Project Hail Mary (2026)

Project Hail Mary: A Peak Movie Experience

Project Hail Mary is part sci-fi blockbuster and part screwball comedy that still observes the hard science source material from Andy Weir.

In this deep dive podcast, we talk about how Project Hail Mary explores hope through friendship and why this movie worked so well for us. We also examine how its dual-timeline structure keeps the story moving, and why the relationship between Grace and Rocky becomes the emotional and intellectual core of the film. Along the way, we break down the astrophage premise, the science behind the mission to Tau Ceti, and how the movie pulls off one of the most effective buddy movies in all of Lord & Miller's filmography. Yes, including Benji's favorites, 21 & 22 Jump Street.

We also get into the tonal balancing act between the comedy and the existential stakes, the decision to use practical effects for Rocky (and why that might have been a billion dollar decision), the agency and ethics of Grace's big decision, and whether the ending actually works.

• Full Transcript

  Project Hail Mary — Full Episode Transcript

  00:00

  A summer blockbuster, but released in spring, that dares to ask, what if humanity's only hope were also the sexiest man alive? The movie is called Project Hail Mary, and it's amaze, amaze, amaze. This podcast is called All Those Moments. I'm Benji Wade. I'm Luke Baufgarten. Fist your bump, Luke.

  dude.

  All those moments is a podcast where we connect social, political, or cultural moments with moments from our favorite movies. If you like deep dive conversations about movies, you've come to the right place. If you've been here before, hit that subscribe button. Let's dive right into it, Luke. Project Hail Mary is based on Andy Weir's best-selling 2021 novel of the same name. He also wrote The Martian, which came out in 2011 and then was adapted into a movie in 2015. You probably remember it.

  Matt Damon, Ridley Scott made like six hundred million dollars at the box office. this movie is directed by the very creative and prolific collaborative duo Phil Lord and Christopher Miller. Prolific, but n not with a lot of directing credits to their name. Totally. But they've got you were talking about their back their catalog. It was it's really interesting how much writing and producing they do and not much. It's deep and it stretches into television, lots of producing, lots of writing credits, tons of things.

  Drew Goddard wrote the screenplay. He also wrote The Martian, making him two for two when it comes to Andy Weir adaptations. It stars Ryan Gosling. And that's who I'm wearing this cardigan in honor of today. Inspired by. Inspired by. Yeah, you said he's wearing something like that in there. I can't remember. Basically, this color, but it's got like a tiger on the back. I was gonna say there's something on it. I I I was Is that like a drive reference? 'Cause doesn't his jacket and drive have some type of animal on it?

  fallen down more of a thirst trap rabbit hole than a movie rabbit hole and found like the 10 best jackets Ryan Gosling has ever worn. my God. Jackets are Ryan Gosling's secret weapon in his movies. So the movie quite obviously Project Hail Mary stars Ryan Gosling. It also has performances by Sandra Houler and James Ortiz and what I would definitely describe as breakout roles for both of them if you didn't know them before.

  And to preview the episode, these are some of the things that we're going to talk about just to let our audience kind of know what we're going to be up to.

  Much of the symbolism, the recurrent themes and ideas that are running throughout the whole film, its tonal balance between many times screwball comedy, many times existential sci-fi, how they pulled off the character Rocky without the use of CGI, how the dual timeline structure of the narrative keeps things from ever feeling slow. Okay, yeah. And whether we think ultimately the multifaceted ending, I'm putting in air quotes works or not. But

  02:54

  Before we do all that, let's talk just general impressions. I always just kind of let want to let people know like where we're gonna be headed with our takes. So for you, I'll I'll set you up. Let's say 30 minutes the next day, whatever. How are you feeling about Project Hail Mary after watching it? I walked out of there just feeling like, why did I ever get cynical about the movies? Why did I ever get cynical about blockbusters? Like I'm I do so much heavy stuff in my life, you know, like my work is all nonstop terror.

  most days in doing journalism and writing about e you know immigration and stuff and totally you've been covering a lot of ice activities in Spokane Washington. And like as broken as the movies are, like that's not my job to fix it. So I can just get go and enjoy good things and have fun and not feel bad about it. And that's kind of a revelation. Like almost felt like I was a kid again. Hell yeah. I mean, you and I have talked about the fact that through our this is episode sixteen

  We've done a lot of heavy material. Yeah. We've done Train Dreams. We did The Voice of Henrajab. We did Eddington, No Other Choice. These are all fairly in some degree or another bleak or about bleak topics or quite despairing about their outlook about planet Earth and humanity's role and what's happening on Planet Earth. I described it and I ran into our friend Anne and I just I would say like a supporting cast member to this show because she's been on she's been on our audience feedback numerous times, right?

