature into the "extinction event" levels. This is bad. Dr. Grace is a middle school science teacher after nuking his higher academic career by both writing a long paper about how water isn't necessary for all life forms and calling out his colleagues by name and with eloquent insults in the paper. Whoopsie. But he's one of those school teachers who's got the charisma to engage his students and an honest enthusiasm for science.
The movie uses the premise of Grace having to remember the past while he's in the present. He wakes up on a spaceship with little to no memory of what happened or even who he is. As he's figuring that out he's also figuring out what he's supposed to be doing. As a bad bonus the other two crew members died in the voyage so it's just him.
To cut the movie into two is easier for me than going back and forth. I can summarize the stuff that needs summarizing better that way.
The backstory is that Eva has the power and authority to do pretty much anything she thinks is necessary to find out what's happening and how to fix it. They're going to send a crewed ship to Tau Ceti because that star isn't infected even if it should be so they figure the answer is there. While that's getting set up they're finding all kinds of uses for the astrophage, including it being fuel for the ship. Grace had accidentally figured out how to make more of it (breed it) and they're doing that in great quantities.
Because of an accident both of the science officer astronauts are killed, which leaves Grace as the next candidate because Eva hedged her bets and had him involved in most aspects of the project. They don't have time to train anyone because the launch window is in three days. He doesn't want to go but he's drugged and sent anyway. As I said, she'd do what it takes.
Grace picks up memories as they apply to what's happening at the time. He's filling in the blanks, which also builds the story for the viewers. It doesn't distract as much as you might think but it is something where you have to realize it's not linear time for quite a few scenes. Plus there's some where the point of view may annoy but it's better storytelling.
He gets to do science when he makes contact with the alien ship. He's discovering the alien just as we are. Yes, I know that's how storytelling works but this is done in a way that takes us along the interesting and important steps.
The alien doesn't have vision and uses passive echolocation to "see". This creates a communication problem so there's time spent showing them learning how to talk to each other. Rocky says his tones, Grace has a transcoder and is making a dictionary. During that they converse and learn about each other and each other's worlds.
Rocky is alone too because the rest of the crew died on the way. Grace is the one to break the bad news that it was radiation that killed them and Rocky was saved because his quarters/area were protected by the astrophage fuel tanks. Turns out Rocky's people didn't know about space radiation. Turns out they're not very versed in a lot of sciences. Grace is so he's the lead of figuring out what's happening. Rocky gives the down to Erid (his planet, which I gleefully used instead of Earth in this idiom) advice when Grace is too far in the clouds to see the basics.
Rocky moves over to Grace's ship to use the science equipment. He has a hamster ball for himself and builds habitrails through the ship for him to use. There's some Odd Couple vibe going on and the entire cultural difference problem that gets explained as needed. This is where it turns into a buddy cop movie and it works for them.
One thing that's very important to Rocky is that Grace watches him sleep and he watches Grace sleep. It's a cultural thing. There was some initial miscommunication about what "sleep" was because Rocky was conflating it with dying and didn't want to lose Grace like he did his crew. That's when the "I watch you sleep" happens. Grace accepts that it just has to be that way.
Rocky finds out that Grace lied to him and isn't going home. He's going to send everything back on the little ships and die. Rocky finds this unacceptable and does the math to figure out he can provide enough astrophage for Grace to get home at the cost of him getting home a few years later. Grace accepts with much gratitude since he was very much not at peace with what was going to happen.
Science happens and they decide they need a sample from the planet that's feeding Tau Ceti. Off they go in Grace's ship. The science is that there's something on that planet that's keeping the sun in balance so it doesn't get cooler. The reason for that is on the planet, they hope. They do find that there's spots where there's concentrations of .. stuff. Science means getting a sample since that may be the answer.
This is one of the most powerful scenes in the film. You'll hear people calling it "the fishing scene". They get the ship as close to the planet as they can and drop a probe into one of the areas to gather up whatever they can. The scene is quite frankly beautiful. Everyone says that the theater they were in is dead silent during that scene and it was both times I saw it. It's freaking beautiful.
