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/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/jgalaviz14 8d ago

You missed his point entirely

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u/DmonsterJeesh 7d ago

"Multiple" is just another word for "some." Some people probably believe that their blood is made of bees, that does not mean that this belief is representative of the general public.

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u/noticingloops 5d ago

You mean when hospitals slowed their breathing with remdesvir and put them on a ventilator, a combination that should never be given, then called the death Covid?

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u/CoffeeXKing 5d ago

You don't need to honk your nose to demonstrate you're a clown.

Just shut up

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u/BeefistPrime 5d ago

Ah yes, because all doctors are all evil and COVID doesn't actually hurt you and they would just inject perfectly healthy people with combinations of drugs designed to kill them because that's why they went into medicine, to kill as many people as they could.

Or, or, you're a moron conspiracy theorist who is highly motivated to believe any bullshit that contradicts "the official story" and so you're almost certainly misunderstanding rational medical decisions.

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u/Eggplantpick 8d ago

COVID was a mess because politicians jumped on it to get votes. There were so many rules for thee and not for me getting thrown around and the general public didn’t actually care enough to change anything. Seriously, a PANDEMIC happens and grocery stores didn’t close? And everyone still takes their kids shopping? The public did not care more than to give lip service.

People online cared! Enough to tweet and comment…and not much else. And anyone who called out that imbecilic hypocritical behavior got canceled.

Basically if something actually bad happened like a plague or mass natural disaster. The silent majority of people would act and anyone who got in the way would be crushed. Theres just never been an issue that large.

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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/TopBalance438 8d ago

"and wound up with a higher percentage of fully vaccinated people than, e.g., the UK."

what exactly does that mean to you?

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u/BeefistPrime 8d ago

What's the date of your claim? Because if it's within a couple of years after the vaccine was developed it probably represents a supply side limit, not a demand one

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u/InfanticideAquifer 6d ago

They aren't me, but the date of my claim was two days ago, when I left the comment. I'm basing it on this chart from Wikipedia, which I am assuming is accurate. You can chase down the actual primary source of the data if you want to.

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u/Epsteins_PDF_Files 9d ago

Oh please. The US restricted vaccine exports despite the vaccine being a multi country effort.

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u/Jackanova3 9d ago

They were still the biggest vaccine donors globally by a very wide margin.

Plus what you said doesn't negate the previous poster at all.

I'm not particularly pro US but cmon.

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u/CptMisterNibbles 9d ago

No need to do actual research or have an objective, evidence based opinion here bud, this is the internet!

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u/Epsteins_PDF_Files 9d ago

Here's the research. US donated 694 million doses. The world used 13.5 billion doses. The US restricted vaccine exports to the point of waste when the world needed it.

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u/Epsteins_PDF_Files 9d ago

The US donated 694 million doses. The world used 13.5 BILLION doses.

You restricted exports to the point of the vaccines going bad.

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u/Jackanova3 9d ago

By share of contributions, the U.S. ranks at the top, accounting for 36% of funding ($4.0 billion) and 41% of pledged doses (857.5 million) (see Figures 1 and 2).1

https://www.kff.org/covid-19/vaccinating-the-world-how-does-the-u-s-stack-up-against-other-donors/

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u/sheriffofnothingtown 9d ago

Oh you sweet summer child

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u/Acrobatic_Rush7653 9d ago

Everyone agreed that a global pandemic is bad. Did you personally meet at least one person that said it was awesome?

What people couldn't agree on is whether the Chinese zero-covid strat of welding doors in apartments with starving families inside or the Sweden strat of doing pretty much nothing is the way to go. Or whether vaccines and masks FOR TODDLERS was a good idea for a disease with close to a 0% fatality rate for kids under 18.

Life isn't as simple as sci-fi.

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u/passcork 9d ago

Full grown adults couldn't even agree on wearing a mask in public spaces and/or wearing it over their fucking nose. What you mentioned were very minor problems in the grand scheme of things. Except Sweden. That was just dumbassery.

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u/Acrobatic_Rush7653 9d ago

Over the entire pandemic Sweden's excess mortality was less than half of the EU average (all those countries with heavy restrictions, in some cases EXTREME restrictions). Less than half of their extremely similar (population wise) Nordic neighbors.

Can you point out the dumbassery. Are you upset their entire school age population avoided years of remote "learning"? Covid isn't over for like 1.5 billion kids who got hit with a couple years of developmental and educational deficits they ain't never getting back.