  Totally. Yeah. And when I ran into Anne, I just said, I really missed them. Rocky and Grace. And I like saying Rocky and Grace, by the way. I'm not going to say Grace and Rocky. I'm going to say Rocky and Grace. Because you Rock is Rocky the star of the movie? I think Rocky is secretly. Yes, totally. And I just missed them. I found watching this movie to be almost like therapeutic, like I was bathed in CBD, you know? It was just like I came home from watching it and felt super chill. And I was like,

  What is working? Why do I feel so mellow right now? And I know it was from watching this movie. Yeah. I bumped into my neighbor as I was coming down here and he said it was one of the best pieces of screenwriting he'd seen in years. I think you can do excellent screenwriting with like less than, you know, super serious Oscar material, right? Like I actually do think there's a lot going on in this movie. They explain a lot. It's really complicated stuff. The science isn't straightforward. this isn't really interesting that you're saying this.

  They do a really good job.

  The emotional beats were really real for me. They were good. It also but it also never felt too awful. The screenwriting, I think I would probably rank behind the performances and the editing. The editing was I want to talk about that. And they made many runs at it because their style of filmmaking is to shoot a ton of coverage. Lord Miller talked about how they're like Gosling gave him X, Y, Z, you know, five, six takes of a a certain style. And then they would go, can we get one more and just like go crazy on it?

  And then they had coverage and they've made the entire movie this way. They also admitted that they had a four hour cut that they were quite embarrassed by. they did eleven screenings of it too. wow. With some friends, some strangers. before we get into spoilers, let's talk about what this movie is and who made it. You want to start with the log line, Luke? A middle school science teacher, Ryland Grace, wakes up alone on a spacecraft with no memory of how he got there.

  He's light years from Earth and he slowly recalls that he's on a one-way mission to save humanity from a climate crisis. Project Hail Mary was directed by the aforementioned Phil Lorde, Christopher Miller. They have written, directed, produced so much, including this is just a short list of things, including a couple of the things that they wrote. Cloudy with a chance of meatballs.

  The Lego movies, Twenty One and Twenty Two, Jump Street, Spider Man into and Across the Spider Verse. They were producers and writers on that. Yeah. I thought for some reason they were one of the three headed directors, but they were not. They too, yep. Yeah. this is the first movie they've directed since twenty fourteen, which was Twenty Two Jump Street. Wow. I freaking love those movies. Dude, you wanted me to watch them before I didn't have a chance to. I'm bummed too, because I I actually like Jonah L.

  my god, Channing Tatum and Jonah Hill, Ice Cube. It's interesting because there's a lot of actors in this movie, but there's kind of only three or four primary characters, obviously Grace, played by Ryan Gosling, the German actress Sandra Huller as Ava Strat, who's sort of the like the head of the Project to Save the World, Project Hail Mary, and also sort of ends up being not quite an antagonist, but kind of a foil to Ryan's character. Yeah. Lionel Boyce as Officer Carl.

  07:26

  And James Ortiz as the voice of Rocky. It came out on March twentieth from Amazon and MGM Studios, and this is by far their biggest box office ever. But before we get into anything else about the movie, let's take a quick break. When we come back, we will go over all those moments from Project Hail Mary.

  Okay, let's talk about Project Hail Mary, all those moments from the movie. Yes, there will be spoilers. If that matters to you, it probably should. Check out the movie first and come back. Project Hail Mary opens in media res. Ryland Grace is being woken up from an induced coma aboard a spacecraft. That much we can figure out. It turns out it's an interstellar research probe. He has two dead crewmates. He's disoriented, I would say barely functional, and he's talking to an AI computer.

  He whiteboards and figures out that with the fuel on board this spacecraft, it would take him 113.8 years to get to Earth. And he's like, Well, it's the first seeds that are being planted with the audience that whatever mission this dude just woke up from. And if you're like us, real bad. Yeah, I'm assuming both of us had not read the book, that this is a one-way trip. Yeah. That's all I'm figuring out at this point. record scratch, we learn through flashbacks.

  They cut back in time and you learn that Grace is or was a middle school science teacher and he's a highly capable scientist. Gosling got a chance to reprise his role as a middle school teacher. Did you see Half Nelson? Long time ago, yeah. Why don't you do me a favor and write three examples of historical turning points that we've talked about in class?

  I think it's the first thing I ever saw him in. And I loved that movie. I love Bowden and Fleck, the filmmakers that made that movie. And I also just wanted to take your temperature on this. I thought that this was a super clever intro for the movie because I haven't read the book, but I think the way that this movie introduces his character and the the two different timelines, I was already kind of like, Who is this guy? It's super mysterious. I'm hooked. I need to know more.

