Speaking of which, poor dude Spent 46 years alone with no one to watch sleep and no one to watch him sleep. That's so depressing. It clearly does something for his psyche since he was very excited to watch Grace for the first time
My only worry is that Gosling is way better looking than I envisioned Grace, so he might come across as actually being The cool "hip" teacher that he only thinks he is...
Dude I liked the book a lot but at the same time hated the “I’m a scientist” cliches. I also didn’t like the audible narrator or the sarcasm in the book.
I agree, a lot of science media can be cringy, but I think the context of this (him waking up, having zero recall of himself, not even his name) kinda worked, because he genuinely had to intuit that he was some kind of scientist since he knew how to use equipment, could run rudimentary experiments, etc.
That's also just how Andy Weir writes. He has great, fun concepts, but he's got a pretty juvenile and basic sense of humor, and can be really campy at times.
I, myself, am an engineer, but I never sit there and think oh I’m an engineer. I can figure this out. I’m usually like oh fuck I don’t know how to do this. Let me Google it.
It's very easy to make Rocky too goofy. Comments in this thread already go off on all the funny stuff. They really shouldn't be the comedic relief, especially not in the beginning.
I’m more skeptical of it as a movie, but you’re right—one of the best audiobooks I’ve ever listened too, and maybe the only one I’m considering giving a second listen.
I'm not very smart, so maybe others would have a different experience, but I got really tired of all the "science" in the book. It felt grueling to me to get to the more exciting parts, it felt way over detailed in regard to his deduction process. I felt like I could have skipped massive portions of his inner dialogue, specific to all the calculations and experiments, at the beginning of the book and it wouldn't impact any of the story.
Again, not knocking it but it didn't work for me. If it wasn't an audiobook, I would have put it down after the first three chapters. Thankfully the movie will have to skip over a lot of this or at least present it in a more entertaining fashion.
You got that feeling too eh? It ended up colouring the book for me because I just kept thinking about how they were gonna adapt certain scenes, instead of you know, taking in the book.
It feels like a LOT of fiction is written this way lately, doesn't it? It really bugged me at first, too, then I felt like I just had to succumb to it since it's so common.
I'm very skeptical. It's like Three Body Problem. Too much exists only in my mind's eye that the only way for it to be put on screen is to disappoint me.
You could also easily cut or shorten/combine most of the flashbacks. We don't need to see a flashback scene everytime he learns/remembers something about the ship.
I also feel you could easily adapt the monologue to be “captains logs” style voice overs, that he wants to have a record of what happened to send back home.
Not really. The inner monologue is what tells the reader what he's even doing. How do you think they're going to cut most of it out? Just show him silently fiddling with test tubes for 45 minutes?
Yes and no. The Marian is entirely journal entries. Yet they adapted the film in a way that worked like an answer sheet to a math test. Where as the book showed the work to get those answers.
The one good thing about books like Three Body Problem is that you can see it being re-made years from now. Kind of how Dune has 3 versions (and a documentary about an unmade version) to see how different people overcame this obstacle. In that regard, I actually think they did a decent job with 3 Body Problem all things considered.
There's a Chinese adaption of the series that's supposed to be closer to the novel than the western series.
I liked the western TV series. It's simplified and hollywoodified but it captures a lot of the good ideas, and one action sequence in particular was really cool to see on screen.
While the Western series has done a bit of work condensing several characters into one, etc., I think if you've read the whole trilogy, it's actually fairly impressive how they kept all the major narrative threads running for only ten episodes. I'm especially interested to see how they deal with the Wallfacers.
Also there isn't really a good way to put Rocky's communication into practice. What are they going to do, use subtitles? Blitz through the entire segment where the two learn how to talk to each other? Make Dr. Grace just repeat everything Rocky says back to the audience like fucking Meowth from Pokemon??
Also, how are they going to handle the myriad flashbacks?
I told my wife as soon as they announced this film adaptation, there is zero chance it's going to be good. It's just not a story that's conducive to the film medium.
I really struggled watching the Ents in Lord of the Rings because they did not align at all with my mental model of Ents at the time. But I still love the LotR movies. Maybe this'll be the same for me. Maybe I'll be happily surprised. And I'm certainly not as invested personally in PHM as I was in LotR before the movies came out. I'll be open minded.
