what happened to the nights

for starters, i do want to clarify that i am specifically talking about the film, rather than the novel (though i will be referencing the novel a few times). i am also specifically talking about subtext/coding here, and not explicit mentions of queerness/aroace identity within the film’s text. i do not expect ryan gosling, phil lord, chris miller, drew goddard, or anyone else involved in the film’s creation to outright confirm via word of god that there was intent to present PHM as an aroace story. it’s 2026; large corporations aren’t even pretending to care about queer people by using rainbow logos for pride month anymore - i think the people who worked on the movie (which is distributed by amazon, the final boss of big evil corporations) know that saying PHM is a film with intentional queer elements would significantly limit the film’s reach. which, of course, does suck, but that is the political and cultural moment we’re in so that’s how i’m approaching this.

however! i DO think it’s notable to observe that many of the film’s creative staff have experience with past queer subtext/storytelling. PHM’s directors, phil lord and chris miller, were writers and producers on spider-man: across the spider-verse, which codes gwen stacy as trans. PHM’s screenplay was written by drew goddard, who was a writer on buffy the vampire slayer (an extremely notable installment in queer media) and who wrote an official buffy comic in which buffy herself sleeps with a woman. and those are just the folks at the top - many similar instances could likely be found throughout the hundreds of people who contributed to the PHM film!

i obviously do not know if lord, miller, and goddard specifically made the decisions which have imbued the PHM film with aroace subtext, but i think it is reasonable to assume that either they, or some of their creative collaborators, know enough about queer people and queer storytelling to have guided decisions which were made to intentionally present the PHM movie as an aroace story.

now for the decisions themselves!

first off, the movie’s color palette! this has been pointed out ad nauseam, by myself and other folks, but so, so much of the lighting, set design, and wardrobing of the PHM movie uses shades of orange, yellow, and blue, which are the stripes of the aroace pride flag.

some notable examples of this color palette include:

this promotional image of ryan gosling as ryland grace in the hail mary’s cockpit!

the scene where grace first sees the blip-a!

grace’s striped socks!

this one specific lens flare, which contains the actual stripes of the aroace flag in order!

as an additional highlight, in some behind the scenes material, you can see that a portion of the hail mary setpiece has been painted with 4/5 of the stripes of the aroace flag in order. this specific wall isn’t shown directly in the film (as far as i’ve been able to find), and i assume that its primary purpose was to assist with the orange, yellow, and blue lighting - but it is very cool to see!

and finally, here and here are some of my favorite gifsets posted on here by other tumblr users which highlight this color palette. i truly can’t capture how orange/yellow/blue this film is with screenshots alone; once you notice how prevalent those colors are, they are impossible to ignore.

obviously, colors have meaning and storytelling functionality in film outside of their use in pride flags, but given the sheer frequency with which these colors appear in the film, and the story told by the film itself, it is absolutely not outside of the realm of possibility that the aroace flag’s color scheme was specifically considered during the filmmaking process. as is well-said in that gwen stacy trans subtext article linked above:

In a sequence where she talks to her father about her secret identity, a moment where she’s afraid and anxious, the room she’s in melts away into those pinks, blues, and whites. Perhaps it’s all a coincidence, but these artists — the same ones who deliberately put the “protect trans kids” flag in Gwen’s room — are aware of the symbolism of these colors.

i believe this is exactly what is happening in the PHM movie, too. an artist (or multiple artists, who plausibly have historically used lighting/set design to support queer subtext/coding) involved in production realized that the story being told is one which would resonate with the aroace community, and chose/advocated for color choices which support that interpretation.

now, as for the story itself!

to briefly talk about the novel for a bit, i do want to highlight the ways in which book!grace interacts with the topics of sex and romance. because the novel is told in first-person from grace’s point of view, we as readers have access to his internal monologue in a way we don’t have in the movie. even with this access, however, there is no moment in which grace expresses attraction towards another person or desire for a romantic and/or sexual relationship. instead, he feels:

baseline curiosity towards his romantic situation, while he is amnesiac and trying to determine how he has such a love for kids. notably, there is no clarification of his sexual orientation OR any preference expressed for a given outcome. i don’t get the sense that grace cares about his romantic situation all that much; i get the sense that he cares about his kids.

no sentimentality about the sole past romantic relationship he mentions:

discomfort while in a conversation about his colleagues’ sex life, even while that conversation is being held for the purpose of professional disclosure:

shock, when his colleagues assume that he has been sleeping with stratt, due to the two of them spending a lot of time together on the project and being in close proximity more often than not:

obliviousness that one of his colleagues might be into him/find him charming:

and total conviction that the astronauts chosen for the hail mary crew won’t jeopardize the mission by hooking up:

i do not know if there was any intent to code grace as aroace while writing the novel. perhaps andy weir has stated his thoughts on the matter somewhere or perhaps he hasn’t - i truly don’t know, but i also don’t think that it matters, when it comes to identifying intentional subtext in the film! i’ve included the specific passages from the novel above to show that book!grace has no strong drive/desire for sex/romance. therefore, i do not think that it is outside the realm of possibility for a screenwriter/artist/creative - especially one who has worked on queer media in the past - to read the novel, see that grace shares traits with aroace people, and to make changes in adaptation which specifically highlight the ways in which PHM and grace’s story reject amatonormativity.