  We get these two parallel timelines, and these are the things that are established in like pr the first 10 minutes, honestly.

  There's some sort of mystery and space happening to this character. He's got a full scraggly beard, long hair. And the context on Earth is through flashbacks. It's obvious that it's some time ago. We don't know how much time. the fact that he teaches middle school lets him describe the stakes of the movie, which is a hard science novel. That's which is what Andy Weir's specialty is. Using simple language that a dumb dumb like myself can understand.

  So I think that the character of a middle school science teacher becomes perfect. Yeah. It's like any dodo-brained American can understand this. Right. Quick note from our friend Kayla, our producer on all those moments. Andy Weir is a college dropout that found his way to becoming an engineer. His mom was an electrical engineer and his dad was a physicist. So he says he was destined to be a nerd. Weir enjoyed writing short stories and did that throughout the years of programming software. And he found that his day job actually helped.

  With revising his stories. I think this is a really interesting note. He wasn't too precious about his writing and he's willing to make edits because of his background with doing engineering and software software. Yeah, like a as a coder. It also helped him be accurate with any calculations that were present in his stories. Okay. So back to Grace's classroom. We learn from his interactions with students in this lesson that he's doing that there's a global science crisis, but it's a s it's like a climate change with it's climate change with a twist.

  Instead of a heating planet, scientists have discovered a substance called astrophage, which is slowly dimming the sun. If you've seen the movie and found this part confusing, maybe this will be helpful. There's a streak of infrared light between the sun and Venus, known as the Petrova line, named after the satellite enthusiast who discovered it.

  The Petrova line is made up of this astrophage microorganism that's basically eating the sun. And that's what the kids in the class are kind of asking. And they ask with a bit of kind of trepidation. They almost don't want to know the answer. And Grace doesn't really want to give it. But he's kind of like, yeah, it's this isn't you, you get the subtext. This isn't great. Kids in the class are aware that the planet is basically being is facing an extinction event. And for me as a dad, this was the first moment of this movie of like.

  Highly relatable. I don't think you have to be a dad, but the fact that this is showing a class full of kids really, you know, brought it home for me. Yeah. Anyhow, the two timelines what's happened in the past on Earth, what's happening in the present on this space probe with Grace. That is the the pieces that are in place for the rest of the movie. Earth timeline kind of looks like this. Humans are getting together to fight this scourge known as astrophage. And here comes the UN Petrova task force led by a Dutch administrator named Eva Strat.

  12:12

  Strat drops in on Grace's classroom to get his help solving the astrophage crisis. And you can also tell that he is a very reluctant hero. Meanwhile, within the space timeline, this is where Grace is still slowly remembering that he's on a mission that's tied to this crisis. the stakes are existential. Planet Earth is basically fucked if he doesn't complete this mission. He's he figures that out. his crewmates are dead, so he's now without the pilot and without the medical officer. And that's who should be aboard this thing.

  It should be a pilot.

  An engineer and a science officer. And you're already kind of putting together like, hmm, how did he end up here? And why does he not remember anything? Yep. The medical officer, notably, played by Lily from the ATT. Did you know? Did you clock that? Absolutely did. Yes. Lily from ATT. Just by the way you said that, her name is Milana Vaintrubb, and I like her very much, and I think Luke does too. I like very much. She's also those ATT commercials were like the

  Cornerstone of so much March madness. Like all of those. She was inescapable. Yeah. For like what, 10 years, five years, something like that. Yeah. He's been in a coma, we find out, for around four years. He starts listening to country music. He's in this, the the phase, if you want to think of like stages of grief, where he's just like not quite acceptance. He's still like in denial. He's like listening to country music. He's drinking.

  vodka out of an IV bag, which we find out belongs. Yeah, the medical officers. Yeah. The ATTs, Lily, who, by the way, that actress born in Russia. She was born in the former Soviet Union. interesting. Yeah, like a couple years before the collapse of the Berlin Wall. he metaphorically pours one out for his lost crewmates and we see glimpses of them through flashbacks. And I want to pause here and ask you a question, Luke. It's apparently handled quite differently in the book, but do you think Project Tail Mary balanced these time timelines well?

  You don't they don't want you to know everything all at once. So and and that's fine with me. I love that kind of I like in media res storytelling. I like discovering alongs with the character or remembering along with the character. So I didn't bug me. What did you think? Same. And in fact, it's like a a classic rule of editing. You give your audience exactly as much information as they need to make it to the next scene. It's like you just get loaded up with this emotional beat and it's like.