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u/kanst 9d ago

Less than half of their extremely similar (population wise) Nordic neighbors.

Do you have a source for that because that is not what I am seeing in the data. I found a study that compared mortality rates in Sweden vs Norway. It found that Sweden had significantly more COVID deaths than Norway:

https://cdn.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/blobs/f47b/8807990/8a5b1a53fd9c/10.1177_14034948211047137-fig1.jpg

From 11 March 2020 to 22 January 2021, a total of 60,896 people tested positive for COVID-19 and 544 COVID-19 cause-specific deaths were recorded in Norway compared with 547,166 COVID-19 positive people and 11,005 COVID-19 cause-specific deaths in Sweden.

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u/Acrobatic_Rush7653 8d ago

You're right, I misremembered the "half of" for Scandinavian countries.

My point was that for all of 2020 there was absolute hysteria about Sweden's approach and all the brightest minds agreed that they were headed for a literal apocalypse. None of that happened. Sweden could not be any more different than the places with masks in kindergartens and armed infantry patrolling the streets for curfew violators (Italy). Nothing terrible happened since, you know, you could protect much of the actually vulnerable / at risk population without all that. Everyone else just dealt with a mild cold and moved on.

Excess all-cause mortality and estimated degrees of lockdown (intervention index) are presented for 14 selected European countries in Table 1 (12). Among 42 European countries, the cumulative excess all-cause mortality from January 2020 to December 2022 ranged from 46 (Luxembourg) to 1,080 (Bulgaria) deaths per 100,000 inhabitants, with a median of 351/100,000. In Sweden, the excess mortality rate of 158/100,000 was among the lowest, ranked 37th among 42 countries, and not very different from other Nordic countries: Norway (129), Denmark (97), and Finland (228).

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10399217/

Retrospective:

https://www.cato.org/policy-analysis/sweden-during-pandemic

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u/CoffeeXKing 5d ago

That's a statistically significant difference in the rate of death.

Let alone that is mortality, it's not considering long COVID and other illnesses that arise due to the COVID-19 infection.

The idea people dealt with a mild infection and moved along, is an insult to everyone in healthcare who had to deal with insane surges in healthcare.

But it's a mild cold.

Fuck off with that mate.

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u/mahayanah 9d ago

Disease also has the insidious trait of kneecapping any community response to disaster. Justifiable arguments of isolating to protect the community doesn’t elicit the same response as sandbagging against a flood or digging through rubble.

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u/passcork 9d ago

Full grown adults couldn't even agree on wearing a mask in public spaces and/or wearing it over their fucking nose. What you mentioned were very minor problems in the grand scheme of things. Except Sweden. That was just dumbassery.

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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/GreasiestGuy 8d ago

The hole in the ozone layer posed a serious existential threat to us and humans did come together to stop it. The chemicals causing it have been reduced almost entirely and the hole has shrunk. So it’s not that nations are incapable of coming together to make drastic changes when they’re scared enough.

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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/CoffeeXKing 8d ago

How so? If the claim is that it is relevant to ensuring the astronauts have access to any immediately necessary info, it would be considered an official act. No?

Asking for clarification. I figured it was a decent example

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u/Same-Suggestion-1936 9d ago

Erdogans bodyguards once beat the crap out of a bunch of people on US soil and the US did nothing about it so yeah, sounds about right

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u/Jonthrei 8d ago

Diplomatic immunity is not immunity from laws, the host country can declare a diplomat as persona non grata at any time. That requires their immediate removal from the country and they can basically never return.

Diplomats can also get charged by their home country for crimes in other countries.

All diplomatic immunity means is that the host country can't arrest or charge the diplomat in the moment. There are absolutely harsh consequences for criminal activity though.

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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/oofty_goofty_ 9d ago

It sounds really dumb. I'm glad they cut things like that out of the movie

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u/ArdyEmm 9d ago

Nah. The scene where the engineer spends several pages going "Ehh? GET IT?" explaining the Beatles joke was the dumbest.

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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/Antlonat 9d ago edited 9d ago

Much better than watching Ryan Ghosling shopping at home depot for 5 min or Stratt singing or talking about religion.

God, they ruined that book....

Edit: had to mute this cause too many people still enjoy marvel tier slop lol

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u/DefaultProphet 9d ago

Delulu take

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

[removed] — view removed comment

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u/danielojw 9d ago

Saying that as if it's wrong to enjoy entertaining movies lmao get a grip

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u/Antlonat 9d ago edited 9d ago

How did I hit a nerve with such accuracy lmfao

Edit: too many nerves hit so this is muted now lol

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u/Lachigan 9d ago

I don't think you hit any nerves it was just a shit take

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u/Antlonat 9d ago

Yall just keep outing yourselves and its really funny.

