Mastodawn

I love #movies. I love #scifi. I love scifi movies.

I like hard scifi, but I'm aware of the compromises that must be made when bringing technical material to a broad audience on the big screen. I can make allowances for that. So I don't have a problem suspending my disbelief when a technical or scientific clunker is required by #story mechanics.

But suspension of disbelief only goes so far. If @pzmyers is right about "Project Hail Mary" (2026), I strongly suspect I'm not going to enjoy it. So I'll wait for it to come out for home viewing, I think. Easier to "walk out" when it's just pressing the "stop" button and you didn't fork out $40 for tickets and a bucket of #popcorn.

His take - not really a review as such:

https://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2026/03/22/the-last-andy-weir-movie-i-will-ever-waste-money-on/

#SciFiMovie #AndyWeir #ProjectHailMary #SuspensionOfDisbelief #film #BadMovie

The last Andy Weir movie I will ever waste money on

The commenters here are persuasive. I dissed Andy Weir and his new movie, and I was told that it was entertaining and I should give it a chance. So I did. I went to the theater to see Project Hail …

Pharyngula

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Joel

Mar 22

@cazabon half the complaints are decently addressed in the book, the other half just sound like nitpicking to me...

I care more about the premise itself (even if it's unrealistic) and the experience, over the hard science. The director of Spiderverse, the most incredible visual spectacle of animation in years, working on a space sci-fi? sign me up.

I will probably read the novel some day. Scifi is virtually always better in written form; there's just so much you have to leave out to fit a story into a 2-hour movie. I think that's why many of the best scifi movies are based on short stories or perhaps novellas, rather than full-length novels.

On the subject of nitpicking: if the spaceship has magical engines to get it to near lightspeed, why would the crew have to travel in suspended animation/induced coma state? Time dilation would mean the trip was subjectively short, maybe just days or even hours, for everyone on board. Obviously I haven't seen it yet, so maybe that's addressed.

#nit #pick #nitpicking

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miszeleq

@cazabon @joel @pzmyers

The induced coma was there, so the crew didn't go mad and kill themselves during the trip. The trip was relatively shorter than on earth - it was around 3 years long as far as i remember correctly.
But those things were addressed in the book, not in the movie. I enjoyed the book because it was fun to read all about in-universe science, that compensated somewhat naive story. In the movie they removed like 90% of the science talk, and we're left with the story.
It's not that it's bad. But it could be so much better.