Peter Suderman likes it.
[Afternoon update]
You're watching a $248 million film and not a single green or blue screen was used. The alien is a handmade puppet. The cockpit physically rotates to simulate gravity. I looked at the production tech behind this 95% score, and the engineering is wild.
— Anish Moonka (@AnishA_Moonka) March 20, 2026
Phil Lord and Chris Miller,… https://t.co/dNqGFCikE3
[Late-afternoon update]
Most movies, I leave going “yes, but.”
— Stephen Fleming (@StephenFleming) March 20, 2026
“Yes, but the lighting was too dim.”
“Yes, but the sound mix was terrible.”
“Yes, but they skipped this major plot point.” (If based on a book.)
“Yes, but they completely miscast this character.”
Not “Project Hail Mary.” It hits all the…
Whenever the topic of Andy Weir comes up I make the same recommendation. As much as I love love love The Martian and Project Hail Mary, his little two-page short story “Meeting Sarah” never fails to get me no matter how many times I read it. And he still offers it for free at https://www.galactanet.com/oneoff/meetingsarah.html
Interesting read. Thanks for the link.
Thanks for that.
That was a nice read. Saw the movie a few days ago and I have to admit the same guilty pleasure of being enamored by a puppet, much like ET, or Spaceman, the story was engaging and creative.
IDK. Ryan Gosling?
Maybe I’ll wait for cable
He’s had something like four hits in a row.
How this guy is even an actor, never mind a star, is truly one of the great unexplained mysteries of our time.
Or, perhaps it’s explainable based strictly on the likeability of his co-stars.
He has a face like the blade of a garden spade with a nose and displays barely more affect in most of his roles than Kristen Stewart or Ursula Andress.
Yeah, Ryan Freakin’ Gosling. Truly one of the most inexplicable movie stars of cinema history.
I loved Andy Weir’s book but I anticipate epic cognitive dissonance when I eventually sit down to watch this thing – which I will do strictly out of allegiance to the story and its author.
Dr. Becky interviewed Gosling about the movie, and I found him likeable as a person.
He could easily be more personable than the average movie star, that being a pretty low bar to get over seemingly. Alec Baldwin drags that average down a lot all by himself. And of course Gosling has the glorious Eva Mendes waiting at home, something which would definitely improve my general attitude were that true of me instead.
My favorite role for Eva Mendes was as Will Ferrell’s wife in The Other Guys, a really offbeat – but IMHO hilarious – cop/semi-buddy movie.
Alec Baldwin is an enigma to me. He has turned in some really first rate performances over a wide range, from Rysam Slaight (there’s a name for you) in Dress Gray to Jack Donaghy in 30 Rock (which I found uniformly hilarious). In addition, he was an occasional guest on Turner Classic Movies with host Robert Osborne. The two of them would critique the movie de jour. I was always very impressed by Baldwin’s expansive background knowledge not just of the film in question, but of the entire filmmaking ecosystem at its production time. Then there was his penetrating, well thought out and very persuasive analysis of the film itself. He was the best match with Osborne of any of the celebrity guests I ever saw. Yet the complete Baldwin seems to be a human disaster. I’ve never quite figured him out.
Haven’t seen the movie but when I read the book, I thought “this is gonna be the best buddy flick since Butch & Sundance.” It was written with screenplay in mind. Not a diss, just an observation.
Going to see it this afternoon. Read the book a few weeks ago. Based upon the reviews I am guarded….mildly apprehensive. They are all talking about their emotional response to one character. the book was pretty good – not awesome. I liked it slightly less than The Martian because it jumped around in the timeline and because it has the same basic method of The Martian.
Well…we will see.
I saw it this afternoon. Pretty happy about it. As others have pointed out, despite compression to movie-length I was not aware of any major plot points they left out (even though I had started to suspect they were about to). Gosling is no Matt Damon, but Ryland Grace is no Mark Watney. The movie format let them do a few things that provided a little punch that was not quite present in the book. Sandra Hüller was great as Eva Stratt.
My only regret is that because there is so very much more going on, they had to make their big cuts in the “science the shit out of this” stuff. They cut some of that in the Martian as well, of course, but they were able to keep a lot more of it there. But it’s a movie and not a miniseries, and if the alternative was to make the plot simpler and more cookie-cutter, I think it was the right choice.
Saw the movie. it’s entertaining. I had read the book a few weeks ago.
Gosling does a fine job. Not sure why Dick hates him as an actor – he’s done some pretty good movies. As for his looks, well, Edward G. Robinson wasn’t no oil painting but he was a great star.
They did leave out a lot from the book, as is necessary and expected. But there was one important aspect of Rocky they could have explained in about 2 seconds that would have made the movie MUCH more understandable to someone who hadn’t read the book.
I thought Sandra Hüller was ok as Eva Stratt, but that they wrote Eva Stratt a lot softer than she was in the book.
They did a good job and the movie was worth seeing.
I’d like to see a movie made of S.M. Stirling’s “Drakon!”
It is written like a movie script.