'Project Hail Mary' Crosses $300M in Sales to Become Amazon/MGM's Highest-Gross | Hacker News Reader

'Project Hail Mary' Crosses $300M in Sales to Become Amazon/MGM's Highest-Gross

variety.com

36 pointsgnabgib36 comments

I like the underlying theme of both Project Hail Mary and The Martian: No great evil just be human and solve problems with a little humor. We need more of that and less might makes right superhero movies.

Exactly. An no tiring unrealistic villain arc.

I hadn't read the book nor watched any trailers (I hate trailers with a passion), so tonally it was a fair bit lighter than anticipated. However both me and my unsuspecting victim of a movie partner (she isn't typically into scifi) really enjoyed it, and I had a similar sentiment afterwards.

Saw it on IMAX, and did not regret that choice one bit.

Glad to see it. We enjoyed the movie greatly but I am sure 50% of that was just relief that the movie adaptation didn’t F the story up :)

The audiobook is the peak experience still I think. Highly highly recommended

The movie was great. I'm always fascinated by adaptations, especially what they choose to exclude. I thought the movie struck the right balance.

I watched it twice, which is pretty unheard of for me. I thought the book was fine but not a favourite. And it's not like it was the best movie ever, but I did feel like it was the best self contained scifi film I've seen in at least 10 years. People acted like adults without being aggressive, decisions were made thoughtfully, it felt realistic which made the visuals more impactful.

> I watched it twice, which is pretty unheard of for me. I thought the book was fine but not a favourite.

I think it's interesting when a movie can be faithful, and yet hit differently. Conclave was like that for me—I enjoyed the book, but it came across as a political thriller with a Catholic twist. But the movie, by showing all of the uniforms, all of the architecture and art, came across far more significant than just a political thriller. A great cast helped with that, admittedly.

I read the book and really enjoyed it, but I heard the movie isn't really like the book, especially not enough of the science stuff unlike the Martian movie which does indeed have more of the science stuff. Those of you who read the book, what do you think of the movie?

I read the book on release and loved it. The main themes and plot points are present in the movie, though it's overall a bit less nerdy and a bit more comical than the book. I think it is easily one of the best, most enjoyable sci-fi movies released this decade.

> I think it is easily one of the best, most enjoyable sci-fi movies released this decade.

I completely agree. I didn't read the book but the science the made sense to me. But then maybe I was able to fill in details mentally.

It’s a movie, not a book. The audio book is 16 hours runtime. The movie is 2 hours. Some things were always going to be left out. The details of the science stuff was one of them. It works better in a book narrative where the process is told than a movie where it’s visual and you have to show.

The Martian book has more of the science process than PHM book does to begin with.

The movie hit all of the primary points but never got into the details. If you read the book you can fill in the details. I imagine that a lot of people watching the movie didn’t know why some things were happening. Maybe some will be interested enough to read the book or the audiobook. If not, they had a good experience in the movie anyway.

It’s still a really good movie.

What bugs me about the editing in the movie is they gave only a couple of seconds of screen time for key plot elements like the nitrogen resistance breeding and how/why this would cause issues for Rocky. It made the last 20% of the movie less coherent for anyone who hasn’t read the book.

You've read the book. You don't need the science.

Heck, you don't even need a plot that hangs together. When I was a kid I had trouble figuring out why i loved the original Dune movie while everybody else hated it.

It was a bad movie because the plot didn't hold together. But the visuals and the characters were awesome. As an adjunct to the book it was great. It just didn't stand alone.

Hail Mary as someone who has read the book is a different experience than someone who hasn't. It brings the book to life.

Andy Weir (the author of the book) has a Producer AND Writer credit on the movie and had some say what bits to take out and what to change.

The changes worked really well for the movie, they changed some subtle bits, compressed others but the emotional core is still there and Ryan Gosling makes it work - the dude can act.

Still wanna watch this movie, I haven't seen trailers (try to keep that to a minimum) and I like Gosling. Anybody here seen it?

Watched it twice, cried both times. Probably could have had a few minutes cut while still tight if you care about that kind of thing, recommend watching in IMAX since it's a space movie. One notable annoying science inaccuracy that felt particularly blatent was jurer gur pragevshtr jnf haonynaprq sbe ab ernfba but that's forgivable.

what is that gibberish?

Its rot13 encoding to avoid spoilers.

Likely a rot13-encoded spoiler.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ROT13

Rot13

That part bugged me too!!! Like, why! There are two places at least, guh.

I asked claude to decipher this and it refused. I asked gemini and it was permissible. Very interesting to see ROT-13 banned via Anthropic as a 'prompt injection' risk.

I'm inured to varegvny flfgrzf va zvpebtenivgl orunivat yvxr gurl'ir nccneragyl tbar znq va mreb-t, but once science doodad from the film, I have spent the last week scrambling my brains thinking about was the tbq-sbefnxra raretl/cnegvpyr genafcbeg vafvqr gur nfgebcuntr. Qbrf vg unir, yvxr, n gurezbahpyrne zvgbpubaqevn? Arhgeba genafcbeg vafgrnq bs ryrpgebaf, gura DHNAGHZZNTVK gval shfvba

Just came back from the show. Loved it. Might go back for an IMAX viewing. I liked the book as well, and thought it was a good adaptation.

Cried a lot.

Yes. I really enjoyed it. Visually spectacular, pretty faithful to the book (as far as I remember the book) and Ryan Gosling was very good in it. They were even fairly faithful to the laws of physics (relative to other Hollywood movies, anyway).

Found it excruciating to watch. As in boring. And there are a few times where the movie seems ready to make its landing and finish but something happens to extend it. I just couldn't get myself to care. The recent Sam Raimi movie I enjoyed

I also saw 'Send help' at the cinema. I enjoyed it, but preferred 'Hail Mary'. Highly subjective, obviously.

Yeah, my wife and I saw it earlier this week. I thought it was an excellent adaptation of a very good book. My wife, who hasn’t read the book, didn’t like it and took a nap. (I think that’s a pretty minority position for most people who have seen the movie without reading the book.)

I heard someone snoring loudly in the cinema, so being “bored to sleep” seems to be a surprisingly common reaction to this movie!

The book is very good and the movie is pretty faithful to the book. They did an amazingly good job of making Rocky into a real character.

I haven't been to a cinema in 15 years, but I went to view yesterday with Gold seating. Didn't even know you could get alcohol served to your seat these days.

Lovely movie, it was a lot of fun.

Yup and loved it. I like Gosling too and he was awesome in this too.

Watched it with a few people who enjoy different movie genres, and nobody was bored, which is rare for the group I watch movies with frequently.

Would I watch it again? Probably not. Was it my favourite Gosling movie? Nope.

Tough to beat The Place Beyond the Pines.

Is it better than the (audio)book? I have no idea.

Ryan Gosling is one of those actors who make movies emotionally immersive, like Highlander wouldn’t be the same without Sean Connery or What Dreams May Come without Robin Williams. Glad he’s young and fit enough for me to enjoy his acting for a bit longer.

Maybe his acting career is aging like fine wine. Unlike you, Ryan Reynolds.

looking forward to this movie, hasn't seen him in really good movie where he would play lead since TPBTP though not sure I liked TPBTP more than Drive, Half Nelson, The United States of Leland or The Believer (2001)

Was hyped for this until Andy Weir's Critical Drinker interview came out.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com