THE BOOK IS NOT THE MOVIE. THE MOVIE IS NOT THE BOOK.
THE BOOK IS NOT THE MOVIE. THE MOVIE IS NOT THE BOOK.
THE BOOK IS NOT THE MOVIE. THE MOVIE IS NOT THE BOOK.
THE BOOK IS NOT THE MOVIE. THE MOVIE IS NOT THE BOOK.
THE BOOK IS NOT THE MOVIE. THE MOVIE IS NOT THE BOOK.
THE BOOK IS NOT THE MOVIE. THE MOVIE IS NOT THE BOOK.
THE BOOK IS NOT THE MOVIE. THE MOVIE IS NOT THE BOOK.
THE BOOK IS NOT THE MOVIE. THE MOVIE IS NOT THE BOOK.
THE BOOK IS NOT THE MOVIE. THE MOVIE IS NOT THE BOOK.
Have I made this clear enough yet? Because I can paste a hella lot more of that pair of sentences.
THE BOOK IS NOT THE MOVIE. THE MOVIE IS NOT THE BOOK.
One more for good measure.
Here's something people need to learn:
Adapt: to make suitable to requirements or conditions; adjust or modify fittingly.
The book and the movie are different mediums. The book needs to be ADAPTED to the medium of film. That doesn't mean copy-pasting the text into a screenplay. It would be much easier if that were the case. No. It means taking what's in the book and figuring out what the heck is going to play visually.
If you've read the book, which I do recommend, you'll find there's a crapton of science, a crapton of monologue, and a crapton of buildup to the mission itself. That buildup involves a crapton of people who make brief appearances. None of this is going to translate well into two and half hours of screen time.
I get it. People have opinions. That's why they write reviews. I'm perfectly fine with them writing them. I'm not perfectly fine with their opinions about how the book should have been adapted. None of them are screenwriters. None of them are directors. None of them have the slightest clue about how to adapt a novel to a screenplay. But darn it all if they present themselves as the high arbiters of what should be done.
I don't do that in my reviews. I think this is the only review I've done that even mentions the source material and even then I separated it out from the movie itself. That's because I understand that a book needs to be adapted to a movie.
There's people whining that they "dumbed down the science". If you've read an Andy Weir book you know you're going to be reading a science heavy book. A very science heavy book. It's easy to have your eyes glaze over at times as he goes through the science accurate processes needed to do what needs to be done. Imagine that on the big screen, taking up precious time. Do you really want to watch Grace incrementally increasing the percentage of nitrogen in the taumeba farms by 0.05% until they get to where they need to be? That's going from zero to over 3%. I'll let you do the math on how many iterations that is and how long it would be to show each one. The movie shows that he's doing it and then shows the labels on the breeder farm with percentages and success/fail. That's maybe two minutes of screentime but gets the entire concept across.
Then there's the outcry about the coma resistant gene being removed from the movie. Even Mr. Weir admitted it was a cheap way to deal with the plot progression. But it worked, in the book. There was no reason to put it in the movie because they handled the situation in another, more suitable for a movie way. Same result, different method.
I'm gonna keep going on some of these, let me tell you. Because I'm peeved and I have a blog.
The book has an entirely different time progression. It was years between when Grace was brought onto the project and the launch. Literally years. They had to build the ship and send it up in parts, to be assembled by people on the ISS. They had to do things like build the spin drive, which was not a done deal when it was shown in the book. Plus they didn't add the third side that was a squeegie for the dead astrophage for some reason but hey, seconds matter in a movie.
Grace did do EVA testing in the book. He tested various and sundry pieces of equipment and was versed in how things worked. Stratt had him involved in the project to the point where he was doing paperwork on the remaining things that could be brought onto the ship. It was stated that everyone on the project considered him Stratt's second in command. That's not something that happens in a few months, as the movie implied.
And then there's Rocky. Rocky did have a different "tone" in the book, no pun intended. Rocky was an experienced engineer and had his own wealth of wisdom. He was more somber, more focused, and at many times fed up with the far less somber and focused Grace. Although when science was on the line it was Grace who led the charge. When it was a more abstract problem Rocky was the one who could break it down, as engineers tend to do. They didn't take that all away from him but they certainly made him a less somber personality.
The ending difference really set some people off. Like, they got legitimately angry about the changes. They didn't see why those changes had to happen. They honestly did. In the book Rocky's planet has a much much higher gravity than Earth, and Grace suffers from living in it. He's arthritic, he's never really recovered from the nutrition deficiencies on the trip to Erid, and he's older. You simply can't do that with an attractive charismatic actor. It would be stupid. Instead they give Grace a home.
I will touch once and only once on the "meburger". No one in their right mind would have put cannibalism in this movie. Grace even says that's what it is but he's justified it as not really cannibalism because he's eating himself. If you haven't read the book, which I do recommend, his protein source is his own cloned muscle tissue, the process which the Eridians learned from the laptop and data he gave them. That bit of morbid humor stays in the book.
Another part of the ending that changed was the fate of Earth. In the book Rocky tells him that their scientists see that the sun is brighter. That's how Grace knows his message got back safely. It's a good line and says all that the scientist needs to hear. The movie, a more visual format, has the Earth team with the sample and his recordings. It closes the loop between him and Stratt. There's no closure like that in the book.
I will note something that I read online when people were debating the ending changes. By the time Grace finds out about the sun it's been at least twelve and probably a lot more years since it happened. We're never really told, or I don't remember, how long the trip from Tau Ceti to Erid took. Let's say twenty years. If Grace did decide to go back he would have been twenty years older, suffering from the gravity and nutritional effects, have to risk the coma again when he's less healthy, and there's a good chance everyone he knew would be dead. Staying on Erid isn't that difficult of a decision when those things are factored in. The movie has less time passing on Erid but still would send him home to an unknown world where he's generations behind whatever happened. His world is gone even if the planet survived.
Those are the bigger things that keep coming up in the user reviews, and that little one tossed in at the end that I like to think about. It's OK to like both the book and the movie for what they are. It's OK to like one but not the other. It's not OK to compare them and get whiny that they're different.
2026 is the year of "Project Hail Mary". People are going to be talking about it for a while because I don't see anything coming out this year that has the broad appeal of this one and has a good book behind it. It will be bouncing in and out of theaters during the year as well so people can go see it again on the big screen.
One last peeve then I'll stop.
There's an audiobook for this that people love. The first potential voice for Rocky in the movie is the voice actor from the audiobook, which I find amusing. But for the love of all that's holy do not tell people that they have to listen to it rather than read the book. Seriously. People are telling others to not read the book, listen to the audiobook. Not everyone wants to listen to books, you know. Some of them, including me, prefer the written word so we can put our own voices to the text. Recommend it all you like, but don't say one is better than the other. They can both be good, in their own ways.
One last last peeve and then I'll stop.
Because of the name there's a significant number of people who thought this was a religious movie or one that had religious overtones. It doesn't. The title doesn't refer to religion - it refers to an American football play. As soon as I see someone referencing Bible verses in their writeup I lose all respect for them and assume they don't know their ass from their elbow.
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