A group of us went to see Project Hail Mary last night.  I was disappointed.

Youtube reviewers and people in real life have been raving about it, and I really enjoyed the book.  My expectations were too high.

The book is usually better than the movie.  It wasn’t that. 

Books and movies are different mediums, so changes have to be made to keep the narrative moving and to cover the important beats in a much shorter time.  Detailed explanations, backstory and secondary plots are reduced.

Andy Weir books are difficult to make into movies because so much happens in the protagonist’s mind, and there isn’t much interaction with other characters.  Surprisingly, it worked out with The Martian.  Other characters had expanded roles, and the movie grossed 6 times the production budget.  In Project Hail Mary, our hero never talks to another human.  All dialogue occurs in flashbacks.

Project Hail Mary seemed to be dumbed down, in a way that The Martian was not.  Mark Watney in The Martian is a deliberate and innovative biologist with a background in engineering who prioritizes the critical issues and solves them with a level head.

In the book version of Project Hail Mary, Ryland Grace is the same type of man.  In the movie, Grace spends the first act running around like a reckless teenager who is accidentality locked in the mall overnight. 

I don’t know who the target audience is for this movie.

Not much of a spoiler, but the story starts with Grace waking up in an unfamiliar, technologically advanced recovery room.  He doesn’t know who or where he is.  In the book, he looks for clues to build a knowledge base in the same way that Watney solves each problem a step at a time to improve his chance of surviving.

In the movie, as soon as Grace wakes up, he darts around the spaceship like a naked baby running around the house trying to avoid a bath.  He takes no time to calmly evaluate his situation or consider any priorities.

Anyone who loves the book will be disappointed in his undisciplined behavior.  He’s not the guy we expected to see.

The movie is faithful to the events in the book.  Grace faces many issues to resolve, but the movie doesn’t provide enough background for each challenge to be understood or to appreciate Grace’s clever solution.  A person unfamiliar with the book may wonder where this challenge came from, and marvel at how easily it was resolved.

Ryan Gosling and the rest of the cast did a great job, but they weren’t given good direction or an appropriate screenplay.

I’d give the book a 9 and the movie a 7.5.