In the book, it was a specific side effect of the drug he was dosed with because he refused to go willingly. The drug would allow him to gain his memories chronologically so he would be unaware that he was an unwilling participant until long after he woke up. The theory was that by the time he realized, he’d be too deep into the mission to consider abandoning it.
It was kind of both things in the book. The computer wouldn’t let him leave the coma compartment until he could remember & say his own name, presumably that would apply to any crew member, so they were expecting some confusion/memory loss when they all woke up.
Did they mention the drug in the movie? I don’t remember.
He was shown as being drugged in the movie but they didn’t cover the intended effects of the drug.
My wife and I saw it yesterday. We liked it quite a bit but it was longer than it needed to be. The movie is 156 minutes long. They could’ve told the story adequately and nicely in 120-130 minutes.
I did not read the book but this video food a comparison between book and movie. Some of that was helpful, even for not having read it.
➜ `https://youtu.be/O_8eYFUCKXI\` ■
Is that the F word in that URL? It sure is…
The one issue is had with both the book and the film is the idea that the Eridians would have no understanding of either relativity or radiation. Given that they have strong mathematical intuition, relativity should have been straightforward. And radioactivity exists on every planet, and if they build devices to detect light, there is no reason they’d limit it to our visible spectrum - they’d detect all of it, including high energy particles.
Still, makes for good literary narrative I suppose.
They might have known about radiation, but didn’t realize that they’d encounter it in space. Remember, they’re very new to astronomy (due, in part, to not being able to detect any of it until they invented light sensors).
The test screening was 225 minutes!
It’s funny, I was thinking it could have used 5-10 minutes more to more adequately explain a few things, like the breeding of the nitrogen-adapted astrophage, and slow a few things down that went by very quickly. On the other hand, space for that could possibly have been achieved by some other small cuts, like the overly long karaoke scene (which I liked, but was too long).
I think the final edit is pretty solid. It moves well, reminded me of the first Pirates of the Caribbean, which is also really long and was excellently edited.
When adapting from a book that’s always a problem. There are YouTubes out there that explain the differences between the two. I saw one I thought was quite good and it answered some questions I had, but since I did not read the book that’s just a guess on my part.
I thought it dragged a little at times, and my wife did too.
That’s wild!
But anyway, overall we both enjoyed it quite a bit.
I thought the karaoke scene was the highlight of the movie. You spend all this time with Stratt and think she is this naturally cold, unfeeling robot who has found her niche and relishes the cold, hard calculations and has no life outside of the specific mission parameters. Everyone around her treats her that way too.
You watch her sing and you watch everyone re-evaluate Stratt in a new light that you absorb as well. She has a rich life outside of work, she is doing this not because it’s her natural state, but because the cold hard logic of the world has forced it onto her. It reinforces the stakes and makes her subsequent betrayal of Grace more weighty.
I thought giving tha scene the room to breathe really allowed you to marinate in that moment and watch carefully the reactions of everyone else in the room and how they thought of Stratt differently before and after that song.
I don’t disagree with anything you write here, really, except I thought they milked it too much. I bet if you counted all the cuts to Ryan Gosling during that scene, it would amount to at least 10, maybe more, and each was basically the same. I think it would have been even more impactful with less of that.
It’s interesting that the karaoke scene was literally made up for the movie, and bears no relation to anything in the book. As far as I can tell, every other scene in the movie is based on something from the book, but this scene was added by the screenwriter solely to humanize Stratt. But humanizing Stratt is actually opposed to how Weir wrote her character - she never lets her hair down in any way, and is 100% dedicated to the task at all times. The closest she comes is having a private drink with Grace, and even that was business related, she had a huge decision to make and wanted Grace’s input.
I think the humanizing karaoke scene was just a way to make the shanghai scene more cold blooded.
Just saw it. I think that using his classroom to facilitate an info dump was a good move. Info dumps are much easier to do in print than on the screen, and they needed a way to condense things. The vlogs were also a good way to info-dump (a technique that was also used in The Martian).
In general, the book had a lot more of figuring things out, and the movie had a lot more of the coming to conclusions.
Yeah. I can enjoy books in the “Smart Man Save Earth” subgenre, but they don’t really move me in any way; and Project Hail Mary the book felt a big old box of Cracker Jacks, sweet and sticky and not really good but a lot of fun. My biggest complaint was the abysmal characterization, especially Stratt’s character, which didn’t deviate from Stone Cold Bitch in any way. The actress who played her in the movie did some brilliant work in making her interesting and compelling, and that karaoke scene was beautiful. It really shored up the novel’s weaknesses for me.
If anyone is interested, it turns out that a few years ago, Andy Weir posted a technical document to Reddit which he wrote about how Eridian biology works and the environment they evolved in on 40 Eridani A b (which it turns out is a planet that actually exists and most of the document is based on the factual things we know about it and their logical implications for how life would evolve there). He considers it canon to both the book and movie and provided it to the movie’s writers for details on how to depict Rocky, and it’s an interesting look at the details of how they function that the movie didn’t have time to go into. A bit dry at times, but very detailed.
An interesting read, both the doc and the reddit. Thanks.
The planet he based it on doesn’t actually exist. Astronomers thought they saw a planet, reasoned through what it might be like and Andy used that as a basis for the Eridian’s planet. Turned out the planet was a solar flare.
I don’t know if this was by design as an Easter Egg but 40 Eridani was always supposed to be the location of Vulcan in Star Trek Fanon (something Fans all agreed was “fact” since way back in the 1970s but I don’t think ever confirmed by something on screen).