actually here are some additions to the project hail mary movie that were not in the book that i very much enjoyed:
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.
grace putting up tethers so he can get around more easily in 0g, and taking them down and attaching them all together to get to rockys ship to rescue him after he turns around. the tethers are put up early and make him feel like hes way out of his depth because hes not trained enough in 0g. he takes them down because hes now comfortable in 0g (and in a way “at peace” with space and not being able to go back to earth/return to normal) and uses them to effectively seal his fate of dying on erid after saving rocky. i didnt necessarily see the need to add the tethers when i first saw them at the beginning of the film but the shots of all of them in the airlock joined together to make the line long enough was such a good shot and i like the metaphor of not holding onto what comforts him (the tethers being up in the hail mary, his life on earth teaching middle school) to chose something for himself (and others!!) even though he will die (him deciding to turn back to save rocky and erid, him NOT being able to decide to go on the hail mary to save earth). objectively this was probably also just to explain why grace had so many tethers but. it works.
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