Video Wednesdays: Project Hail Mary, Good but...

I’m usually the one who tells my friend, Deb, not to compare the movie with the book it’s based on or previous versions of the story… I also tend to shy away from trailers because they too often either give away too much or get the tone of the movie wrong. And if I’m already interested in the film, then why skew my expectations with the trailer? But then I accidentally heard Justin Chang’s review on Fresh Air and I was a bit concerned how they were going to tell this Andy Weir story.

I have loved Weir’s stories since first reading the Martian, because he tells a very nerdy story, doesn’t dumb down the science and uses science and humor to get the hero through impossible situations. The final speech in the Martian sums it up where Watney explains to a classroom of astronaut candidates that you do the math and work on the first problem and then the next and if you do enough of them you get to come home. The Martian had one stranded astronaut on Mars trying to survive long enough to make it to the rescue mission. Project Hail Mary explodes level of the crisis to a lone astronaut light-years from earth trying to figure out how to defeat some space organisms that are consuming earth’s sun and threatening the extinction of all life on earth. Oh yeah, and when he wakes up from space hibernation he’s suffering from temporary amnesia and doesn’t know who he is or why he’s in space. So, it’s one dude in space who has to save the whole world.

How do you tell this story of a guy waking up in space with virtually no memory of who he is or why he’s out there? If I’d never read the book, the movie does a good job unraveling this mystery. But I have to agree with Justin Chang’s review that things feel a bit rushed with prat-falls and disjointed montage clips, when maybe a little more time could have been spent letting Grace, the amnesiac astronaut, work with the ship’s AI as he slowly wakes up. I appreciate that the filmmakers don’t resort to Hollywood tropes of astronauts going crazy because “space.” And I get that they have a hell of a lot of land to cover, discovering what’s “eating the sun” and a mysterious world-wide organization pulling the resources together to send a team of astronauts out to figure out why this sun-eating plague isn’t effecting Tau Ceti, etc., etc. But except for the opening scene with the kids in the classroom asking what’s happening to our sun and Grace’s reluctance to talk about it, we don’t know why he’s reluctant to talk about it and then next thing we know he’s in some special facility poking the space organisms to see what makes them tick.

I know it’s not important, but some of the science is dealt with in a “hand-wavy” function and not enough time is spent explaining what Grace just figured out, to the point where the mysterious head of the government project, Director Stratt, has to gesture to the other dignitaries and scientists in the room and on the camera feeds to clap at the accomplishment(s). Again, someone coming to the movie without having read the book probably won’t notice any of these concerns… except that I kind of wonder what’s lost because the only characters I know the names of are the hero, Ryland Grace, his handler on earth, Officer Carl and the buddy he makes in space, Rocky. Maybe I need to watch this one again… it’s a good movie, but I’m feeling like it was a better book. Man, am I becoming one of those old foggies who are too attached to the book to not be able to appreciate this version of the story? Damn. What would Rocky say?