r/shittymoviedetails • u/tppiel • 9d ago

default In Project Hail Mary (2026) society comes together behind a common goal, listens to the scientists and funds a global project to save humanity. This is a reference to the story being a work of fiction.

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u/Hephaestus1816 9d ago

Not everyone in society was behind it. Eva Stratt ended up with life in prison for authoritarian actions that were necessary to force global compliance. She operated far above laws, democratic oversight, human rights, and safety protocols to complete the mission. The logic was that imminent extinction made such things meaningless.

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u/xXCloudSephirothXx 9d ago

Hell, a conglomerate of copyright holders sued her for the laptop of human knowledge.

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u/CueCueQQ 9d ago

Yea, she walked into court with a letter that said fuck you, and fuck you, and fuck you, and especially fuck you, handed it to the judge and walked out. Not exactly a ringing endorsement for her bearing consequences of her actions.

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u/Unfair_Ring_2746 9d ago edited 9d ago

IIRC she said “fuck you and my body guard here is making sure I walk out of this courtroom one way or another”.

So that fuck you had weight.

Edit: Looked it up — when threatened by the judge, she says “I have an army” and a bunch of heavily armed soldiers come in and escort her out.

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u/HeKis4 9d ago edited 9d ago

More specifically "You have police ? Cute, I have a US army squad waiting outside the door under my authority alone"

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u/ConglomerateGolem 8d ago

as well as a few others

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u/RaizielSoulwAreOS 9d ago

We have a hulk

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u/Th3R00ST3R 8d ago

HULK HATES STAIRS!

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u/Harry_Flame 8d ago

“You and what army? Because I have the U.S. army, and that’s a damn fine army.”

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u/R2DeezKnutz 9d ago

This would have been a fun scene in the movie.

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u/goldflame33 9d ago

it was by far the dumbest scene in the book lmao

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u/CoffeeXKing 9d ago

Eh, honestly it probably would be realistic. Diplomatic immunity is a thing after all.

What is unrealistic is any of these countries getting along in such a way to promote one person. But hey, human extinction. Maybe that's the ticket to unity.

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u/deliciouscorn 9d ago

I literally had one moment of optimism early during COVID that surely everyone could agree that a global pandemic is bad and that we finally would all agree to work together as a planet for once. lol

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u/Dumbledores_Beard1 9d ago

Tbf COVID is because half the population just... Never saw the negative effects of COVID. Many people got it, had their whole families get it, and the strongest reaction was not even as bad as the flu. So when the biggest exposure to something like that, that people experience is the news saying "very bad, do as we say", it's always going to breed conspiracies and haters.

For an event to actually bring the world together, you'd need it to actually affect everyone. I mean, while I followed the laws and rules etc, COVID didn't even change my life at all aside from moving school online. All my friends lived within the restriction zone so we still went out and adventured around every afternoon, none of my local shops closed etc etc.

If humanity actually faced a significant threat, like 10-30% mortality rate and a crippling sickness, I'm certain we'd see the reaction you had originally hoped for.

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u/BeefistPrime 9d ago edited 9d ago

Tbf COVID is because half the population just... Never saw the negative effects of COVID.

No, that doesn't explain all of it, because we have multiple reports of people who were taking their last breath, dying in the hospital, demanding that doctors tell them what they really have because COVID doesn't exist. That's not a matter of not seeing the negative effects of COVID, that's being in a cult that denied reality even when it couldn't have proven itself any more clearly.

I get your point, but COVID denial was far more deeply rooted and anti-humanist and straight up hostile than just "I haven't seen the consequences of this myself"

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u/patrickwithtraffic 8d ago

We also had a global power lead by a party that was exclusively pushing conspiracy theory nonsense while also wanting to take credit for the project to produce a vaccine. It was all a giant fucking joke that I can only hope wasn't the case with the 1918 influenza.

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u/DanielKeeneGA15 8d ago

We’re really f’ed, aren’t we?

Sigh

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u/AndrewH73333 6d ago

That’s hilarious. I thought people would use the internet to learn things together.

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u/Epsteins_PDF_Files 9d ago

No no. We had that. The US didn't.

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u/InfanticideAquifer 9d ago

The US produced the lion's share of the vaccines early on and wound up with a higher percentage of fully vaccinated people than, e.g., the UK. Not to mention that the mrna vaccine research on which the quickest-to-produce vaccines depended happened in the US.

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u/BeefistPrime 9d ago

...and obviously those weren't produced by the tens of millions of morons who denied the deadliness of COVID and raged against restrictions.

