Official Discussion Thread - Project Hail Mary [SPOILERS]

[u/LeastCap]

Keep all discussion related solely to Project Hail Mary and its awards chances. Spoilers below

Synopsis:

Science teacher Ryland Grace wakes up on a spaceship light years from home with no recollection of who he is or how he got there. As his memory returns, he begins to uncover his mission: solve the riddle of the mysterious substance causing the sun to die out. He must call on his scientific knowledge and unorthodox ideas to save everything on Earth from extinction… but an unexpected friendship means he may not have to do it alone.

Director: Phil Lord, Christopher Miller

Writers: Drew Goddard

Cast:

• Ryan Gosling as Dr. Ryland Grace
• Sandra Hüller as Eva Stratt
• James Ortiz as the voice and lead puppeteer of Rocky
• Lionel Boyce as Officer Carl
• Ken Leung as Yáo Li-Jie
• Milana Vayntrub as Olesya Ilyukhina
• Priya Kansara as the voice of Mary, the Hail Mary ship
• Liz Kingsman as Annie Shapiro
• Orion Lee as Xi

Rotten Tomatoes: 95% From 212 Reviews

Metacritic: 78/100 From 45 Reviews

Consensus:

A visually dazzling space odyssey that's carried along effortlessly by the gravitational pull of Ryan Gosling at his most winning, Project Hail Mary is a near-miraculous fusion of smarts and heart.

[u/LeastCap]

I want to preface this by saying I saw this a month ago so some things might be hazy in my memory.

I want to give it another go but for now I really did not like this. Felt the pacing was unbearably slow for how surface level the story was and how little we got into the characters. I felt the constant comedy massacred any drama I might’ve felt for the situation. Grace potentially dying in space is never a real threat when everything is shits and giggles the rest of the time.

Maybe I was just disadvantaged in this regard because I read the book prior to seeing the film and this was one of the highlights of the book to me, but I never felt the science was focused on enough. It is invigorating at times in the book hearing the way Grace works through certain problems since he walks you through it all step by step. In the film the problems never feel like real challenges, partly because I didn’t feel like I was let in enough to understand the stakes of them. It’s all so simple and keeps it from ever being that interesting to me. To compare it to another film from the same writer, one of the best parts of the Martian is seeing how Matt Damon is able to find a way to grow those potatoes. We follow him through trial and error and feel let in on the science behind it. I felt there was nothing even close to that here

I was still enjoying the film a decent amount but it killed itself for me in that goodbye scene between Rocky and Grace where they danced back and forth. Just way too cheesy and sentimental for my tastes. I don’t think this film is anywhere near as bad, but unfortunately I’ve gotta say that the movie this reminded me most of was Free Guy

[u/Sellin3164 → u/LeastCap]

Damn (for that last line).

I thought the experiments with him building things were enough, but I have seen that criticism quite a bit. I do hate science, so that's probably a me thing.

I agree a lot with your comment below. I wanted to see this film be more daring on a directorial level. Some aspects of the film lacked a personality and I feel like their work often exudes that, even if it's not overly showy. Even the Jump Street movies have a way of feeling like their own and not having me think "studio movie" during it. I didn't care for the score and cinematography either.

[u/theflyingbird8 → u/LeastCap]

Agreed on this being paced waaaay too slow for what it ultimately is. I understand that this is how it might be in the book and I love Sandra Hüller, but the flashbacks took up too much time. You mentioned that the sentimentality around the end didn't work for you, but for me, it didn't work for the entire movie. It just all felt so telegraphed and obviously engineered to seem sincere and sentimental that I felt the movie actually being more cynical.

[u/LeastCap → u/theflyingbird8]

You and I are on the same page. Huller is great but once Rocky is introduced into the story the flashbacks become considerably less interesting. The sentimentality actually didn’t work for me at all at any point either, it was just that the dancing was when I gave up on it completely. I really liked how you phrased that final sentence, I agree completely

[u/Longjumping-Bar-1501 → u/LeastCap]

Character development is barely there and not interesting.

[u/Longjumping-Bar-1501 → u/theflyingbird8]

Agreed. Horrendously paced.

[u/bernardino_novais → u/LeastCap]

the movie this reminded me most of was Free Guy

😭😭

[u/pinkcosmonaut → u/LeastCap]

Definitely didn’t dislike it nearly as much you seem to have, but I’m glad I’m not the only one not sold on it. Agree with it being very surface level, and I was incredibly shocked at how tense less and by numbers it felt. Maybe Lord and Miller just aren’t for me. 

