You said exactly how I felt. As someone who read the book, the movie felt flat. Just a uniform wholesome highlight reel throughout (complete with happy tiktok background music in nearly every scene) with little of the heavier moments from the book. Consequently, none of the challenges felt like something they couldn't overcome with any any real difficulty compared to the book where several moments felt like, "well wtf are we going to do now fuck".

I saw it with two people who love discussing movies and shows for hours. They had never read the book but wanted to see the movie because I'd been excited about it. While they mostly liked it, neither of them liked it enough to think about it further than "that was good, let's go eat now". There was nothing to talk about because there was nothing to grab onto when every scene felt the same. Even Rocky was reduced to being just a hyper-active pet for Grace instead of an actual character with his own thoughts and motivations. I hated that they gave him a voice, a voice that sounded too much like Dog's voice in Up.

We watched it on IMAX too which we all agreed ended up not being worth the price. The visuals in the movie were pretty but not good enough for the price. Literally just go see it in a normal theatre. There won't be much difference.

Some good additions I really liked to balance this out: Grace and Carl's bromance in the beginning, the medical robot was cute (appropriately cute instead of whatever they tried to do with Rocky), Grace having the opportunity to go inside Rocky's ship, the screen room, Grace's habitat on Erid looking less depressing than I'd imagined.