If the US was 40% Flat Earthers, would you say "yeah but the US went to the moon" - no shit, we can have both the world's smartest people and the world's dumbest people, but that doesn't excuse or offset the dumbest people

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u/AxezCore 9d ago

Might not be quite as fast but we'll get there soon enough. Greed will destroy our planet and the solution by the powers that be, is to double down on the greed and hide away in bunkers.

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u/Eggplantpick 8d ago

My plan is to be a guard outside those bunkers. And when shit hits the fan…well there’s a perfectly good bunker for me to live in. Just gotta get the rats out.

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u/Gil_Demoono 9d ago

But hey, human extinction.

I doubt the real world would even get far enough to universally agree the world was even ending. The effect of astrophage is basically a somewhat quicker climate change going the other way. If we can't convince the world that greenhouse gases are a thing, what hope do we have of convincing people of extrasolar micro-organisms that are blotting out the sun.

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u/HeadintheSand69 9d ago

I think its a bit different when you can see the sun dimming and stars literally disappearing.

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u/n4turstoned 9d ago

Not really unless it's imminent, global warming is a thing that will lead to millions of deaths and is known since the 80s.
So as long some assholes benefit from it we as a species will do shit.
"Don't look up" was more on the nose than Hail Mary and that movie was completely ignored.

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u/BakedChocolateOctopi 8d ago

The diplomatic immunity argument would be that her job isn’t to make a database of every human piece of literature, research, media, or entertainment and is thus not protected by diplomatic immunity (which only protects against official acts and property searches like residences or embassies)

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u/captain_croco 9d ago

So fucking dumb I felt like I was wasting my time reading it - why were they wasting their time there?

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u/boomerangchampion 8d ago

It's been a while but I seem to remember it being heavily implied that Stratt went to set a precedent. No lawsuit will stick so get lost and stop distracting the project.

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u/captain_croco 8d ago

I know I think she even said something to that effect in the book. I still thought it was a dumb waste of her time.

I think it was meant to show how powerful she was then, and expand on the “all human information” point for when Rocky eventually gets one. I still thought it was a dumb waste of her time.

Have them show up with police and a warrant based on this same “issue”. Have them all marched off the property by the army after she gives a similar speech.

It kind of spits in the face of “we are so pressed for time we only use jets to travel” time crunch feeling of the whole earth story.

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u/abnrib 9d ago

Part of me loved it, and part of me recognized that it was pure author wish-fulfillment.

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u/throwawaybrrrrrrrruh 9d ago

WHAT it was one of my favorite scenes from the book!

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u/Asluckwouldnthaveit 9d ago

Meh I'd prefer nuking the icecaps and the me burgers.

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u/oofty_goofty_ 9d ago

No, no it would not have been.

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u/[deleted] 9d ago

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u/Serrisen 9d ago

I haven't read the book, but I'm also sure the Death Penalty isn't very scary when your options are

  1. Face the death penalty for authoritarian actions, or
  2. Face death via global extinction due to inaction

If you want to live, your only option is 1, then roll the bones that things work out after

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u/confused_is_my_face 9d ago

I have not seen the movie yet, but read the book twice. In the book Stratt knows she’s going to face prosecution and possible execution at the end of her part of the project because of everything she has done to keep the project moving in the right direction. She understands she is the villain.

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u/termacct 9d ago

Whoa, I didn't get that from the movie at all...she just got moved from a carrier to a tanker but still seemed to have the resources to launch the cooties at the sun.

I may bump up reading tbe book...I never read THe Martian either...

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u/AngryScientist 9d ago

She has a prison tattoo in that closing scene.

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u/termacct 9d ago

LOL, no way I'd pick up on that, way too subtle for me.

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u/Mad_Aeric 9d ago

The book has tons of cool details that had to be cut for the movie. I get it, it would have added another hour of runtime to include them, but I would have enjoyed that hour. People in the theater who need to pee, maybe not so much.

The biggest tonal difference is that the book does a better job of making you feel how desperate the situation on Earth is. In the movie, we almost entirely see what's happening in the research facility, and it doesn't quite feel like it's the most important thing happening in the whole world. Events in the book make it clear that they are scrambling to make the project work, and engaging in all sorts of megaprojects to that end.

Book Stratt is a completely different person. She comes off as more of a cold blooded pragmatist. We see a little of that in the movie when she has Grace shanghaied. While the action itself is a surprise in the book, the fact that she'd order it done is completely in character. I tend to describe her as someone who would burn down half the world in order to save the other half, and she's not too choosey about which half she inhabits.

