Lixy

"Hey, Gen Z, we're gonna relabel vacations into something else now and tell you how you really should be wary of taking vacation because it might impact your financial future."

the idea that failure is an individual failing and not the oppressions of a broken system.

the martian is the story of one man stranded on mars with barely enough food and supplies to last him a calendar month, let alone the 14 that it inevitably takes to bring him home.

mark watney's rescue means millions of dollars in unplanned expenditures, cooperation between multiple nations that frankly have no stake in the life of one american astronaut, and risking the lives of 5 of his crew members. it is a story that makes you tackle the fundamental question of: "how much is one human life worth?"

the answer, the book (and its equally well-executed movie adaptation) offers, is everything.

they could have simply called it a day and told him that it was untenable, that they cannot possibly be asked to risk the lives of the rest of the ares iii crew. but they did not. they did not, because they deemed that no cost was too high if it meant that there was even a snowball's chance in hell that they could bring that one man home.

project hail mary, on the other hand, is a complete 180.

here, the fate of an entire planet's survival rests upon the shoulders of one rather unremarkable man. ryland grace is a middle school science teacher, whose only claim to fame is a controversial research paper. it is a story that forces you to confront the question: "how much do you personally owe humanity when its fate hangs in the balance?"

once again, the answer is everything.

ryland is not the brightest person on the planet, nor is he the bravest. he doesn't choose to be involved in saving earth, and he certainly doesn't choose to be sent on a suicide mission away from it. in project hail mary, one man has no choice but to shoulder this burden for the sake of humanity. and, it turns out, he's not the only one carrying this responsibility.

somehow, both books provide the same answer and message, only in somewhat different ways. they both serve to convey that life, no matter the scale, is worth preserving.

that when it comes to one man stranded 140 million miles away, no cost is too high, no risk too big, because his life matters. he matters. and he matters not just because he volunteered to go up there, or because it wasn't his fault, or because they know he's out there. he matters because he exists, and that is more than enough to do everything possible to bring him back.

or that no personal cost is too high to pay if you are the one person that can actually save humanity. the people may be faceless, nameless crowds to you, but their lives are worth saving simply because they exist. they exist, and that is plenty reason to doom yourself to certain death if it means that there is even a single chance in hell that you will save them. you don't have to be talented, or remarkable, or necessary to matter.

Like, the universe blinks and some space/time phenomenon runs afoul of Simon's elder god moment and the next thing he knows, he's waking up inside some kind of space ship(?) that appears to be running on autopilot.

It's weird and the tech looks both dated and brand new, expensive and advanced but also extremely retro, like someone using a diamond-encrusted rotary phone to check their emails. Luckily it's all mostly in language that Simon can comprehend, unluckily a lot of the equipment still seems like it would require several degrees of expertise to operate. But eventually Simon figures out enough to find the ship's crew, and... it's not looking good for them.

Two of them are dead. Have been for a while. Whatever stasis system(?) they have has preserved the corpses pretty well, but it's past the point of being able to try and revive them. The other is still alive, but Simon's not sure how to safely wake him up or what to do if that starts to change. He decides to just keep an eye on the situation, presumably there's a system that will wake the guy up whenever the ship reaches its destination, and if he starts to look bad before that point then Simon can always try to manually revive him and hope for the best.

Anyway, the ship has medicine and supplies, which he desperately needs. He figures the other two crewmen weren't planning on dying, so they can probably spare enough of said supplies for him. He figures out the AI well enough to start asking questions and eventually puts together that he's time traveled(?) or crossed into another dimension, that this ship is on a mission to figure out why the stars are going dim, or rather why there's one star that isn't, and he's not sure what to make of it but it seems he's also landed on another one-way trip.

