One thing I like about Andy Weir is the emphasis on trusting smart people and figuring out solutions to problems that seem impossible.  I think we need that right now so I'm also glad a lot of people are seeing this movie and thinking about those things.

I think that's totally fair.  Not everyone loves everything, and you don't have to like something because other people like it.  I loved it, but I can totally see where there might be leaps of logic to people who haven't read the book.  The story is also a bit samey to The Martian.  I started reading Artemis, Andy Weir's second and less successful book, and it's very different.  So I do feel like he went back to the well with a very capable and sarcastic protagonist.

But I'm a sucker for that kind of stuff.

Yea, it definitely felt like the Martian all over again, with some Intersteller thrown in. 

I'm actually elated though it has done as well at the box office as it has and that audiences are happy with the film.  I hope it doesn't teter out though.  Mario Bros dethroaned it and I think 500m is the break even point globally.  I hope it gets to $600m.  It's amazing to me it cost as much as it did.  Movies are getting so expensive now.

But I'm a sucker for that kind of stuff.

People love Project Hail Mary and I don't understand it.  I have no doubt, I am the one who is wrong though.

Genuinely curious what you didn't like about it and especially if it was what I just talked about.

I found the entire thing weird.  Rocky was such a bad alien, it was hard to watch how bad it was.  None of the banter was funny to me.  Gosling was really leaning into the shtick way too much as well.  I didn't feel any suspense as to the fate of the world. 

A lot of the stuff was cookie cutter, like oh we need this one dude to save us. 

I feel asleep in the middle of it.  The first hour was a tough watch.

I had such high hopes. 

Obviously, something is wrong with me, because it's been loved by the general public, as well as smart and sophisticated audiences.  I found it super weird, and quite disappointing.

(no familarity with the book, btw. but that is gonna be most audiences).

The issue I could see if you're someone who didn't read the book is that Grace seems to get so much done so easily, it seems.  He generates a communication device for Rocky in what seems like a couple of hours.  He hands Rocky a clock and then suddenly they can have a normal conversation.

But in the book, that process takes forever and is a million steps.  The clock is an introduction to mathematics.  Grace learns that Rocky's numbers aren't base ten.  Through a lot of trial and error, they are able to create a mechanism to talk to each other.

The book is a ton of trial and error.  The movie just shows him getting it right.  Which makes sense - the movie is already pretty long with him jumping straight to the right answer.  At the end, Grace figures out that the Taumeba has leaked out into his fuel supply, but that takes pages and pages in the book.  He has to figure out what is going on, why its happening, and then he makes a decision.  The movie jumps straight to what is happening because it's already been 2:15 of movie and they gotta wrap it up.

Nothing is really removed but they do gloss over a lot in the interest of time.  But if you don't know that Grace actually does the work off screen, I could see how people might be turned off by how easily Grace seems to do a lot of fantastical stuff.

Genuinely curious what you didn't like about it and especially if it was what I just talked about.

I saw Project Hail Mary last week, and it's really stuck with me.  Great adaptation of a really great book.  I don't think they could've done a better job adapting it.

Agreed. It's been a while since I read the book, but it was faithful to my memory, anyway. Well, other than the final scene, but that's just a matter when the scene takes place, not how. I had questions while watching that maybe the book addressed, but they didn't want to spend time on answering in the film, but nothing that bothered me to the point that it took me out of the experience.

But do you get to actually see the movie rendered in some way?

actually technically possible if the game developers want to be more ambitious!

https://store.steampowered.com/app/2315 … ry_Tycoon/

https://archiveofourown.org/works/77109631

Oooh, how are you liking For All Mankind?  It took me a few episodes to get into it, but I've really enjoyed it.

I like it, some characters more than others. It does stretch the imagination a bit that some of the same astronauts from the 60's are still flying in the 90's (I'm half-way through S3), but it's an interesting experiment in alt-history. Having worked at Kenndy Space Center during the shuttle years, I can't help but roll my eyes at the thought of the space shuttle visiting the moon, but I can overlook a lot these days that I would have railed against back in the day.