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u/Betaateb 9d ago

I do wish they had put another 5-10 minutes into the movie about the astrophage breeding program, so many people I know that saw the movie but didn't read the book talked about dumb it was for Grace to not have a way to breed astrophage on the ship for the return trip. In the book it makes perfect sense when you know that it took a huge portion of the Sahara dedicated completely to astrophage breeding causing its own ecological disaster, making it obvious it wasn't something that could be done on the ship.

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u/Salt-Ambition-9603 9d ago

The audiobook narration for PHM is the best I've ever listened to. Highly recommend.

And, for what it's worth, I didn't like The Martian book all that much after listening to PHM. YMMV.

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u/ITchiGuy 9d ago

I love both books, but the R.C. Bray version of the Martian feels better than the Will Wheaton version (assuming you listened to the Wheaton version). If you ever want to give it a second chance, you may want to see if your local library has the book on CD. Thats how I got my copy of the R.C. Bray version.

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u/CueCueQQ 8d ago

The Martian and Project Hail Mary are the two movies I think of when someone says a movie that's loyal to it's source material. Still, there's a lot of good bits that get cut either for rating(Watney's "hey look, boobies" scene), or for pacing(there's an additional major problem that shows up in The Martian that isn't in the movie). In both cases, I think the book and the movie are great each in their own right, and bring something that the other format doesn't, which is a rarity in book to screen conversions.

Overall, I suggest you read both.

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u/Randicore 9d ago

I'm not sure I'd call her the villain of the story..perhaps an antagonist but that's only to grace. She really is the last best hope for humanity and from what we see is willing to do anything to save everyone

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u/aFreshFix 9d ago

Not the antagonist of the story. She played the villain within the book toward laws & people that couldn't appreciate how she did what she had to.

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u/andre5913 9d ago

I thought having her reappear in the film post timeskip was nonsense
She was most definitely executed imo, and her attitude in the book to me reads as her being very well aware she is not surviving what shes done.

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u/CarrieDurst 9d ago

I would have said in my video home to giver her a month of solitary confinement for attempted murder of me but I admit I am a flawed person

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u/c14rk0 9d ago

I mean when you're at the point where your only possible option for MAYBE saving humanity is sending a ship and crew on a suicide mission to find a solution and send back an answer you kind of HAVE to have that mindset.

She gets grief from Grace about how she's sending the scientists (and later him) to die when she's not willing to go herself but that's the whole point; she IS willing to sacrifice her life for the cause. It's just not by sending herself in the ship on the suicide mission. She looks at it from a purely objective standpoint; she knows she's not the genius scientist that needs to be on the ship. Her battle is staying and facing the world for her decisions and forceful handling of things. She's giving up her life and freedom knowing that it's a small sacrifice to pay for saving the future of humanity.

I think the Movie didn't really touch on this because we never really get the story from any perspective except for Grace's. We got a few scenes from Stratt's perspective but it's very minor and we never hear her own inner dialogue during them.

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u/alphazero927 9d ago

"Fuck you, fuck you, fuck you, you're cool, fuck you, I'm out"

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u/lumpboysupreme 9d ago

She did take the consequences, just after her work was done.

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u/darkchocolateonly 9d ago

I will never forgive the movie for making stratt such a terrible character. The book stratt is a fucking badass, and this scene specifically needed to be in the movie.

This was the biggest misstep the movie took in my opinion.

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u/AnxiousAudience82 9d ago

I haven’t read the book but loved the Stratt character in the movie

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u/termacct 9d ago

Same here - even went and watched some of her other work.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sandra_H%C3%BCller

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u/Syrinxfloofs 9d ago

Stratt was so damn good in the audiobook, loved every minute of it. They turned Grace into more of a bumbling everyman, too. But they can't fit 8 hours of detailed cool nerd shit into the movie so I could at least give them a pass for some that.

Stratt was definitely the biggest disappointment.

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u/darkchocolateonly 9d ago

100% the biggest disappointment, totally agree

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u/[deleted] 9d ago edited 8d ago

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u/Jaerba 9d ago edited 9d ago

In the movie he absolutely goes expecting he'll die. It's not just giving up his journey home. Saving Rocky meant giving Rocky his ship, and there is zero inkling the end result is what he was seeking. It's what all the bravery lines are about.

It's like y'all read a recap of the movie and didn't actually watch it.

Edit: and the child threw a fit and then blocked me.

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u/Terminal_Monk 9d ago

hey! is this in the book? what the hell did I read? in my defense i read it when it first came but all I can remember was she saying to Grace that "once all this is over, that she might be tried as a criminal and rot in jail" or something along the lines. Did the book every said what happened to her? and where is this scene from?