  Cool. Well, that will segue into this. And I think they manage it really well. Shout out the editor Joel Nagron for managing both timelines so effectively. Recently credited with editing Thor Ragnarok and Cocaine Bear. I have not seen Cocaine Bear. Did you see Cocaine Bear? Apparently this they this was one of their projects too. They did was it? Were they producers? Cocaine Bear, yeah. Lord and Miller also talk about screening the movie, as I mentioned 11 times, a small group of people.

  So they really, really worked hard. their editor definitely got a lot of cracks at perfecting it.

  I think the parallel editing of the editing of the two timelines is pretty effective. And they picked they picked like really good emotional beats to carry one moment into the other. So continuing on with moments from the project Hail Mary, we get back to the Earth timeline and learn that Grace is one of many scientists that are being recruited to help with the astrophage crisis. Strat is the no nonsense leader of this effort.

  She has help from a deputy. Actually, can we go back just for a second? Cause it's not in the notes, but I think this is one of the parts where I'm like, one of the things about hard science fiction, Andywear's stock and trade, is that it's it's plausible, right? It's so close to what, you know, it's it's in our universe. It's not some, you know, galaxy far, far away. And it's not and the idea is that this is something we might not have this technology yet, but this is at least within the it obey, you know, the these stories obey the laws of physics as we know them and chemistry as we know them.

  Do you did you catch why Ryan Gosling gets picked for this crew? Or why he gets brought up in the first place? you mentioned this. No, I I do remember it, but I he had some sort of theoretical idea that he put into a paper. And he's like a theoretical biologist, is what it sounds like. And his whole paper was it's possible for there to be non-water-based life forms. Right. And th so that's why she comes to him and says, Hey, you had this paper. It was crazy. The reason he's working as

  A teacher is that it was such it was so roundly derided by the scientific community. It basically chased him out of academia. So that's why he's a teacher. Okay. But then so he goes about in this scene like that happens right before where we're at. He's trying to figure out if these what these creatures, the astrophage is made of, and he finds dot dot dot. If these things are going back and forth between the sun and Venus, which is where the other end of the Petrova line is at.

  16:28

  Water can't exist in the sun. The sun's too hot. It would just these things would evaporate. This can't be, or the at least their theory is this this cannot be a water-based life form. So you gotta call the guy who thinks it's possible to have non-water-based life forms because you know, current science thinks, you know, is like as far as we know, non-water-based life is not possible. this is great. But real quick, I just want to make sure I'm connecting dots here, because this could be a revelation to me. Is Rocky not water-based?

  No, he is water-based too. Because so Ryan Gosling does all of his tests and finds out.

  His theory's wrong. Yeah. It's the thing he wrote that we're so sure about. Yeah. You know. And yet, this is the other thing that I think is so fun and interesting about science. And this is why I'm sure people like Hank Green love Andy Weir. It's like that's common in science. You're always getting things wrong. Of course. That's whole point. It's like to have a hypothesis, test it, you're proven right or wrong, you revise your hypothesis.

  We learned that Grace is one of the many scientists that's that's helping with this effort. Strat is the no nonsense leader of the effort. She has help from a deputy type of officer, Officer Carl, played by Lionel Boyce, aka Marcus from The Bear, aka one of my favorite characters in the last 10 years of television. Thank you so much for calling that out that he is Marcus and the Bear. Because I was like, I know that guy, I love that guy. And I You couldn't quite place it. At this point, keep in mind.

  He's just help helping with the task force. And we find out that there's hundreds of other scientists. So he does learn that he is not exceptional at this point. Like he would have been exceptional if it would have proven to not be a water-based life form. So she just takes off. She's like, take these three basically three cells or three little blobs of the stuff. Like, good luck. I'm gonna go with the A team. He basically gets like resigned to the C team with Officer Carl.

  And it is almost like a moment of chance that he ends up making this discovery. So with Officer Carl, although you could argue that his

  relationship with Officer Carl, which takes on characteristics of what Lord and Miller are so good at is these buddy pairings. This is the first time where it shows he's so good at cooperating with other people too and getting them to help. So Lord and Miller talked openly in a recent interview that I was listening to about their inclination and their reputation for stories about friendship and friendship that is experiencing hardship in some variety. Yeah. So I think this is the first kind of

  It's like the officer Carl relationship is a dry run for what we eventually find out about his relationship with Rocky. And I think I found a lot of the humor in this section passable. There's a few good lines, but kind of it's kind of labored. Yeah. It feels a little forced. Carl didn't like deliver any or just his looks and his mannerisms and like the pastry chef and the big Yeah, he's given a little bit of Marcus in this. No, absolutely. Yeah. What I was thinking in those moments and later on with the Rocky character is like.