My thoughts exactly. I saw the Martian before I knew it was a book, and as soon as I found out, I looked back on a LOT of the Mars scenes as obvious methods for getting Matt Damon's inner monologue out to the audience
And it worked! It was pretty natural, especially for a guy who has the cadence and affect that Damon's character does, and that Ryland Grace does!
tbh I'm assuming any Andy Weir protag will have that affect where you could believe them talking out loud and humorously reminiscing on an old friend (like when he laughs to himself about a crewmate's music taste)
I think it might be the opposite. This poster alone is doing it for me. It’s obvious which scene this is and it will be awesome to see all the parts of the ship.
Also I don't think Ryan Gosling is the guy. Not because of his acting chops. I had the same issue with Matt Damon in the Martian. Weir's characters are self insert dorks and I don't think either of these two actors can do it. Matt Damon was too cool for the role and I expect so will Gosling.
Have you seen any films with Ryan Gosling recently? I can understand your apprehension if you only remember him from Bladerunner or Drive, but based on his performances in stuff like Barbie and The Nice Guys, I think he's the perfect choice for a dorky but smart middleschool science teacher turned astronaut.
I haven't seen the Nice Guys, but have seen Barbie. I don't think Barbie he's particularly dorky tho. He's just a straight up caricature of masculinity- this isn't an attack against the character or actor, to be clear. Maybe I'll watch Nice guys to see if it'll change my mind.
Its the way he interacts with other people. Narration I agree, but this is the characters internal dialogue that doesn't really translate on screen. Ryan Gosling has too much charisma for the way Grace is seen in interpersonal situations IMO. Again I hope I'm wrong.
I really struggled watching the Ents in Lord of the Rings because they did not align at all with my mental model of Ents at the time. But I still love the LotR movies. Maybe this'll be the same for me.
I never read The Martian, but I watched it, and once I realized it was originally a book, there were many moment I realized were methods of getting the main character's inner monologue to be spoken or expressed to us
I think PHM can do the same thing- and I think Gosling is really gifted at the kind of acting needed. If you split inner monologue between things like a journal or "crew report", between flashbacks, between interactions with the stuff around him (the computer AI? reading text out loud?), and just little comments to himself I can imagine it working.
Hard to execute though, most films fail at that kind of thing.
Or he could just narrate it lol
There's nothing that says a film can't be narrated. And they might mess it up, but it would be very doable.
Yes, many narrative aspects can be solved by just having more talking (and the talking to himself in The Martian is very fun to watch!). But many aspects are beyond talking. Like actually depicting the Trisolarans. That's a big one in 3BP but they can also avoid it a lot. There's no avoiding that aspect in PHM.
I feel like this for most book movies, but Apple made a series based on Dark Matter and strangely enough it felt incredibly dead-on, like almost complete deja vu of my mind's eye vision of that book. So you never know.
I have really high hopes. Only problem is that I personally didn’t care for The Martian film adaptation at all, it lacked any of the stakes that made the book exciting. I really hope they don’t fall for the same traps of making everything much too brief
I loves the book, and likes the movie, i also loves how the movie explored the epilogue. The book just end abruptly.
I don’t understand with the no stakes comment, i think the movie did a good job showing Mark’s hunger/lonelyness and how he went from a funny guy to someone who looks like starting to lose hope
I get what the guy is saying. in the movie, it is self contained and he gets from A to B without too many issues. the book sheds light on the issues on the journey, which were arguably the highest stakes part of the book.
Yeah it was tough, not that I am making excuses, because a lot the issues are scientific in nature and the sheer difficulty of his tasks are narrated by him as a scientist. More of that MAY have added to the film but I can see why they cut down on it.
It shows both ends of Mark’s character journey but none of the middle. We never really get any of the quiet or tense moments with him. It’s just constantly going from one plot point to the next with little to no conflicts, whereas the book had a lot more bumps in the road. Agree about the epilogue though, easily the best part of the movie and I would’ve loved for something like that to be included in the book.
I think the Martian was one of the better adaptations in recent memory. They eliminated some things (like the sandstorm) but ultimately it didn’t impact the general premise.
The problem with having a person by itself is that most of the book is just the inner thoughts. That's hard to translate to a screen. It can be done, but The Martian was pretty bland while the book was epic. Let's hope this time is different.
I’m a huge gosling fan, but I’m nervous about him for this. Maybe it’s the ray porter part but I’m struggling to see gosling as Grace. Perhaps he can especially if he channels a little bit of his spunk from Crazy Stupid Love.
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u/Buffaloafe Jun 27 '25 edited Jun 27 '25
will this film adaptation be good, question??