Almost Hard SF! And just plain terrific! Forget the critics- Just Watch It!

Rating: 8/10 (25 March 2017)

After reading all the bad reviews before I thought this was gonna be crap so i was expecting zero going in. But from the very first moments this felt like true hard science fiction movie- the giant sleeper ship with the protective shield that preceded it felt like something straight out of Tau Zero or The Songs of Distant Earth, and everything that came after felt just plain Right. The events, decisions, mistakes and most of the physics felt plausible and realistic unlike any other SF movie I've seen of late.
The only things that bother me after rewatching this a few times (scientifically) is how the constant thrust ion drive along with the ship will need to be flipped around mid-way through the journey to go from acceleration to deceleration. AT the end the ship is shown close to the planet but still in the same nose-front attitude.
Also wouldn't the very slight iod drive thrust create a very slight gravity within the spinning section of the ship that is perpendicular to the centripetal gravity from the spin? But since its very very slight thrust it might be negligible.
The slingshot around a red giant at 50% light was probably tacked on cos it looked good. Not even sure you can do a slingshot at such velocity. And was it to increase speed even further or as a course correction or both? Not sure. And at such high speed that type gravitational encounter might have actually ripped the ship apart. And definitely would not be visible at all to anyone watching cos of its approach speeds. It would be over almost instantly. Plus the red giant will be blue shifted to appear a blue color in the approach phase? Anyway this is all trivial nitpicking. The producers never said that this was a scientifically accurate- but the accuracy far outweigh the BS.
The acting and story and all the decisions are just simply perfect for this type of endeavor. Never a moment did I think wow that was utterly stupid and unrealistic on his or her part. If I was stuck on a dead ship all alone and saw this beautiful woman I would definitely wrestle with myself whether to wake her or not. Who wants to die alone?
So all in all this IS perfect Science Fiction. To HEll with the critics. They've been soul-sucked by the crap that was Gravity and Interstellar and The Farce Awakens and the Star Trek reboots that they don't know a GOOD THING when they see it. Simple as that.
I just wished they had stretched out the ending a bit more and revealed that the couple had children and grandchildren and those kids would be waiting when the sleepers finally awoke.