I refer to Project Hail Mary, which (despite it being at the end of its run) I actually saw at a cinema on the weekend.
I wouldn't say it's a terrible movie, in the sense of offensive in any way, but I just find too many problems with movies sourced from author Andy Weir. Like The Martian, which I also found unconvincing, I can see that he tries to be pro-science, which should appeal to me, but the movie versions at least contain too many things I find too unrealistic despite the veneer of realism.
Things I had issues with in this movie: (like The Martian) the domestic setting seeming to be not that too far into the future, yet the rockets are huge and full of wasted space in a way that current technological progress would suggest is going to take a long, long time to achieve; astronauts doing stuff outside of the spaceship that look not entirely realistic; spaceships doing things that look unrealistic; an alien that was far too cutesy and too human-like in attitude, especially considering its completely alien biology; plot points that don't make sense when more carefully thought about; a hero who likes to work things out by hand on a whiteboard, when it's obvious that the ship's computer would have enough intelligence to work it out in a flash. (Maybe the book had the misfortune to be written just before LLMs and AI became such an all consuming topic of interest, and therefore missed the reality that a starship like that in the film is now, more than ever, really likely to have a HAL type intelligence running it.)
I didn't really care for the mixed tone of the movie: it tries to keep everything light hearted and "feelgood" with the main character, when it's a "have to avoid the end of the world and billions of people dying" movie.
I am puzzled by how many good reviews it got. But, I see via Metacritic that Variety didn't care for it and I agree with the review, which is summarised in its headline:
‘Project Hail Mary’ Review: Ryan Gosling in a Lavish but Derivative Outer-Space Adventure
Phil Lord and Christopher Miller's lone-astronaut saga wants to be "Interstellar" meets "E.T.," but it's too long and too cutely formulaic.
One other thing: Ryan Gosling seems to routinely turn up in movies I find just barely OK, but overall underwhelming. He has a certain charisma, but it's never enough to carry a movie for me.