This also brings one of the most tension filled scenes into play when the ship goes into an uncontrolled spin and knocks Grace unconscious before he can correct it. Rocky breaks out of his ball into the ship's deadly atmosphere and drags Grace to the med bed. Grace wakes up and follows the trail of "blood" to where Rocky is curled up in his bedroom area. He moves slightly.
While Rocky is lying there Grace does the science stuff on what the probe brought back and uses science to create a version that will live in Venus's atmosphere. Since nothing is said it's assumed that unmodified taumeba will live in the planet by Rocky.
Grace talks to Rocky during all this, which is the story exposition done well. And of course, Rocky wakes up. There's a heartfelt tearjerker here and Grace tells him that the collector worked, they got the predator they wanted, and he was able to use Rocky's breeder farms to make enough for both of them.
Now that they have what their suns need there's the parting of the ways. It's sad. It's very sad. But they know it has to happen. For whatever reason Grace cuts the tube away instead of Rocky deconstructing it like he did last time (that bothers me) and they go their separate ways.
Grace gets woken up by a contamination alert. The breeder farm was made of metal that Rocky's people use to make pretty much everything. The taumeba are little fuckers and while Grace was adapting them to not die in nitrogen they were figuring out how to escape through the stuff. He flushes the ship and seals them in plastic bags, which they can't get through.
Then he has the realization that Rocky's ship is made of that metal and he's not a scientist so he has no idea what's going to happen nor can he fix the problem since the problem is his ship itself. Rocky is going to die alone in space. This is .. not good. Grace doesn't have the resources to both go back to Earth and to save Rocky.
In the end he sends the probes back to Earth with the taumeba, all their research, everything about Rocky, etc. He goes out and finds Rocky, luckily still alive but a few tense moments when we're not sure. I wouldn't have put it past them to make it too late and knowing that made the tension real. Rocky is alive and very concerned, because he knows something is wrong and because he knows Grace can't get home.
The movie ends with Grace on Erid in a bubble they built for him. Rocky is in a much better "suit" that lets him walk instead of roll. He tells Grace that the scientists have repaired and refitted his ship to get him back to Earth. Grace asks to think about it and Rocky says to think about it a long time. The movie ends with Grace going to a cave entrance where there's a bunch of stuff on his side, a clear wall, and a bunch of little Rocky creatures that are his students. They're energetic little buggers and he's teaching them science.
It's a tearjerker movie at times. They make you care about not just Grace and Rocky but the fates of their worlds.
There's people who say they made Rocky too "light" and used him for comedic relief, against an actor who's already doing comic relief. That shows they didn't read any of the nuances. Rocky is an engineer. Grace is a scientist. They're both voraciously interested in what the other one does. They're also two entirely different cultures learning about each other at the same time. That's going to cause a lot of the situations that they show. Failure to see all those things means these are people who look for the movies to spell everything out for them so they don't have to think for themselves. Yes. I'm dissing those people.
I was lucky enough to see it on real 70mm film IMAX the first time. The massive screen and beautifully balanced sound - sigh. We saw print 9 of 15. Yes. There's only 15 prints of the movie. It's about 12 miles long and weighs around 700 pounds. There's a certain warmth about film even if it was filmed digitally and transferred to physical film. During the quiet parts I could hear the projector. It's something. And the screen is freaking huge. I think I'm going to see it on IMAX again just because I'm lucky enough to be able to do so.
The second time I saw it was the local digital IMAX. It was still visually stunning. It was brighter and I could focus on details that were missed on the big screen because there was just so much to look at. The place where the cropped IMAX falls short are the space scenes. Those are the ones in the big aspect ratio. If you haven't seen it in real IMAX you won't notice what you're missing so don't fret.
I think this one is going up for a number of awards but the ones it should sweep are the technical ones. The visuals and cinematography are going to be hard to beat. There's so many practical effects that the CGI heavy movies will seem shallow in comparison. I don't think it will get any major awards for acting or writing.
The Book
If you've ever read an Andy Weir book you know you're reading a science book. Andy wants the science right and he's gonna write about it. That's why his books are as good as they are. They expect you to follow along instead of dumbing it down.
I'm going to focus on the things that were in the book but not in the movie. That's why I watched, then read. Not knowing what was excluded meant I got to take the movie as its own entity. That's important to me.
