This was a fun book. Solid narrator on the audiobook. (Ray Porter)
this post was submitted on 28 Jun 2025
216 points (97.8% liked)
movies
993 readers
97 users here now
A community about movies and cinema.
Related communities:
Rules
- Be civil
- No discrimination or prejudice of any kind
- Do not spam
- Stay on topic
- These rules will evolve as this community grows
No posts or comments will be removed without an explanation from mods.
founded 3 months ago
MODERATORS
Fucking love the audiobook. Listen to it so far four times. Plan on reading the novel this year (finally picked up a copy.) My worry is they will fuck this up like they did the Martain. Great novel, and also solid audiobook, listening to it now for like the 20th time. But didn't care for that PG13 movie.
Spoiler but the first sentence in the book got the word fuck in it. And Annie cursed up a storm in the book.
Edit: They better do Rocky I swear.
The botched comical farce ending that he makes fun of in the book becoming the movie ending was offensive... I loved so much of the pieces but talk about a slap in the face.
Also, removing the detail of Pathfinder failure so you have months of mental health issues... Damon did spectacular at emoting the strain in the moment he regains contact with the crew, but it felt disjointed without the context of zero contact and the desperation.
Many of the actors were amazing, but Ridley screwed up bad.
Matt Damon did a fantastic job portraying Mark Watney, though I'll definitely say movie!Watney had it a lot easier than book!Watney. He didn't kill Pathfinder, basically the entire long haul to ARES IV was "he did it, he drove to ARES IV", no sandstorm, no figuring out which way to go, no rolling the rover.
They pussed out on a lot of the mission control characters as well, Annie wasn't a no nonsense ballbuster, I don't even remember Mindy the meek satellite girl who grew a pair, and Vince unilaterally sending the Rich Purnell maneuver in defiance of orders and daring them to fire him over it...
Some of that would have been cut for run time; what works in the span of a novel doesn't work in the span of a film. I think to fully capture the entire scope of the book you'd need a 6-8 hour miniseries. If I want to revisit The Martian, I'm going to play my copy of the audiobook narrated by R. C. Bray.
Look: Boobies! ( . Y . )
Ray Porter stan checking in.
Hi Stan. I meant to write you sooner, but I've just been busy.
Amaze!! Amaze!!
…I’m excited for this film, but so scared that it will be another enshitified movie of a great book with the story twisted and warped by producers and other interests.
Like Ready Player One turned out to be; utter garbage.
Ungh….
great book
Ready Player One
uh
Admittedly the book is waaaaay better than the movie. Neither are great though.
I actually like the movie. It made the best out of the book, which is meh at best.
I agree wholeheartedly. The book and movies are just vehicles for delivering nostalgic references, but while in the book 80% of those references were just listing off one thing after another, in the movie I could see and hear them, which makes it much better for that nostalgia.
Yep. Book wasted time with unnecessary callback lists, obscure shows, and a hero that was kindof a jerk. The movie was fun - not deep or anything, it didn’t waste time though.
Ready Player One the movie wouldn't have been any better with him playing PacMan and Joust for hours or quoting Monty Python and War Games word-for-word.
load more comments
(1 replies)
I feel like Any Weir's name should be on this poster. He's a bigger draw than Gosling in my book.
Just Any ol' Weir?
Hoping they pull a switcheroo and gosling plays Rocky
...I figured Rocky would be voiced by an array of theremins.
Right but Hollywood so gosling does mocap and the voice is his but heavily vocodered thru the theremins.
In all seriousness I would love to be wrong about this but I doubt hwood will allow rocky and the other eridians to have musical verbal language. That means subtitles, and Hollywood fucking hates subtitles.
Yes! I had Jon Hamm in mind for the lead while I was reading it. But, Gosling surprised me as Ken in Barbie so maybe he’ll be great in this too.
load more comments
(1 replies)
Damn, I kept putting off reading it and they're already making it into a movie. At least now I have a deadline.
It’s a page turner and a pretty quick read!
Just listen to the audio book. It's read by ray porter and he nails it.
Seconded. Read it on my own first, ended up reading half of it out loud to my wife just because I was so tickled by it, then put it on for the whole family on a road trip. Such a great story, everyone loved it.
Yea it's become one of my top books. I have listened to the audiobook probably 30 times now. I'll go through a series like the Dresden files or the grey man and then PHM gets a listen.
That was a fun, very light sci fi novel. I hope they don't fuck it up too bad. I hope Gosling plays Rocky, bwahaha
Fist my bump!
That's a pretty ambitious book to turn into a movie. Hope they don't go too "Hollywood" on it, and respect the source material.
They already had to cut out a big chunk from the middle of The Martian (which then broke the I've got no radio, so no one can give me permission to board, so I'm now the first space pirate joke, which they decided to keep anyway), and Project Hail Mary is a much longer book - it's about as thick as Dune, which became two movies and still cut loads. Something major will have to change if they're going to give it an acceptable runtime.
- No it isn't, Hail Mary is 180 pages shorter than Dune
- Dune is way more dense than Hail Mary, Weir very clearly writes his books to become movies. Way more dialog, much simpler problems, and clearly defined acts translate much easier to the screen
- They'll obviously have to cut some parts, but having read/seen The Martian I don't think anything of major importance was lost
load more comments
(3 replies)
It's nowhere near as complicated as dune though. They can cut out a lot of the flashbacks.
If they cut too many of the flashbacks, it gets rid of, or at least erodes, the WTF? Where am I and how did I get here and why? part of the book, which is a pretty major part of it.
load more comments
(1 replies)
"jazz hands"
Cautiously hopeful.
The book is so good, I don't know if I wanna see the movie.
Wait this is gonna be a movie?!?!
Gosling is not a grace... really hope they do great but knowing hollywood they're gonna turn grace into some hero that was always a hero vs what he was in the book a scared scientist that just loved knowledge.
Gosling personally wanted to make this movie cause he loves the story. I don't think he's too far off, and rather have someone who cares.
load more comments
(1 replies)
load more comments
(5 replies)
That would be a great mobile wallpaper without the text.
Everyone working on this behind the scenes has a really fantastic track record. Cant wait.
I love this book! I was hoping they'd try to adapt it into a movie! I hope it'll be good. Very exciting!
Filmed "for" IMAX?
if you want to have a proper imax experience, you need to shoot a movie with that intent.
That's what they are saying here.
Other releases will have a very different screen ratio and viewing experience.
It does suggest that the space scenes will be quite glorious
But did they shoot with IMAX cameras?
They usually say it's filmed "in" IMAX.
view more: next ›