When Grace wakes up, confused and without his memories, Simon panics and because Grace assumes he must've been part of the crew he just... goes with that. Grace thinks that he woke up from stasis early and that his weirdness is a result of isolation. He's a little surprised that there's an amputee aboard but it would be insensitive to ask, right? Not that a one-armed guy can't be an astronaut, yeah? Although Simon is also weirdly cagey about what his specialty is supposed to be and seems vague on the mission too, Grace assumes his memory also suffered some kind of an issue from being in stasis, he's just glad he's not alone.

Then they run into Blip-A and they're even more not alone, Rocky moves in, everyone does science, Simon still doesn't really seem to have an area of expertise per se, Grace keeps waiting to remember the part where Simon joined the mission (he's sure he'd remember him), Simon's kind of sweating bullets still wondering how he's supposed to explain anything, and then the whole fishing trip on Adrian goes pear-shaped and Simon uses like. Eldritch blood magic...?

Grace is having trouble computing that but he definitely saw it. So. Guess that explains why he's on the mission, if someone found a literal space wizard they would want them on the Mankind-saving mission, if ever there was a time for some kind of secret cult society of wizards living under the radar to come out in the open it would be now, yeah. But Grace can also see where explaining that to an amnesiac would be awkward and seem too hard to believe.

He has connected the dots!

Anyway he doesn't really notice that his Simon Joins the Mission and Reveals Wizards memories never arrive, he's too distracted by the revelation that Stratt forced him to go on the mission and he didn't volunteer, and then there's the whole issue with the taumoeba breaking containment and turning back to rescue Rocky and save Erid, which they both agree to do. By that point Simon has established himself as a presence in Grace's mind and Grace no longer considers him that much of a mystery to be solved (Simon's abilities are, Simon himself is not), whenever Simon lets slip something about like, competing for food or being in prison or in a cult, Grace just assumes he himself was pretty sheltered from how bad the situation on Earth was getting due to being in the Project Hail Mary bubble, and is like yeah okay Stratt double fair play to you, I didn't realize it was getting quite so Mad Max out there.

Now up until this point, Simon has done a good job of staying out of Grace's logs. Grace has mentioned him but in such a way that everyone on Earth probably thinks he's hallucinated an imaginary friend in the isolation and stress, like well damn he's cracked but at least the science seems sound.

Yes sure Dr Ryland Grace, your good friend Simon the One-Armed Blood Wizard is up there with you and the aliens, and for that matter so are all of us in spirit. Godspeed and thank you for your noble sacrifice.

Grace himself thinks that Simon is making his own reports, but when they go to send the beetles he's like, no we should do one together to make it clear that we're both agreeing to this and have come to this decision as a team. At which point Simon is just like, well... okay? Still just kind of avoiding conflict by going with the path of least resistance. So he smiles and nods and waves at the camera, and is like Hello Earth, Simon the One-Armed Blood Wizard here. Um. Yeah I'm good with going back to save Rocky and Erid too. Best wishes, and all that.

And this forces you to decide whether your autonomy matters to you more than the approval of the group - while they'll still act like you're on thin ice either way, if you give in at this point they know you're theirs forever, because now they've established a foothold, you've shown a moral weakness, which they will brand you with so it can be used against you in the future ("hey RICE-addict here doesn't want help break into the city records office") to force you to double-down and isolate you further.

And like there was no permanent cast, all these celebrities seem to have gotten a scene or part of a scene to do (i’m not sure exactly, I did not ever watch Quibi and thus haven’t seen this yet), and then they just… recreated it as best they could. At home. Under quarantine.

So like, you had Jennifer Garner in a blanket cape playing Princess Buttercup AND the Booing Old Woman with a crowd comprised entirely of stuffed animals:

Or Taika Waititi paying Westley off a badly-drawn Inigo on a piece of cardboard held in front of someone’s face:

And it’s all just delightful.

But my absolute favorite part of this thing that I’ve sadly never seen but assume is probably absolutely hilarious and a treasure and I want to find it some day and watch the whole thing… is that Carey Elwes is in it.

As Prince Fucking Humperdink.

Here ya go

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