The book goes into a lot more detail about various and sundry scientists on Earth. They were reduced, eliminated, combined in the movie. It makes sense because the movie isn't about them. It's about the end result of what they did but who did it is irrelevant to the movie. That's why so much of the pre-mission stuff was removed. It didn't add to the story the movie was going to tell.
The book had one pseudo-science thing that was a plot device. There was a genetic component to who could be safely put into the induced coma. That limited the available people. Grace happened to be one of them but he wasn't told until he was being told he's going on the mission. Even Andy wasn't completely happy with that piece but it was something that needed to be done to cause the situation where they had limited options for replacements.
Grace didn't realize how much he was being groomed for the project until it was made very clear to him during one of the parties. They had to point out how he was present for almost all of the major meetings, involved in most of the science, etc. The primary captain had everyone's respect from the moment he was named (for reasons never stated) and he's the one who stood up and settled it by telling Grace he's the second in command of the project.
Another thing the book didn't carry into the movie was the intentional climate change ordered by Eva. They nuke Antarctica to get the methane that's in the ice released into the atmosphere. What makes this wrenching is that she uses the research of a well-known climatologist to be the one to plan and execute it.
Grace's forced addition to the crew was much less dramatic in the book. Instead of him making a run for it, like the movie, he's in a cell then drugged. The captain had said he didn't want anyone who didn't volunteer which made Eva have to make a slight change to her plans and send Grace aboard in the coma, with the captain's objections something she won't have to deal with.
Another big thing that was changed was Rocky's planet Enid. In the book it's at 29 atmospheres and the gravity is insane. The ammonia-based atmosphere is touched on then left alone because once it was stated there wasn't much else to talk about. Rocky was bouncing around on Grace's ship because he was essentially under no gravity as far as he could tell.
Rocky had been at Tau Ceti, alone, for 46 years before Grace showed up. They did not give this number in the movie and that's good. People who find out from the book have a whole new sense of sadness for Rocky.
The book goes way into what Grace figures out and/or assumes about Rocky's physiology. Part of it is when they sleep, they're completely helpless. That's why someone watches them. They need someone to keep them safe. Now think about not having that for 46 years after everyone else on his ship died for reasons he didn't know. The movie touches on this with more of a food coma aspect which keeps it light(er) but the stuff in the book is dark.
Rocky doesn't impose himself on Grace in the book. They decide he should move over there because that's where the science is done and science is going to fix the problem. The changes to Grace's ship are discussed and he helps where he can. There's a respect there that they take out of the movie because it changes the entire texture of the relationship and it doesn't really change the story.
When Rocky breaks out of his ball to save Grace when the ship is spinning out of control it's a lot worse. Grace gets pretty seriously burned getting Rocky back into his area and then almost kills him by trying to help him. The movie shows a small scar on Grace's arm from that situation and doesn't do anything with the "almost killed Rocky by trying to help even though he had no idea what to do" thing.
The rest of the changes are in the ending of the story. Grace only knows that his sun is getting brighter because Rocky said the scientists told him. That gives the assumption that things aren't going to get worse on Earth but he has no idea how bad they got.
They do have a bubble dome for him on Erid but the insanely high gravity is still there and so is the pitch blackness around his bubble. He doesn't have that bright and airy seaside home like in the movie. He's got a yurt in the darkness. He's suffering from the high gravity and still has some residual effects from only having taumeba to eat after his food runs on on the trip to Enid. He had it rough since he made his choice.
And then there's the food thing. This one is something people have definite opinions on. Some say it should have been included, some don't. There's one source of protein Grace can eat on that planet and it's him. They took some samples and cloned his muscles. He calls them "meburgers" because he's literally eating his cloned self. He also says they're pretty good. It's a great scientific insert but so not in keeping with the movie.
Overall they took the darker aspects out of the book, in a lot of ways, and left them out of the movie. They simplified the science by skimming rather than delving. They used their time to show, not tell.
This is why they call it an adaptation. They took what would work in a visual medium with a fixed length of time and chose what they felt would make the best story, while keeping as true as possible to the source. The book and the movie are two different things and if you treat them that way you'll get a much wider story than if you only consume one or expect to have everything in one medium.
