Some people are not good at things.

Project Hail Mary — 2.5/5
The Martian — 4.5/5 

I rewatched 'The Martian' last year — a banger of a movie. Holds up on repeat. I never got around to writing down my thoughts, but I had some! And then here comes this movie to create a parallel. So let's try to work this out.

I think 'The Martian,' more than just being a great adventure movie, well-told, is probably the most emblematic movie of its particular point in time. It's the height of Obamacore, 'The Audacity of Hope,' Reddit-era politics, Buzzfeed-ification of information, and "science wins" signs peppering lawns in the years before the big science-based kerfuffle which confused half of America. It is our Most Millennial Movie. It is almost, perpetually, corny. Hope is corny! Optimism is a little lame. "We are going to science the shit out of this" is said by either the coolest — or most trying — science teacher you've ever met. Fortunately, tonally, the movie always falls on the left side of that binary. And I think it's because, like a great teacher, the movie's primary goal feels like education (and just hiding it within entertainment). The movie shows the science. You feel like you're with people who are figuring it out in real time, and they're bringing you along with them. They explain it as they go. Not that you can now, like, go to Mars and grow potatoes, but you generally understand you can grow potatoes on Mars, and have a general understanding of everything that goes into it, and why they're doing what they're doing. They focus on the what and the why, and there's less interest in the who who does it. Not that Matt Damon's character is a non-entity, it's just he has no larger personality-based story being told within this. He isn't filled with tragic backstory and is now being faced with an extraordinary opportunity to answer something inside him. He's just a smart, generally amiable, occasionally funny guy in a bad situation who only has the hope of science to get him through it. You grow to care about him and in order for the movie to work, you have to care about his survival — but he's not the story. The science is the story. 

On the other side of that — I love Lord and Miller. I love Ryan Gosling. I loved Andy Weir's last movie (see above). I went in preparing to love this and, five minutes in, could not get over whatever fucking tone was happening here: a tone I can only describe as millennial cringe. I could not, for the life of me, overcome this first hurdle and so, a movie that on face value isn't bad, becomes difficult for me to watch. "Soooo I met an alien" is the same type of line as "we're going to science the shit out of this," only it falls on the other side of the binary. It's Jess from 'New Girl' in space (and I say that insultingly while also being a huge fan of 'New Girl,' so figure that out). And I think the problem, with 'The Martian' in mind, is that the movie tries to make more of a story out of Ryan Gosling's character—and in so doing fails both his character and the science story. The science feels like two people talking to themselves. It's beyond our understanding, and so we're just watching people do random things we surmise as "something important." And so the takeaways from those conversations are the cute asides, and given the science isn't really that important to understanding the movie, the cute asides take up the entire weight of the movie. Have you ever seen two good friends hang out and you're overhearing their conversation and you just kind of think they're both pretty annoying and you're glad you aren't friends with them, knowing full well that if you were sitting at that table, you'd be laughing right along with them? That's me and this movie. The relationship is the whole of it, and I just couldn't buy into it. And then there is a reveal that this story is some larger story about what it means to be brave! Okay! I would have liked that to have been the whole movie! That sounds interesting! It would have created an emotional through-line that connected the first and final scenes, but it only appears at the tail-end, because.... because??? Sigh. It's fine to just be a buddy movie that takes place a million miles away. Just be that. Lose the unnecessary earth-bound characters breaking character to sing karaoke. Lose the larger weight it ties itself to. Just be a guy on a ship on a mission. Or maybe next time I watch it—and I can see myself watching this again—I just go in with a different mindset and the light switch will be turned on, I'll be in the mood to hope, and suddenly I'll love it. But honestly, re-reading the quotes for this thing over at IMDB, trying to find a title for this post? Uhhhh I don't think I will, boss.