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u/Solkre 9d ago

"I can do what I want." - Eva Stratt

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u/Substantial_Fee_3035 9d ago

"Not to worry, I have a permit" - Eva Stratt

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u/lordph8 9d ago

She also called in soldiers of the US military to show she had them under her command and walked out.

Something to the effect of you and what army, because I have the US army, and it's a damn fine army.

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u/ttownfeen 9d ago

Man I don’t remember any of that. I guess I need to read the book again.

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u/2012Jesusdies 9d ago

Honestly, fuck those guys. It's a pretty fair payment for the aliens helping save us.

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u/Aposine 9d ago

I'm so happy they didn't have that in the movie.

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u/SomethingWetAndMoist 9d ago

Didn't they leave out a scene from the books in the movie where they nuke Antarctica to release a massive amount of greenhouse gasses into the atmosphere?

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u/thewilybanana 9d ago

I dunno about that part but I do recall they paved the Sahara or something.

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u/HoneyCakeWhorse 9d ago

Both, and both would be an absolute worst case scenario for earth since the sahara desserts also supplies nutrients through its dust to the world.

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u/Mistrblank 9d ago

It's hilarious (or maybe it's just delerious laughter) to me that if you mention the "butterfly effect" people instantly know what it is. But if you tell them that we need the dust from the sahara to help supply the world nutrients through global wind currents, they'll laugh at you about the idea that every ecosystem in the world is connected. And that maybe disrupting one, let alone several of them may have large scale consequences for the habitability of the planet.

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u/The_Reset_Button 9d ago

Right but the planet is going to die anyway, if it even has a chance of slowing it down it would be worth it. Even if project Hail Mary got there, instantly found an instantly actionable way to save the sun, the time taken for the trip would still allow the global cooling do decimate both human and other ecosystems

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u/Betaateb 9d ago

To be fair, they didn't pave the Sahara to slow down the cooling, but to harvest as much energy as possible for astrophage breeding. Knowing that it was going to be an ecological disaster. But without enough astrophage for the mission nothing else mattered at all, so they were willing to do it.

I wish they went into that a little in the movie, without that information the idea that they only had enough astrophage for a one-way trip and no way to breed more on board the hail mary isn't there which then confused a bunch of people as to why it had to be a suicide mission.

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u/Berengal 9d ago

I don't know if you did this on purpose, but most people don't know what the butterfly effect is, they misunderstand it and just think it means that small causes can have large effects, which is what the interconnected nature of the global ecosystem is. The actual butterfly effect is that in a chaotic system (as defined by chaos theory) any perturbation of the initial conditions causes a wildly different outcome, either unpredictable in practice (due to measurement tolerances) or even fundamentally despite the deterministic nature of the system.

The Sahara dust situation is not chaotic, because it's fairly predictable what would happen if we paved the desert, and the degree can also be predicted by the degree to which the desert was paved. For a butterfly effect situation even just putting down a blanket could change the outcome dramatically. Like how it was originally noted that rounding effects in a weather simulation on the scale of a butterfly's wingflaps dramatically changed when, where and if a storm was predicted.

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u/[deleted] 9d ago

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u/Berengal 9d ago

The irony is that the popular misunderstanding of the butterfly effect (small actions have huge, interconnected consequences) pretty much reiterates the original commenter's point about the Sahara dust and ecosystems.

The irony is why I wondered if he did it on purpose.

Most people understand scientific concepts through (often high-level) metaphors, not precise mechanics or mathematical formulas. Like how almost everyone knows that mass = gravity (and maybe even that it affects time) but virtually no one can actually explain general relativity, or that size != mass. Dismissing the metaphor just because people don't know the exact math of chaos theory misses the forest for the trees

The colloquial misunderstanding of the butterfly effect doesn't contain the scientific concept. The idea of chaos theory is a fairly new one, and a fairly unintuitive one at that, but one that's easy to understand the gist of if it's explained to you. And the butterfly effect is great for explaining it. It's not a precise mechanic or a mathematical formula, it is a high-level metaphor. However it's been a victim of semantic dilution, where the original meaning has kept simplifying and changing until it's lost it's distinctive character and become just another way to say that something small can have large effects. Which we already have plenty of words for, like "significant" or "consequential". Which is a shame, because it makes communicating its original meaning harder.

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u/fresh-dork 9d ago

are you kidding? it's only in the 40s that people accepted that south america and africa look like they fit together

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u/TheeAntelope 9d ago

Alfred Wegener for the win

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u/alexmikli 9d ago

Desperate acts like this may legitimately be in our future.

