#phm readthrough

general notes:

movie notes:

did not expect how much i'd love the movie aesthetically!

-> the score stood out to me almost immediately as exceptionally tasteful; even all of the lyrical/pop culture songs in there were beautifully selected. i'm currently listening to the score right now as i write this review. i love the instrumentation they chose for the score, it's so playful and industrial, but still has the capability to fit the more dramatic scenes. it's very fitting, is what i'm saying X)

my favorite scores are time go fishing (obviously), life is reason, centrifuge, erratic maneuver detected, and rocky moves in.

-> the sound design is a hallmark of how far we've come with space movies when compared to something older, like the star wars movie (not to throw shade on the franchise at all, of course). i love the use of the special sort of vacuum silence with only occasional subtle vibration when the camera "grazes" something during the outer space scenes. AUGH. props to daniel pemberton and the sound team!!

-> the lighting and camerawork were simply gorgeous... really made me Feel the vacuum and motion at times, it was so amazing to see even though i couldn't see it in theaters. widescreen monitor and good headphones were enough to reduce me to tears during the adrian fishing scene.

-> the set and prop design is excellent all across the board. the hail mary ship actually looks a lot like what i envisioned while reading the book, so massive props to andy weir for his descriptiveness and props to the set design team hehe. rocky is also quite similar to what i had in mind (mainly from seeing all the fanart while still reading), although i initially thought him to be a bit more "buggy", since words/phrases like "carapace" and "labrador-sized spider" were used to describe him in the book.

-> the "realness" of some scenes were beautifully done, like the film logs done by grace, particularly the "personal space" one. it really feels like some dude recording his strange roommate for earth to see X)

about the changes made in the movie compared to the book:

-> i actually love what they did with eva stratt's character in the film! made her more 3-dimensional, more sympathetic. she was a little flat in the book but she's so great in the movie!! definitely an elevation, plus sarah müller's performance as her was AMAZING... the "sign of the times" karaoke scene made me emotional and primed me for the absolute obliteration that was time go fishing.

-> pretty sure the ", statement" sentence structure is only in the film, right? i don't recall it being in the book, only the ", question?" sentence structure.

-> i also think they changed the fact that the blip-A can't attach to the hail mary while the centrifuge is on. pretty minor detail, whatevs.

-> Carl Exists Now. i wish they utilized him more and gave him more depth/screen time, although i understand the hesitance to because he was basically the director(s [?]) exposition OC lmao

-> i like that the nannybot is/the mechanical hands are now called armando, and that the ship is called "mary". makes them feel more present in the story rather than background objects like in the book.

-> they cut out the whole "attaching the beetles to the ship as makeshift spin-drives" plot point, although i do agree that it would've been difficult to make work for the film and is better relegated to the books.

-> PUPPET SHOW!! i actually like this bit. it's funny and cute without being too reductive to the story. also eased the burden of having the exposit all the sciencey stuff.

-> "fist me" having to be changed to "fist my bump" for the PG-13 movie had me cackling.

-> i like the addition of the computer voice to rocky for the majority of the movie. it's a very clever retcon/solution/adaptation; i applaud the filmmakers. the monotone deliver is very very funny at times lmao. it was also a great plot device during the "brave" scene that made me tear up. it reads very much like how rocky reads in the book, and doesn't change the tone by much. rocky probably chose that voice because it's the closest to grace's voice, given it's his only frame of reference for how humans sound.

i like how they handled the flashbacks, even with the shuffling-around of some of their orders. i enjoyed how they handled exploring grace's cowardice, although i do wish they went more in depth...

the little lava ball and it's soft, beanbaggy sound design makes me emotional for some reason. i love it and i want one. i also want a weighted rocky plush and a paperweight in the shape of the hail mary ship. and grace's quilt. and an armando coat hanger.

they should just hire me to design merch for the film /silly

i like how ryan gosling establishes grace as a crier consistently throughout the movie despite the technical difficulty of crying scenes. YES. let a human leak from their faces and make gross mucus from emotion. love that.

OVERALL: strangely enough, the weakest bits were the start and the end, but once the story really got going it was excellent. i love the aesthetic direction of this film. i didn't like some of the changes to the story, but i enjoyed others greatly. again, i think the best way to enjoy phm is to first read the book and then be re-introduced to the story (and get emotionally wrecked by it all over again) through a whole new lens when you watch the movie.

my issues with the film:

-> the setup is nowhere near as strong as that of the book. it takes a while to get going, and it dices up a lot of the sciencey and characterization details that made the book great. they had to create carl as a means to pull grace's internal monologue out of his head and onto the screen, but i feel like they could've utilized him better. the film made me wonder if my friends (who haven't read the book yet) were even fully following the events, since they happened so quickly and without much detail. although i do admit that it was a difficult task without having ryan gosling spit science words at the camera for 5 minutes strait, bill nye style (even if it would be in character for ryland grace). overall, the setup had me sinking into my seat and huffing "this isn't what happened in the book...", which thankfully did not happen for the rest of the movie.