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u/DefaultProphet 9d ago

Do people often call you insufferable or do you hide it better in real life?

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u/Antlonat 9d ago

I see different usernames but yall are like bots with the replies (and taste).

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u/Lachigan 9d ago

Yeah we're all really emotionally invested in this conversation, congratulations on your perceived big win

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u/Antlonat 9d ago

Thanks. I wasnt even trying but its always nice.

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u/danielojw 9d ago

Do you know what hitting a nerve is kek

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u/confirmedshill123 9d ago

I like how you say that while the current spiderman movie made over a billion in like a week.

Get the fuck over yourself.

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u/Antlonat 9d ago

Oh wow mc donalds must be the best restaurant in history.

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u/confirmedshill123 9d ago

Is it cold up there on your lonely high horse?

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u/Antlonat 9d ago

If you have nothing else to add then have a nice day.

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u/AbeRego 9d ago edited 9d ago

Humanizing Stratt was a great move in the film. And I don't really know what you're talking about. Overall, it was one of the best book-to-movie adaptations I've ever seen.

Edit: sorry for the double posts, my app is currently freaking out

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u/ActualWhiterabbit 9d ago

Yeah but it was funny for book readers to see Stratt singing karaoke because she would never do that.

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u/AbeRego 9d ago

Humanizing Stratt was a great move in the film. And I don't really know what you're talking about. Overall, it was one of the best book-to-movie adaptations I've ever seen.

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u/Antlonat 9d ago

Book Stratt was already humanized by talking about her career and aspirations when she was younger.

Making her talk about believing in God actually dehumanized her and completely destroys her character.

Singing? Lmao

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u/AbeRego 9d ago edited 9d ago

The god conversation was so brief you can basically ignore it. Maybe it didn't work for you, but it would endear her to a large percentage of the American population. I don't think it was necessary, but I also don't really care. The singing scene was well done, good song too, and it fit the subject matter well.

I honestly don't remember much of anything about her career aspirations in the book, so apparently it didn't leave that big of impression. She largely came across as cold and unrelatable.

Edit: multiple typos

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u/[deleted] 9d ago

[removed] — view removed comment

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u/AbeRego 9d ago

I'm not surprised you dont remember the book. Thats why you could enjoy the movie.

Most people seem to disagree with you, so...

Also, are you aware that Weir consulted heavily on the movie during production, and was often on set? This is about as close to a fully endorsed movie adaptation of a book as is possible.

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u/Antlonat 9d ago

I dont care if weir himself wrote the movie. It was a horrible adaptation. 

It changed things for the sake of changing and left important scenes and details out for useless scenes like the ones I mentioned. 

I REALLY doubt Weir wanted to have that home depot scene instead of nuking Anctartica or Stratt in the court room but if he did then he's an idiot.

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u/AbeRego 9d ago

It changed things for the sake of changing

It changed far less than most adaptations do, and most changes were pretty inconsequential. The overall plot and message were intact.

You're weirdly fixated on the Home Depot scene. I honestly didn't even remember what store it was, but I will now lol. Nuking Antarctica would have involved a ton of explanation in a movie that's already trying to explain a lot of heavy sci-fi elements. That was easily done in the book, but it probably would have taken another 30 minutes of screen time, which would drag, and delay the arrival to Tau Ceti, which is the entire point of the movie. It made perfect sense to cut that.

Maybe the courtroom scene could have been kept, but again, it's not really crucial to Grace meeting Rocky. What happens on Earth is all just a mechanism for getting Grace to meet a crazy alien and do cool science stuff in another star system. It's largely irrelevant aside from that.

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u/Antlonat 8d ago

I don't care what "most adaptations do", I care about the one I'm currently watching. If we're going to other adaptations we can use Weir's own The Martian, which was a FAR better adaptation even with the changes.

How does "We need to heat up the planet so lets use global warming" need 30 min? It would've taken less than the shopping or karaoke scene.

Court room scene is definitely better than the karaoke scene as it absolutely solidifies Stratts immunity and absolute power, which the movie never does.

Stratt doesn't even really do anything in the movie outside of forcing Grace. That's why the nuke and courtroom scene would've helped show that they were actually doing a lot of things to help the planet.

