Rod and Karen review the sci-fi buddy film “Project Hail Mary.” They also discuss movie trailers and a ton of listener comments about recent reviews.
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SMR 588: Project Hail Mary
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As a linguist, I enjoyed the fact that they actually dealt with the language issue. It was overall a really good movie and had a decent balance between the science and the emotions.
A bit long, a tad too cute first-act & then like a completed equation, it just comes together in Acts 2 & 3 with Ryland & Rocky’s relationship being at the center of it all. Never read the book but the film adaptation had some great teachers to marry all of its parts together. Almost saw it a second time, too. Really good picture.
If composer Daniel Pemberton’s not nominated for best score, we’re going to have a problem, for sure. Score itself’s phenomenal.
Glad y’all enjoyed Project Hail Mary! I agree that the movie struck a nice balance between telling a compelling story and not getting too bogged down in the science details. I listened to the audio book first when it came out a few years ago, and if you want all the science details, they’re in there. It’s very similar to Andy Weir’s other book that got turned into a movie, The Martian.
The amnesia plot point was explained in more detail in the book. It was not just a side effect of the suspended animation for the space trip. When they sedate him for the space mission, they specifically give him a drug that would impair his memory when he wakes up to prevent Grace from sabotaging the mission out of anger when they reach Tau Ceti. I don’t know if such a temporary amnesia drug actually exists, but that was the explanation.
For the purposes of the story I think it works because it gives Grace time to process several different traumas at different points in the story. If he had all his memories when he woke up he’d have been dealing with all those emotions of anger and shame along with the fear and grief of being all alone since his two other crewmates were dead.
The book also goes into more detail of how Grace and Rocky learned to communicate and how different their technology is. Rocky’s people are more advanced in some things but not in others. I’d definitely recommend the book for folks who are interested in getting all the science and are not bored by it.
I think we mostly agree on the Super Mario Galaxy movie – my comment was not meant to be a criticism of your review at all. I would have loved for them to have done a better job and developed Fox as a character, but I never expected it. Rosalina (you said Daisy in your response to me but I think you meant Rosalina) is central to the Super Mario Galaxy game so she should be a major character in the movie (and even she got pretty reduced screen time). Even Donkey Kong is Mario-adjacent since they’ve been in lots of games together so having him be in the first movie wasn’t out of place. But I do agree Yoshi deserved more development too.
A Starfox cameo in a Mario movie was completely out of left field so I didn’t expect them to develop Fox at all, especially given how thin the character development was for everyone in the movie. But I understand your point and that’s definitely a valid criticism (which I share) of the movie. And I think Nintendo’s primary concern is pushing the games first – I’d be very surprised if there’s a Starfox movie in the works, but I’d put money on a new Starfox game coming in the next 2 years. It reminds me of Hasbro’s thinking with Transformers The Movie back in the 80’s. The movie was a vehicle to introduce and sell new toys so they didn’t think twice about killing off the old toys, despite Optimus Prime being every kid’s favorite character. They had no thoughts about the emotional impact killing Optimus Prime would have on kids watching the movie, they were just clearing the decks for Ultra Magnus and Rodimus Prime. Similarly here, Nintendo doesn’t care about developing Fox McCloud as a character, they just want to remind Nintendo gamers that they still have plans for him, and are priming the pump for the eventual Switch 2 game.