I read the book a few years ago, so I already had a connection to these characters going in. Luckily, the movie understood what made the book special: the relationship between Ryland Grace and Rocky. That’s the heart of the story, and the movie nails it.
Rocky is just as lovable on screen as in the book. And Ryan Gosling as Grace was a great fit. The movie also added Carl, who wasn’t in the book at all, and honestly he was a solid addition. The early scenes with him and Grace messing around in the store (the bowling with foil and tape bit) added some fun moments that helped set the tone before things got serious.
The adaptation made some smart changes to streamline the story. The coma gene stuff, which got a lot of page time in the book, was simplified down to Grace just being the only qualified person. It’s more emotional that way, even if the amnesia drug doesn’t get fully explained. The waking up sequence was also way less disorienting than the book, but that’s probably a necessary trade.
One change I actually preferred was how they handled the taumoeba collection scene. In the book, Grace drags Rocky back to safety and almost kills him trying to heal him. In the movie, Rocky gets his own bravery moment, which felt earned given how much weight the “they died and I couldn’t fix it” scene carries in both versions. That was a really cool way to adapt it.
I did miss the “me burgers” though. In the book, Grace ends up growing his own muscle tissue for food after running low on supplies, and jokingly names the result “me burgers.” It’s grim and funny, and I get why it didn’t make the cut, but it was one of those little details that stuck with me.
The scene that surprised me the most was Rocky talking about his mate. Knowing from the book that he’d been studying the Petrova line for 46 years, away from a mate he’d been with for 180 years, and then hearing him say that wasn’t long enough… that one hit. The movie doesn’t go into the full context of Eridian lifespans, but even without it, the scene works.
The other standout was the astrophage interception scene. The red color and the music made it genuinely stunning. Goosebumps.
Some of the cuts they made to speed things up actually made the pacing better than the book in spots. And while I would’ve loved to see the piano scene from the ending (where Grace uses a piano to teach the Eridian kids so he can communicate with them), the ending they went with still worked.