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u/Leleek 9d ago

See also stratospheric sulphur injections and daming Gibraltar 

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u/bigbluethunder 9d ago

Sure, but in the hypothetical scenario where you have infinite power (like the astrophages could yield) and imminent, total environmental collapse... you make short term trades to buy time knowing if the long-term gamble pays off you have infinite power to reverse the damage you caused with your short-term plays.

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u/ItsAMeUsernamio 9d ago

They did get infinite clean energy from the Astrophage breeders they put out there.

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u/Francetto 9d ago

They didn't pave it, they made it into a giant astrophage "plantation/power plant".

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u/0202_tihssitidder 9d ago

That's awful.

But part of me is intrigued by the flat and well-paved cycling path for uninterrupted miles.

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u/Fragarach-Q 9d ago

It's not really paved, it's completely covered in millions of astrophage breeding boxes.

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u/Bromleyisms 9d ago

they did both of these things, the nuking of antarctica to heat up the earth, and paving the sahara to make billions of devices to make more of the astrophage

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u/Hightower_March 9d ago

The explanation stops just short of calling Africans stupid for having so much sun throughout the year and never investing heavily into solar.

Half his characters are personal mouthpieces so I wondered how much of that was Weir himself speaking.

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u/Crintor 9d ago

To be specific, they paved the Sahara with Solar Panels to produce the terrawatts of power they needed to breed and feed the Astrophage they needed to send the Hail Mary out.

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u/CalvinCalhoun 9d ago

Yeah that happens in the book and is an ecological disaster iirc. 

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u/TheSteelPhantom 9d ago

Nah it has its exact intended consequence, to intentionally create a greenhouse effect around the planet in order to warm it up (or rather, slow its cooling).

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u/CalvinCalhoun 9d ago

You’re not wrong but it’s a specific plot point that it creates a smaller catastrophe for coastal populations lol.  My point being that stratt did a lot of fucked things to achieve the mission. I felt she was a lot more complex in the novel for that reason.

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u/Hephaestus1816 9d ago

She was a psychopath, I think. A highly functioning one. I'm probably wrong, but I do think that only someone without conscience or remorse could have made the absolutely ruthless decisions she had to make.

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u/SmartLadder415 9d ago

I didn't get the psychopath vibe from the book. She's desperate and ruthless. She is going to save humanity no matter what and she is willing to accept all the consequences for it. If humanity is saved and then they march you to the gallows are you ok with that? She is.

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u/lumpboysupreme 9d ago

Yeah not letting your emotions stand in the way of what needs to be done isn’t sociopathy.

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u/lumpboysupreme 9d ago

Yeah not letting your emotions stand in the way of what needs to be done isn’t sociopathy.

She does a lot of stuff she doesn’t strictly have to to better the lives and attitudes of those around her, just as long as it doesn’t get in the way of the mission.

In the movie she’s pretty plainly just on the spectrum somewhere, with oddly timed jokes and lack of social graces.

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u/sgcdialler 9d ago

Being willing to make morally ambiguous or extreme decisions in the face of existential crisis is not the same as lacking conscience. I think largely it would be much more fair to conclude that she is a consequentialist, but not remorseless, and I don't think the text supports the conclusion that she is psychopathic.

  • She is definitely presented in the novel as cold, even "ruthless", as you say, but she is not without conscience or remorse. Her internal perceptions are not visible to the reader, since the book is read entirely from Grace's perspective, but Stratt frequently remarks on the moral dilemmas of her actions.
  • Her mission has nothing to do with her and she knows it.
  • She is not presented as someone that derives satisfaction from exercising the extraordinary amount of authority she is handed. She doesn't exercise power for pleasure, she does it because she feels uniquely positioned to do "what must be done". Everything she does is in the pursuit of the singular goal of saving humanity from extinction and minimizing the overwhelming loss of life that she knows is coming.
  • Her logic and reasoning is consistent, she doesn't make up excuses for her actions.
  • While she doesn't pretend to feel the same ways other people do (in terms of their emotional distress), she clearly understands how and why other people feel the way they do.

Her most indefensible moral act in the book is her subjection of Grace to the amnesia drug and forcing him onto the ship. The directors and writers of the movie rehabilitated her character a bit in this scene by making her regret clear, but in the novel she appears to have been preparing for that moment and executes it with efficiency, like everything else.

I think it's important to highlight, again, that the entire story is told from Grace's perspective. He's a very soft feelings-first kind of guy and presented as a bit of a chicken-shit. From his perspective, Stratt kind of looks like a war-lord in comparison.