now, back to the film, and onto the changes themselves!

broadly speaking, the film follows the same convention that the novel uses, where flashbacks to moments in grace’s life on earth are included sporadically as he regains his memories while in space. however, it shuffles around the order and presentation of certain events/plot points to create thematic parallels and structure specific scenes in ways which add aroace subtext.

my favorite example of this is in the “grace go home” scene. in the film, rocky decides to sacrifice six years of life on erid so that grace can return to earth. this happens after rocky and grace have talked about rocky’s mate adrian, so they (and the audience) both know that rocky has a mate and grace doesn’t. this is a reinterpretation of the sequence of events presented in the novel, where rocky 1) has so much extra fuel that giving grace what he needs does not impact rocky’s journey home at all, 2) only brings up adrian afterwards, and 3) never finds out that grace is single. in both versions of the story, this is a sweet gesture of friendship - but in the film, it is also rocky choosing to NOT prioritize a romantic relationship over his friend. this subverts the hierarchy created by amatonormativity, where romantic partnerships are considered the most important type of relationship. it is also presented as a good thing, since rocky’s choice here gives grace the tools to save him in the end! thus, the movie’s presentation of this moment affirms that the prioritization of non-romantic relationships will benefit everyone.

another example is the scene(s) in which stratt tells grace that he will be a part of the hail mary’s crew. both versions of the scene serve two purposes: they establish that 1) grace is too afraid to join the hail mary crew willingly, and 2) that there is a rift in understanding between him and stratt. in the novel, the rift in understanding between grace and stratt is shown by having her state that he is a teacher because of his cowardice, not because he genuinely loves teaching. however, in the film, this rift in understanding is shown when she delivers the legendary “you have no immediate family; you don’t even have a dog” line - grace has not shown a desire to have a dog even once in the movie, yet stratt brings it up here as though it is something he does/should want. by focusing the breakdown of grace and stratt’s friendship on grace’s lack of romantic relationship, the film calls attention to the fact that grace is Different the way many aroace people are Different. and the film goes a step further as well - while book!stratt believes that grace’s lack of romantic relationship is a consequence of his cowardice, movie!stratt implies that because grace does not have one, there is nothing in his life that he cares about enough for him to want to stay on earth. the film shows us here that because grace does not have the “right” type of relationship and his life does not follow amatonormativity, the people around him cannot understand how he finds fulfillment in that life. that is, unsurprisingly, very resonant with many aroace people!

furthermore, the way the film juxtaposes the grace-rocky and grace-stratt friendships, via the thematic throughline of “you just need to find someone to be brave for” and small moments (grace calls both mysterious, asks both for time to “think about it” when presented with the option to leave the planet he’s currently on), highlights the fact that grace’s most important/defining relationship is a friendship, not a romance. while grace and stratt are not presented romantically in the PHM film, that film still exists within a canon of hollywood films in which many attractive male leads are paired off with attractive female leads, simply because they are attractive and standing next to each other on screen. within that context, it is reasonable to assume that the PHM filmmakers were very aware that a large portion of their audience would interpret grace and stratt’s relationship as romantic, no matter their intentions. additionally, it is notable that the “someone to be brave for” line was delivered by yáo, who has already been shown, by this point in the film, to have a wife and child (presumably, they are the people HE is brave for). thus, when grace finds “the one”, “the right person” who he needs to be brave for in rocky instead of stratt, it is not only a great moment of friendship, but also an intentional subversion of expectations which have been set by other films/media. in explicitly pulling the story’s “you just need to find someone to be brave for” throughline to the forefront as an in-text motif, the film once again highlights how grace’s story also subverts amatonormativity.

this juxtaposition is shown most explicitly, in my opinion, when the film contrasts grace and rocky’s trip to tau ceti-e with the party on stratt’s vat, in side-by-side scenes. in the present, grace and rocky are shown having fun together, singing karaoke, and talking about both adrian and grace’s lack of a mate. in the past, however, grace says the line “it is such a weird party. yao is singing, everyone’s so happy, people are hooking up… and they all know they’re gonna die.” the first element of note here is that grace and rocky’s conversation about mates - the first explicit mention of romance in the film - happens immediately before the cut to the flashback where grace and stratt are at their closest. if the audience is going to assume that grace and stratt’s relationship is romantic, they are going to do it now! the second element of note is that grace has just been shown singing, having fun, and being happy with rocky, despite knowing that he is going to die. this calls attention to both 1) grace finding fulfillment in his relationship with rocky that he does not find in his relationship with stratt, and 2) that grace is able to find that fulfillment even without “hooking up” or a “mate.” structurally, the movie is showing its hand in who that “someone” grace is brave for will be - and by emphasizing that it is his friend rocky rather than any potential romantic partner, it is yet again emphasizing how his story rejects amatonormativity, and how he is content without romance or sex.

… and there are probably many other examples which can be pointed to as well! these are just my personal favorite ways in which the movie has chosen to add additional aroace subtext to grace, and to call attention to that subtext to a degree which, imo, outright codes him as aroace, while adapting the novel.