This wasn't a movie I particularly wanted to see even though it's right in my wheelhouse, realistic Sci-fi. However, after Project Hail Mary did so well in theatres it became a movie I wanted to check out once it reached streaming. In this case I watched it on Amazon Prime Video.
It wasn't really on my radar because, on the surface, it's not anything I haven't seen before, even quite recently. Lone astronaut goes on some kind of mission, mission fails, astronaut tries to salvage the mission and somehow finds a way home.
However, in my opinion, what makes this film different is in the detail. There are a lot of often seen tropes here presented in new ways, that may capture your imagination.
The movie opens with science teacher, Ryland Grace (Ryan Gosling), waking up from deep sleep on a spaceship, far from Earth, with no memory of why he is there. Presumably a side effect of basically being put in storage while the spaceship travels across vast distances.
From there he must work out his mission is and whether he can even complete it due to some very significant set backs. Along the way he learns the Earth's sun is dying, and he meets an alien friend who may be his best chance at saving our sun.
Obviously with the presence of aliens and alien tech 'realistic sci-fi' is a bit of a stretch but, from the Earth side of things, the movie is trying to present a realistic version of space and space travel, even if some Earth tech doesn't exist (to my knowledge we haven't perfected 'gravity' for space craft yet, for example), and maybe some of the time frames are drastically compressed.
That aside, Ryan's performance is incredibly engaging through out, with half the story told through flashbacks and the other half in the present moving forward. We get to see the full backstory of how a high school teacher came to be in space, and it's every bit as interesting as the story to save the sun.
While you may have seen the broad strokes before, this movie is well worth seeing for the detail. I would say it is, for sure, one of the best movies in its genre, not just covering all the technical hardship but showcasing emotional relationships and hope too. Also the alien is something of a new take on what an alien might be as well.
Even if you've seen one too many astronaut stranded in space movies, don't skip this one. It's really well done.
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