-> the film is already so long but part of me longs for an alternate version where we get to see ilyukhina's kilogram block of heroin LMAO

-> some plot beats were exchanged for "funny haha cinema comedy" moments and i'm a little sad/disappointed, though i do understand some. the one i most dislike is the fact that they changed the whole bit about eating being an uncomfortable, private process in eridian culture to "rocky eat beautifully hurr durr".

-> the other thing is the general characterization of grace and rocky. grace in the beginning of the movie, before contact with blip-A, is played off as "haha screaming monkey man in space confused" rather than a fidgety science teacher unravelling what's happening to him with science. i get that it's now a part of his character that he talks to much, but ryan gosling's voice really does get grinding to hear at times in the beginning. i wish they made grace and rocky out to be the extremely capable scientists from their respective planets that they are in the book, working together and occasionally butting heads, rather than "comedic duo" all of the time.

-> another thing about the acting (not a critique of the actual actors, more so the film direction), sometimes there are dramatic pauses for various reasons (whether that be comedy or tension), that are just baaaaaaarelyyy too long to be within reason and really take me out of the film. kind breaks my immersion and makes me remember that it's a movie lol

-> the one aesthetic choice i questioned was the set design of blip-A. the whole setting up communication was shortened a lot (which made me SAD because i loved that part of the book; it made me weep from joy) and the lighting and set/prop design made it quite difficult to follow what was happening at times, even after having read the book.

-> at the ending, i love that we get to see eva rifling through the logs grace sent back and traveling through the now-frozen sea back on earth, but the bits on erid aren't as strong. they cut out the me-burger, and the fact that they're in a biodome isn't clearly communicated enough. my friend was greatly confused because she thought they were back on earth and didn't realize they were on erid until a bit after the "who can tell me the speed of light?" scene, while the credits were rolling. unideal. without the internal monologue, you can't tell that grace fully thinks in eridian numbers now or that he's getting old and tired + cane user rep. it also cuts out the eridian organ that they built for him to communicate with, sadsad.

book notes:

i enjoy how andy weir's writing has improved since "the martian". my biggest gripe with that one was how much hand-waving there was and skipping over scientific details. project hail mary addresses that, perhaps a liiiiiittle bit to the detriment of the movie adaptation, but it was what drew me in initially.

i love the "flavor" that grace's internal monologue has; it's interesting being inside his head.

hail mary, full of grace, for a long shot mission. AH! i get it. funny clever poetic beautiful.

i greatly enjoy how rocky and grace's setting up of communication was. AA!! it's genuinely so clever, i had me kicking my feet and giggling the whole time. my favorite bit of the book with many great moments.

slightly related to the last one, i love how intelligent both parties are made out to be. they're very skilled scientists/engineers. i enjoy how the fandom hasn't been reductive towards rocky and made him the "cute dumb alien dog". that man is 300-something years old, has a job as an aerospace engineer, and is married X)

also, it's not clear if the eridians even have sexes/a concept of gender. they might just be strange little genderless hermaphrodites that don't even realize there's other sexes, since they only ever meet one sex of human. they might think "he/him" is just the generic third-person pronoun in human-lish lol. huh, they also don't know of any other human languages or cultures (at least of what's shown to us in the book). something to think about...

i deeply enjoy the cultural differences between eridians and humans explored in the book, particularly their sleeping and eating habits. feels very real and i love it so so much.

screaming at how nerdy and real everything about the (in-universe) project hail mary's creation is. the fact that it's name is a pun?? the beetles??? augh i love

i love the clever explanations for why things happen in the story without it feeling too "chekhov's gun"-y or "deus ex machina"-y. like with the fact that rocky has excess fuel because eridians don't know about relativity yet and overestimated how much they'd need, rocky's species having better mental computing capacity and thus carrying much of the weight for the language barrier being broken, and the fact that they have nitrogen because dubois chose it as his method of assisted suicide. all of these are skipped over in the movie i think. sad :C

i love the adrian action sequence, it's so well done. my breath followed that of the characters. i was so tense and internally screaming in terror the whole time while my boys got banged up bouncing around the hail mary.

OVERALL: love love love amaze amaze amaze <3333. PLEASE read the book and watch the movie, in that order. truly one of the best literary experiences i've been on. i'm now on my way to find any and all additional material and lore, watch cast & production interviews, and tear apart AO3's catalogue. MAN i love this storyl