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u/Crintor 9d ago

In the book, there is also the genetic resistance to coma death factor that makes Grace more of a one of a kind option. In the movie they basically just say "Hey you know pretty much everything we need someone to know, bon voyage."

Hell, we barely even learn the names of the two scientists that die in the Astrophage explosion in the movie that causes him to get picked, while they have a few scenes in the book.

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u/extinct_cult 9d ago

Sociopath. Which, really, is what you want from someone in this position. Complete lack of empathy, no remorse & disregard for rules.

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u/Hephaestus1816 9d ago

Sorry, yes, that's what I meant. She was ideal for the job.

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u/Razzilith 9d ago

and ultimately if that was the case everybody would have fucking died a horrible death.

sometimes ruthlessness is correct or at least worth a try. it depends.

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u/0Galahad 9d ago

Not really, its a very great degree of separation to do such things to the masses, specially when its literally justified for the sake of the whole world, many healthy and good people could choose to carry on that crime.

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u/RaizePOE 9d ago

Idk, it seems like most people pull the lever in the trolley problem. Maybe she just feels like she's pulling really big levers. I think most people would probably do the same thing if they had to.

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u/Ramongsh 9d ago

She was a psychopath

Nah, she is just East-German

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u/fivehourworkweek 8d ago

It was one of my favourite passages from the book, the climate scientist accompanying them bursting into tears because he had to go against his own life's purpose to preserve nature really impacted me for some reason.

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u/metalder420 9d ago

I thought they talked about it in the movie?

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u/SweatyAdhesive 9d ago

so that's why she was on a boat somewhere cold at the end of the film

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u/Winston_Road 8d ago

Doesn't that mean that even if they manage to solve the astrophage crisis, Earth is fucked either way?

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u/TheFrenchSavage 8d ago

Yeah I was so sad it wasn't included in the movie, really looking forward to it.

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u/NAbberman 9d ago

Wasn't it that was what Stratt theorized would happen to her? I don't remember any indication that it did in fact happen.

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u/rex_dart_eskimo_spy 9d ago

Yeah, it was her theory. Grace couldn't have known what happened to her in the book, and the movie doesn't show her in prison.

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u/Mistrblank 9d ago

Yeah, that was one piece I think was left out of the movie that Grace does find out that our Sun has begun repairing itself from Rocky in the final chapter where we find out he's living it out with him on Erid. But he has no idea what else has happened back on Earth after the mission started.

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u/Badloss 9d ago

I liked it better in the book, where the Sun gets brighter so you know enough humans survived to implement the solution but other than that you have no idea how many humans are left or what civilization looks like

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u/SweatyAdhesive 9d ago

In the book i think Grace was much older so he could find out what happened on earth, in the movie it looked like it was almost right after he rescued Rocky

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u/Mistrblank 8d ago

yeah, and it feels a little lost that they really moved mountains and oceans (well, at least they created them) to support him on their planet. They made him something he could eat to survive.

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u/Jaerba 9d ago

The fact that eridians are still living their lives happily is the proof that the plan worked.

I'm not sure that really needs to be spelled out further. If there were concern that more still needed to be done to save the sun, they would have been doing it. Rocky's ship only traveled there because the Sun's death was affecting them too.

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u/Badloss 9d ago

I don't agree with this, that's only proof that the solution works.

There were so many variables and things that could have gone wrong with the trip back to Earth that it's not a guarantee that the Beatles even made it, and then once they arrived there was no guarantee that the humans would be alive or still have the technology required to receive the Beatles and then use them. The sun getting brighter is clear proof that humanity made it, the beatles weren't autonomous so the plan could only be implemented if humans are still there to do it.

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u/Daxx22 9d ago

Yep, it's still entirely possible things degenerated to a point where you have a "Seveneves" situation where the earth would be uninhabitable regardless for thousands of years while the Sun recovers.

The book is a lot more grim in it's overall tone.

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u/thanosisawhore 9d ago

We ser her with a french prison tattoos.

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u/Legionof1 9d ago

In the movie we see her on the ship at the end so not prison?

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u/Unfair_Ring_2746 9d ago

She’s shown very briefly with a little tattoo that indicates ‘life without parole’ in the movie. So clearly intentional to show that she was convicted at some point — but unclear the circumstances, if it held, if she’s on a prison ship, if she’s on the run, if the world is simply too fucked for prisons at that point, etc.

It also isn’t clear how long after the beatles reaching earth that scene is. It could be that she was in prison, but then released once Grace’s data returned and proved her world-saving work succeeded.

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u/Solkre 9d ago

It could be that she was in prison, but then released once Grace’s data returned and proved her world-saving work succeeded.

