Rastl Says Stuff

he's terrified, yet his instinct to trust is stronger than his instinct to survive. he's afraid, and he knows he could possibly suffocate to death in that moment, but something in that early meeting calls him on a deeper level to connect with rocky. to trust him with his literal life.

as grace contemplates removing the helmet, the camera cuts back to rocky - who intentionally leans forwardly slowly and clicking cautiously, anxious to see if this kind human is going to trust him the way he does.

cut back to grace and he removes the helmet on blind faith. he exhales overwhelming sighs of relief; the music swells and resolves; rocky chirps and jumps for joy; grace softly smiles, and so does damn near anyone in the audience. the moment is potent and raw. it assures the characters and the audience alike: you can count on me. you are not alone. we can figure this out if we stay curious about each other.

the scene then ends on a wide shot of their two ships bound together, spinning in synchronized centrifugal gravity, over beautiful resolving chords of melody and harmony. it shows us a powerful visual of the birth of their unbreakable physical and emotional bond. dependability and loyalty is built and earned, but these two could actually trust each other with their lives from the very start.

It's a bit jarring to me that Grace wouldn't go back to the lab and get equipment to measure the atmosphere in the tunnel. It's. Right. There. And it's safe. And any engineer would understand using caution in this situation. Then again he did sniff the first canister he received so there's that.

The book has the initial tunnel being pressurized by the Hail Mary and Grace leaving it that way when he's sent back to his ship. That gives Rocky a visible chance to analyze the atmosphere to duplicate it.

Here I am, trying to go to sleep, and Colt decides to have a late night conversation with Grace.

"The fun thing for us for that end sequence was his costume -- what he would have left over from the ship. I don't really think you see it in the film but the trousers that he's wearing, they're cut from one of the flight suits. And we've done a belt buckle that's made of xenonite that Rocky would've made for him. And all of the sewing on it is a little bit - it's nowhere near as good as Jenny would normally do, so we had to purposely ask Jenny to do bad sewing at the top of his trousers, so it'd look like he would've done it.

And then our brilliant breakdown department, run by Tim Shanahan, they break everything down to look like it's 10, 20 years old. So his cardigan and the t-shirt's all faded. And even on the laces -- the laces in his chuck taylors -- because your laces always break after a certain period of time, so we found stuff that was on the ship, like elastics and stuff. There's a nice big close-up actually in the film, so you can see that they're not normal laces, they're like stuff that he would've got from the ship that he's made as make-shift laces."