Morbid Mysteries Of The Missing Millennium™️

The millisecond Simon believes for sure that he's going to die, his eyes go straight down to his Eden pendant. Not to the side; not to the monster; not to the burning hull.

The pendant.

Simon's last thought, what Simon believed would be his last thought, was

of home.

They could never make me hate you…

The sound she makes kills me for some reason

everyone gets onto eva stratt for the "think about it long time" vs. "you have three hours" thing but

operating on book canon a little bit: if grace couldn't do it-- if he said no*-- the alternative was to scramble and fly in the next most qualified volunteer, who had 0 training, 0 knowledge of astrophage, and was not an astronaut. three hours could have been three hours of training for that replacement. three hours could have been three hours of preparation for grace, if he said yes

eva stratt gave grace three hours. not to decide, necessarily, because the decision was going to be made the way it was no matter what. but three hours to come to terms with it, to grieve, to mentally prepare himself. three hours that could have been spent giving humanity a better chance to survive

she borrowed three hours that she didn't have to give grace space to process. to get himself together and come to her, teary-eyed but resolved, and say yes.

And this is the moment that determined Rocky's fate.

Nothing out of the ordinary, right?

Okay, fine—I feel a little awkward about this

graces earth amigurumi/stress ball, good luck quilt, and fox cardigan which is a slightly altered version of an actual vintage mary maxim knitting pattern! it gives grace this very strong visual tie to humanity by having him seen in/with items that are so distinctly human created, even in space or on erid. it also serves as a nice little love letter to fibre crafts at the same time to see them kept and treasured to the end of the film

rockys little finger knitting instruments for his xenonite! in the book they are just two liquids that get mixed together (part a and part b) but this little knitting-esque contraption is such a nice detail to add, and it ties in with graces handcrafted items as a similarity across the species that is recognisable, kind of like mirrors of each other!

i love a fox motif i love a fox motif i love a fox motif

the first meeting on ship where this room full of people are staring at grace and the hangar doors are open behind them, it gives this really eerie feeling of being stared at which is made worse by grace standing in front of the projector screen. i dont think the doors are open in the book.

grace opening the crew members belongings and Seeing them as people through the photos before sending them out to space. in the book he doesnt open them until later and there arent many details about what is in the photos so it feels more emotional when he sends them out (and he sends them out together and not one then the other!)

carl. he adds a lot to the earth sequences (especially a lot of fun!), and the “you know who you are” is just. yeah. hes a small introduction when a lot of characters from the book are lost in the movie, but hes impactful and i love him.

james ortiz kind of in general. im glad they went with puppetry as much as they could because it looks beautiful and i love puppetry. i know they chose to go with having rocky have a tts kind of setup to avoid having subtitles throughout most of the movie, but james adds a lot vocally to the character! kind of boggles my mind that he was doing like 45 min long improvs SO in character WHILST puppeteering when he wasnt even meant to be the voice of rocky and was just line reading for ryan. im glad they didnt have someone else do the voice acting. of course also his appearance as the news anchor at the very beginning and the tts option they go with being called “James” are also super nice

grace and rocky and the shared pain of picking a tts voice that works also MERYL STREEP

the costuming storytelling. obviously it wasnt really in the book because its much more of a visual medium but the colder and colder clothes progressively on earth, stratt closed off in her turtleneck and grace in the squeaky yellow raincoat thats so jarring when she tells him shes putting him in the hail mary against his will, the stupid science shirts, and the fibre arts pieces all add so much.

the inclusion of the projector/led screens and the beach motif

the video logs! its a good way to tackle graces internal monologue (kind of like how carl is in the early earth days), but it gives grace a feeling of being able to say goodbye to earth above being able to send the taumoeba. i wish in the book that grace had told earth that he was choosing to turn back and save rocky/erid even though he would starve shortly after, as it would have asserted to earth that he wasnt a coward

speaking of, the removal of the coward talk that both stratt and grace do when grace doesnt want to go. book stratt doesnt actually believe that grace is truly a coward otherwise she wouldnt have sent him. she knows that when he wakes up and doesnt know who he is, he will still be grace and he will do everything that is needed to help. the film was probably going to lose the nuance of this bit where they had to compress everything so im glad they removed it. i like the addition of grace running and being tackled instead

kind of along the same line, rocky not having shame about eating in front of grace!

entirely for visual purposes, having grace be able to see the petrova line whilst hes in it because its beautiful and i love beautiful shots in movies okay

also the big window on the hail mary. solves like two chapters worth of grace working out hes in space by dropping random objects and looks cool whilst doing it

armando. dont know why we needed an additional robot on board but i cant imagine not having him now.