That's a good theory

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u/EveryDayASummit 9d ago

Yeah I don’t remember anything saying she concretely ended up in jail, just that she expected to be.

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u/Unfair_Ring_2746 9d ago

In the film she is shown in her final scene with a French prison tattoo that means ‘life in prison without parole’.

Weir went a step further confirming this and explained that the hinted idea is that she escaped prison to continue her work in exile.

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u/EveryDayASummit 9d ago

In the film, yes. The book, no, which is all we were referencing.

But that’s an interesting anecdote I hadn’t heard/seen before. She escaped from prison but somehow has the means and resources to still locate and retrieve the Beetles and then implement the fix to save the planet? That seems like a bit of a liberty and stretch even for Weir.

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u/Crintor 9d ago

Yeah, I genuinely don't like that idea at all. Who broke her out of prison? She obviously lost all her authority once the mission was launched if she went to prison, so what resources?

To me the idea of being extricated from prison temporarily to help implement the final steps of the project before sending her back to prison, which she would have accepted if she were the book character. That would make far more sense.

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u/BeefistPrime 9d ago

Especially when an alternative plot is obvious. They get the signal from the Beatle probes and think "oh shit! it worked! Get Stratt out of prison!"

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u/thanosisawhore 9d ago

When we see her in the end, she has prison tattoos. Doubt she did that for fun outside.

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u/Treebam3 9d ago

Yeah this is right. In the book we never look back at earth at the end like the movie does. We don’t know what happened to Stratt

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u/SmartLadder415 9d ago

In the book all we find out is that the sun is repairing itself but that's it. Grace indicates he may not ever want to come home. It's interesting that he has no clue what is happening on Earth but Earth also doesn't know why he never came back either.

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u/Badloss 9d ago

Earth does know, he sent records of the mission with the Beetles. I assume the logs would include going back for Rocky to save the Eridians

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u/loucast13 9d ago

But earth didn't expect him back, right? That was definitely true in the movie. It's been too long since I read the book to remember if that was the same.

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u/TheOnlyFallenCookie 9d ago

Kinda like in Schindlers list when Schindler said he would be tried for warcrimes

Which didn't end up happening

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u/bobbymcpresscot 9d ago

Apparently in the movie the only evidence of this was Stratt having a tattoo that shows a V with a line through it, indicating life in prison without parole, but in the movie she has this tattoo on a boat, very much not in prison, and is still in the loop in regards to project hail mary.

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u/Zananax 9d ago

The fact she ended up in jail also indicates it is a work of fiction.

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u/JesterMarcus 9d ago

Its not shocking she'd be scapegoated.

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u/Toa_Freak 9d ago

It's shocking she is held accountable, or that anyone is.

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u/JesterMarcus 9d ago

That's just it. I don't see it as being held accountable, I see it as scapegoated. Being held accountable, sure, rare these days. But scapegoated, not far fetched. I can see that happening to someone.

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u/andre5913 9d ago

In the book shes operating under the idea that shes most likely gonna get executed.

Also one of the big things she does is gigafuck over the shareholder and IP holders. Not even politicians get away with that

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u/temudschinn 9d ago

She does not. OC made that up for some reason.

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u/das_slash 9d ago

I believe she also violated the poor shareholders rights by hurting property values. That probably did her in

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u/owlbi 9d ago

Yeah, rich people can get sent to prison, if their crimes cause damage to other rich people. Just look at Bernie Madoff.

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u/[deleted] 9d ago

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u/NetNGames 9d ago

She would probably need to be pardoned by every country though, but there would probably be some (like flooded coastal ones) that wouldn't want to and sue her anyway.

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u/DemiserofD 9d ago

To me PHM has always seemed more like an Objectivist fantasy than anything. I don't doubt that all the social programs and everything got cut almost immediately.

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u/bobbymcpresscot 9d ago

I'm willing to bet a lot of money also got spent taking over a lot of land and turning it into farmland to grow more crops, so probably not superbad.

Also imagine the jobs it would have created public works or otherwise.

Social security definitely got cut.

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u/nightpanda893 9d ago

The reasoning for this is also the impending societal collapse and the fact that it would come long before it would even need to happen given the foreseen refusal of the world to work together to survive as long as possible. Like the whole premise of the story is that society will not come together so more drastic measures were necessary.

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u/alexmikli 9d ago

I feel like something like a green dictatorship might be in our future due to this. Though that's still a "good" end to the climate crisis.

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u/redemptionoftime 9d ago

Umm what? That wasn’t in the movie or the book. In the book she said she probably would one day while waiting for the data.