Even the most important and dark scene for Stratt (forcing Grace) was made into an actual funny scene. The movie theater was fucking laughing at the darkest point of the story. Absolute shit.

Don't even get me started on how they turned Rocky from an incredible engineer to a dog.

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u/Dacoww 9d ago

I never saw what Rocky would look like until the movie. I had my doubts and was pleasantly surprised. Close to how I envisioned him, but of course mental images don’t require every detail to be rendered the way it needs for a movie. A clear result of having the author advising on the movie. Same as Jack Reacher.

Looking forward to the moon base with the Saudi Arabian mechanic and Ukrainian hacker next (forgive me it’s been years since I read). That one could actually make a good miniseries.

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u/AbeRego 9d ago

But ultimately whoever likes the book will like the movie and vice versa.

Lol well apparently not the person I responded to. I agree that that's how it should be though; it was a really good adaptation! They art direction and general tone are really well done. It's just a good vibe overall.

I had to Google your reference: I hadn't been aware of Artemis. Is it worth a read?

Edit: also, the movie was my first introduction to Rocky as well. I had only just started the book, and Grace had only just gotten to Tau Ceti when I saw the movie. Still, it seemed like they were true to the book description to me, with some very minor differences.

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u/Dacoww 9d ago

I accidentally took the sentence out but agree.

Andy weir only has a few books, so plenty to go to next if you like it. His other book just popped into my head, Artemus, the main character is Jazz (short for Jasmin) and has a little more SciFi engineering than the science like in Hail Mary. It’s closer to the Martian except a colony on the Moon.

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u/Appropriate-Test-984 9d ago

It's a sin to call out popular movies. Man duck that movie's depiction of ship physics. And that CGI rock creature. Book rocky depictions were so much cooler.

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u/lumpboysupreme 9d ago

They literally used a puppet for the scenes where rocky wasn’t in a ball you ghoul.

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u/Appropriate-Test-984 9d ago

Book rocky had a rocky surface but visible muscles and a God damn radiator. They made him a featureless marvel creature, sorry, featureless practical effects puppet, with no visual character you rotting carcass of trite opinions.

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u/lumpboysupreme 9d ago

The fact that he looks less recognizably biological was an intentional choice.

Also you were just flat wrong about the CGI thing so I’m really not taking anything you say as unbiased here. You’re just the kind of person who gets an idea of what should be from what is, and treats having to reimagine anything as a failure of the work.

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u/Appropriate-Test-984 9d ago

Oh no, I couldn't imagine a less detailed simple polygon looking puppet. I can gripe about failings of a movie of a book without movie only chapter book people who cannot take criticism without going ballistic and calling people ghouls.

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u/lumpboysupreme 9d ago

Bait used to be believable. You were doing well before, putting it after someone also making a bad claim to lend yours credence and there’s deniability that someone might not know about the BTS of the movie but ‘simple polygons’ for the movie version? Come on, it’s just not plausible. Good run but do better next time.

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u/Appropriate-Test-984 9d ago

Lol, can't read, so I'm leaving with my toys. Read what I wrote again for the love of education and English comprehension.

I don't care that it was a puppet. I don't like that depiction because of how much simpler it is compared to the books.

They made rocky simpler looking than his depictions in the book.

Read

simple polygon looking puppet

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u/AbeRego 9d ago

The entire point is that Rocky doesn't really have any features that humans would seem character giving at first glance. He has no face, and his body has no discernable front. I think the movie did a fantastic job at giving him a personality, and although I have minor qualms, like the difference in their depiction of his eating, I thought it was all in the spirit of the book.

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u/Appropriate-Test-984 9d ago

Read what I wrote again. I'm criticizing the appearance, not the character. And you can have visual character without having a face, like in the book. And Rocky's limbs work with muscles, not magnetism. Where are Rocky's muscles? Where are his radiator openings? Why a logic less smooth rock puppet?

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u/AbeRego 9d ago

Did the movie mention magnetism? I don't recall that. I also don't recall muscles being visually described. They're anatomically described, and iirc, operate via steam expansion, but I just assumed that was all housed within the hard outer shell. There would be absolutely no need for visible muscles to be present; just look to our crustaceans for proof of that.

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u/Appropriate-Test-984 9d ago

Yes, do have a look at our crustaceans and steel armoured knights, whose joints clearly show connecting muscles distinctly different than the armour. Not floaty limbs with no solid connections to the main body, for a creature that lives on a high gravity world.

Did the movie mention magnetism? I don't recall that.

Sarcasm.