WARNING: Spoilers for the “Project Hail Mary” book and movie

“Project Hail Mary” has a 94% critic score and a 96% audience rating on Rotten Tomatoes, on par to the 98% audience rating of “The Godfather.”

Yet I walked out of the theater disappointed.

I had listened to the audiobook of “Project Hail Mary” over spring break on a road trip to Arkansas with the rest of my family, and I loved the vast amounts of science and humor sprinkled in between dramatic scenes and complex character arcs. Throughout the entire trip, I couldn’t wait to get back in the car to listen to more of the story.

The book and movie are set in the not-so-distant future, where an alien bacteria called Astrophage starts eating the energy of the sun. If not dealt with, it will decrease the sun to 10% of its current power, leading to a global ice age where most of the human species would die within 30 years. In an attempt to stop this, Ryland Grace, a middle school science teacher, is sent to figure out why the Astrophage is not stealing its energy and how to apply that information to save our sun. Eventually, Grace runs into an alien he names Rocky, who is an engineering genius also attempting to save his own home star.

Rocky and Grace face much adversity and work together through their love of science to overcome the challenges that are thrown their way because, in the book, wrenches are constantly thrown in their plans. Like how they first have to start out spending a significant amount of time overcoming their language barrier since Rocky speaks in musical chords —which is why I feel the audiobook is the best experience.

The book was “amaze, amaze, amaze” — a phrase Rocky uses often. The movie, however, missed the mark.

While the movie struck some of the right notes with their relationship — the need to work together for the greater good of both of their planets — the overall absence of science was subpar, with only one notable instance of Grace doing science compared to the hundreds in the book.

There was one point at the end where they mentioned the breeder tanks that they had spent so much time on in the book, and I was excited that they were finally going to do some science. However, to my disappointment they brushed this off, claiming to have fixed it off screen.

It also missed the amount of trial and error the characters had to go through to find the solution they both so desperately need, like how they have to develop a chain, winch and ship trajectory to safely get their panacea out of Tau Ceti’s atmosphere without damaging the ship. Which you can guess — the movie just skipped over. Without the struggle, there isn’t enough pay off in the successes. I just kept waiting the entire movie for them to have to put effort into anything for more than two scenes and it never came.

Unlike the book, Grace does not have to unlock fragments of his memory to access parts of the ship and does not have to adapt the solution to the atmosphere of Earth and Rocky’s home planet. This led to a very pathetic Grace because instead of exploring the ship and being ecstatic that he was in space, the first thing he did was get drunk.

Additionally, the film leaves out major plot points that cheapen Grace’s character arc by not emphasizing that he is competent & brave, even though he did not volunteer for this mission, like the remedy they discover to solve the problem of Astrophage contaminating Grace’s fuel. Other critical character building moments are also removed, such as Grace putting himself at risk of having Rocky’s atmosphere — which has a pressure 29 times that of Earth’s and is made of approximately 410 degrees Fahrenheit ammonia — leaked into his ship to care for Rocky after he saves Grace.

Before Grace does not save Rocky, I had been enjoying the movie, but something just felt off to me and I couldn’t really place it. But at this point, I had become disillusioned with the constant cheap jokes they were throwing out, and I was plain annoyed that they had made the character armor so thick that I wasn’t even worried that anything would happen to them.

Without this struggle that bonds the two together, their relationship seems shallow. In the end, their connection is supposed to be the main focus of the story, and without this trust being formed by problem solving together, there is no real reason for them to be friends.

This, combined with Grace constantly being played for laughs by him being incompetent and majorly cynical, leads to a very surface level relationship while in the book, they bond over their respect for each other and their optimism in times of struggle. But in this version, Rocky has no reason to respect Grace — all he does the entire movie is complain and mess things up.

The reason that the characters are so loved is because they rely on each other, share an enjoyment in solving scientific problems and learn each other’s deadpan humor, like how Rocky will chastise Grace for doing stupid things when he gets tired. While they do get depressed at points in the book, they always know the other is right there to support them. However, since the movie removes this struggle and most of the science, they never have the opportunity to grow this unique connection.

I understand that the book with its mass amount of scientific explanation would have to be adapted to fit more general audiences, but they leaned too far into creating a movie that could be mass marketed and lost the heart of what was present in the book.

I would have likely enjoyed the movie if I had not had the expectation of it having even a little bit of the amount of the depth that was in the audiobook. But, if adaptation is a rocky road — then these directors have surely tripped.