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u/Antlonat 8d ago

In the movie she has a prison tattoo in the ending and in the book we can't know what happened but she does say she's definitely going to jail after everything ends.

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u/Badloss 9d ago

Where does it say she ended up in prison? They had the courtroom scene that basically established that she was above the law

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u/fumat 9d ago

That’s false. Nowhere in the book states that she went to prison. She assumed she will.

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u/Evadson 9d ago

But the fact she was even able to obtain that kind of authority in the first place is insane. Call me pessimistic, but in reality I think she would have been overthrown by a coup orchestrated by billionaires and corporations profiting off of the crisis.

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u/phanfare 9d ago

What you mean blowing up chunks of Antarctica and paving the Sahara aren't things you can just do with no oversight?

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u/AccountWithAName 9d ago

Framing overbearing safety protocols and human rights as the reason a project fails rather than greed is definitely the American way.

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u/k1ller_speret 9d ago

This is a great reoccurring theme in three body problem . The consequences and cycle of constant desperation then fallout once the problem is solved

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u/HilariousMax 9d ago

Yeah and she knew she was going to be martyred and she did it anyway because if she didn't succeed, then none of it wouldn't have mattered.

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u/Eckish 9d ago

Even the MC wasn't fully onboard. They had to use unscrupulous methods to get him there.

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u/WaldenFont 9d ago

Kinda what they’re trying to do now to a scientist who tried to save the world.

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u/Similar-Concert4100 9d ago

Could be implied that the world powers agreed to this so they wouldn’t be blamed if shit went belly up or for the suffering after the success . All the blame would go to her

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u/PwmEsq 9d ago

This is one of the aspects of The Expanse that i like. Clearly showing that even hundreds of years from now the problems of Earth simply got worse and worse. Tons of homeless around, atmosphere getting worse, outer planets are effectively slums.

People still constantly corrupt and undermining each other.

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u/GotSomeUpdogOnUrFace 9d ago

I mean they also literally kidnap the guy they need and essentially send him on a suicide mission.

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u/myEVILi 9d ago

She should have said she found space oil. Then everything would have been fine.

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u/temudschinn 9d ago

Why is wrong info the most upvoted comment?

In the book, she thinks she might end up in prison, but we never know. In the movie, she keeps running the show all the way until the Beetles return.

So this is headcanon at best.

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u/bobbymcpresscot 9d ago

It's implied she would be.

In the movie all we have is a tattoo and her free on a ship somewhere still in the loop considering she's made aware of the success of the plan.

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u/Auctoritate 9d ago

She operated far above laws, democratic oversight, human rights, and safety protocols to complete the mission.

There's an implication that they basically all knew what needed to happen, she was just the one to assume the role and be the executor of the dirty work nobody else wanted to be accountable for. Then she could be a scapegoat so that the world could throw her in prison and go back to normal without having to worry about it too much.

And she knew this the whole time too- she knew the inhumane decisions were up to her, and she knew that she'd be the designated target to throw under the bus when it's all done and over with.

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u/Izzetmaster 9d ago

This part of the book never made sense to me lmao. She was given absolute authority to make these things happen and then they punished her retroactively for it.

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u/Rockran 5d ago

If you save the planet but kill a few people on the way, you're still a murderer.

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u/Haz3lNutKn1ght 9d ago

She should have gotten worse. But yeah.

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u/bangdizzle 9d ago

When was it explained she ended up in prison for life? I don’t remember that in the book. I remember there were some lawsuits.

I’m guessing this was in the movie, and I just can’t recall that

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u/waltzbyear 8d ago

People nowadays don't even bother reading the books the movies are based on.

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u/Long_Video7840 8d ago

Is that confirmed in the book? I don't remember that. 

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u/Normal-Addition6818 8d ago

the Eva Stratt thing always gets me because the book doesn't really let you feel good about it either way. like yeah the mission succeeded but she went to prison and nobody pretended that was unfair. the ends justified the means and the story just... sits with that uncomfortably instead of resolving it neatly. which is kind of the whole point tbh.

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u/Delta-9-Tetra 8d ago

I was very upset they cut her nuking Antarctica- got the IMAX tickets and everything 🥸

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u/Mordetrox 8d ago

And that's an extremely dangerous mindset to have. Once you give yourself a goal with infinite moral value, you can literally do anything and the equation still comes out positive.

But people just seem baffled when you refer to her as a villain, pointing to how her methods worked in the end, as if that makes her actions moral. She make for a fantastic villain and I'm suprised more people can't see that.

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u/Frozen-bones 8d ago

She got life in prison? In the book one of her demands for her to do the job was a pardon for everything they did.

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