I hadn't read Project Hail Mary before I saw the movie, and I still haven't, but one of the very few criticisms I'm seeing of the adaptation is that they left out the explanation that Ryland Grace had been tested for and found positive for the 'Coma Gene', which allowed you a much higher chance at surviving a long-term medically induced coma.
The arguments are that leaving this out makes the comas seem less realistic, but more importantly that this is another way in which Grace is a Chosen One who is marked for death without his consent. His DNA has decided his fate, his autonomy is stripped again in ways that he cannot ever control.
I get this, but I have to disagree.
Watching the film blind, I had theories on why Grace was the sole survivor, beyond the narrative necessities and clear visual callbacks to things like 2001: A Space Odyssey and Alien.
"I don't know why they died," he tells Rocky, but then comes up with a strong (if heartbreaking) theory on why Rocky was the sole survivor on his own ship.
So, to me, without any knowledge of a gene, the story is this:
We watch Grace break down, in a state of extreme heightened physical and emotional turmoil, running for his life as he thinks "I want to live," he is tranquilized, and stabilized in a medically induced coma for three days before takeoff.
The others have spent months, as we saw, coping with their impending death. They've already all but accepted it subconsciously, cheerfully smiling and lying down on a medical table for a staff of doctors to hook up an IV as they drift away into Dreamland on the day of the launch.
Which of these do you think has a higher rating on the Glasgow Coma Scale? Your ratings on which in the first 24-36 hours absolutely impact how likely you are to regain function of any type or to die, gene or not.
Ryland Grace is told by Eva Stratt that he is the only choice to maybe save the world, and that this will absolutely kill him. This may or may not be true, and he definitely may not believe it, but he is the best choice to ensure the possibility of millions of people working for years to save billions of lives, whether they knew they were part of the project or not.
In this moment, perhaps more than any moment he's had in his life, he realizes he wants to live.
That he and the world are absolutely going to die, but he wants to cling to life by the skin of his teeth, to go down sobbing, kicking and screaming, raging against the injustice of it all, fading into unconsciousness as he fights the blackness and stares at the face of yet another friend who just tells him infuriating platitudes instead of stopping the horrifying thing being done to him.
He just wants to wake up again and live.
And that, that is a Hail Mary.
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