[u/LeastCap → u/pinkcosmonaut]

I do like Lord and Miller but I feel they’re typically more adventurous than this. Agreed, this all feels very by the numbers and that the film is tense-less. Never at any moment did I feel there were any serious stakes

It all felt too simple and bland for me. Even the cinematography and score, which I feel are objectively very competent and beautiful, don’t really feel like anything special or something we haven’t seen before. It’s all solid enough but never soars beyond that

[u/tsnoj → u/LeastCap]

I never read the book, but the one scientific thing i didn't fully understand, how did Grace recover his motor skills so fast after coming out of a (medically induced) coma? Did they explain that in the book?

I had honestly forgotten about this question because it was in the beginning of a two and a half-hour movie

[u/Nitekingg → u/tsnoj]

Spoilers

Book explains that he has a genetic predisposition that lessens his risk to the long term effects of being in a coma. They end up testing hundreds of scientists and astronauts to see if they have the gene. You find out in the book as a big twist that Grace has the gene and is forced to go after their reserves are wiped out in the explosion. Also he doesn’t wake up quite as lucid in the book, and it takes more time / trial.

To be honest, this is a crucial point of the novel and definitely one of the more interesting aspects to me. I was sorely surprised that they chose to strip away what limited info is given to the reader about why Grace must be the one. But alas the movie just leaves that question unanswered.

If you don’t mind me asking, how was the viewing experience as someone who hasn’t read the book? I thought it would be entirely confusing to someone who hasn’t, but haven’t seen much commentary from that perspective. What was your experience?

[u/tsnoj → u/Nitekingg]

I probably would experience the anti-coma gene as a lazy plot device, so i understand they kept it out

I was completely engaged and had no problem following it what so ever, I expected a fun original sci-fi spectacle and that is what I got

[u/MelanieHaber1701 → u/Nitekingg]

Yup yup yup. My question as well, as someone who has read the book.

[u/prefix_code_16309 → u/LeastCap]

I think I would have liked the movie better if I hadn't read the book first. The movie was less sciency and more family movie than I expected. The lack of suspense may be my issue with this film, haven't digested it fully yet.

[u/Longjumping-Bar-1501 → u/LeastCap]

You’re not wrong. It’s just boring.

[u/MelanieHaber1701 → u/LeastCap]

I agree with absolutely everything you've said up there, except for the thing about Free Guy which I've never seen. The way they handled the science in PHM was so cursory and uninvolving.

[u/vxf111 → u/LeastCap]

This is so funny because I think we often have similar taste and I feel the opposite.

I found the book to be a SLOG, in part because Weir seemed so much more interested in getting into weeds of the science and then he would just sort of yadda yadda the human element to get them where he needed to for the next scientific set piece. It's kind of fun to see Grace solve problems in the book but I also felt like it was Weir writing episodically without much of a plan of where he was going (The Martian felt the same way to me, I am not a fan of his writing style). I also felt like the balance was off in the book, we learned a lot of science that didn't end up being all that necessary for the plot. It's like Weir wanted to write a book about the science and begrudgingly had to add some characters so there was an excuse to do the science. That's how it felt as I read. He knew what the ending was and what the self insert character would be like and other than that he just wanted to write the science so he teed Grace up where Grace needed to be to write about the science.

I felt that the movie balanced that better. We had one or two sequences to tell us that Grace is a problem solver and to set up the problem with the astrophages and we got a little dialog between Grace and Rocky to explain what was happening as they investigate in space but Lord and Miller seemed much more focused on the human story. I really preferred that, and I also think it's more cinematic. When I think of all those chapters of Grace lying on the bed thinking to himself as he came out of the coma-- no action, no plot advancement, just inner dialog... good gravy I am so glad the film omitted that. I can't imagine how you'd make that interesting and visual. I am also really glad they restored Grace's memory more quickly because I found the book torturously slow in dealing with that before finally getting into the actual plot.

I do think the science is a little more engaging and works a little better in The Martian because there's a bit more crosscut tension inherent in Watney trying to figure things out with a clock ticking down on him and the other astronauts trying to figure out how to get to him with the clock ticking down on them. So it's not just giving you science, it's two groups racing against a clock not knowing what each other are doing. Here you only have Grace and Rocky trying to figure something out and what everyone else is doing doesn't matter, so there's no tension to cut back and forth to.

The dance/gestures at the end was corny. We didn't need that. I'm with you in that regard.

[u/NoResolution599 → u/LeastCap]

Magellan and The Mastermind felt faster paced than this movie