  The importance of buddies in any creative or intellectual endeavor, how much better it is when you're Ryland's, when he's in space, he's not really solving the problem until he meets Rocky. I think you're describing something that's already happening. And I love that they get a dry run to show his relationship with Carl because it is this idea that, like, almost like pair programming. Pair programming is this concept of you will get more out of a coder if they're working together with another coder.

  19:41

  In unison, hope in even yes, in person. So Carl and Grace are communicating with walkie-talkies at this point, and we go into a kind of a montage. At one point we get one of these pretty good lines. Hey Carl, this is Grace. Imagine for a second you're an interstellar microorganism and Carl deadpan, very Marcus. He's like, Yeah, I'm not doing that. They experiment, they go to on a trip to Home Depot, classic buddy movie montage. Carl and Grace making a game out of throwing duct tape into the shopping cart before

  bowling with the duct tape and rolls of aluminum foil. It's it's a little corny. but I'm like, hey, I'm still in because I want to know what's happening in space. This is where the earth timeline stuff isn't totally working for me, but it also doesn't really matter. This felt like fan service for hobby scientists to me. Yeah. It's like I've you know, the the guys that now have million dollar YouTube or million subscriber YouTube channels and are always blowing shit up in their backyards. Like that's this that's the vibe's for those guys.

  It's very DIY. Yeah.

  They work on a lab experiment that teaches them where basically Grace learns how astrophage breeds. And there's some great lines here. Carl, are you sitting down? And Carl says, No, I'm standing like a grown man. Big discovery. Grace figures out how to reproduce astrophage. You fast forward, he's in front of a huge panel of scientists. They're on this highly classified aircraft carrier. There's an awkward there it is reference from Grace and another scientist. I'm just gonna move past some of this stuff.

  Lots of shenanigans and Earth, the Earth flashback timeline earlier on in the movie. It's a little Pixar, it's a little a lot cringe. It's kind of like, hey parents, you're gonna like this part. Whoop, there it is. yeah. And then the other one says it and then Grace is like, I like that guy. I'm just like, can we just get back to space? Yeah, yeah, totally. they realize But it's important to note that like the only reason he gets invited back to that ship is that he's the one who discovers how they reproduce. And the

  That's why these this line is going to Venus. So the astrophage are going back and forth to Venus because they eat the sun, but they reproduce in carbon dioxide and CO2, I think. They they toot and scoot is what he calls it. And so what they're realizing is if they can reproduce the astrophage, which is a highly volatile microorganism, they can use the astrophage to travel the 11.9 light years to a star called Tao Seti, which appears to be the only star that they can identify as.

  That hasn't been affected by astrophage. So Taosetti becomes really important to the story, very popular. This is where back to Andy Weir, he's working in like not just plausible things, but things that are actual. Yeah. Tao Seti is a very popular, is very popular on Earth among stargazers because it can be seen by the naked eye. Taosetti is a sun-like star that has four confirmed, I'm putting in that in big bold, Earth-sized planets orbiting it. That is, this ends up being the entire basis for the story of Project Hail Mary.

  Use this astrophage.

  Harness its energy to travel to Tausetti and see what's up. Why is it immune to astrophage? So we're basically 30 minutes into the movie at this point, and Grace realizes the following: he's on this mission, he's alone, and there's no backup. and he has a really good robot droid assistant named Armando, who gives him a very, very nice haircut. I don't want to nitpick, but we wouldn't be insufferable podcasters if we didn't nitpick.

  Ryan Gosling is so fucking good looking. Yeah. And yet, I just want to say, when he first appears in the movie with the scraggly hair and the beard, but then seems to find this amazing, and I mean borderline uncanny ability to cut his hair perfectly with the help of Armando. It's AI, man. Woof. I was like, he's got the frosty tips, he's got the sculpted wings over his ears. He's also ripped. The thing is, though, I know, I, I look, if you if you took note of the fact that he's ripped, well, wait, I've got an update for you.

  In the book or the movie, his appearance really doesn't matter. He's described fairly nondescript. But when it comes to his body, Luke, I'm gonna do this only once. I'm gonna talk about the book, which I have not read, but I think it's worth doing here. Cause I didn't want to come in here and shit on the movie Project Hail Mary because Ryan Gosling's too ripped and not figure out is there something to that? So it turns out in the beginning of Weir's novel, when Ryland Grace is still assessing things after waking up from the coma.

  It's written in first person present tense, and here's a passage from it. Why am I so weak when I have these well-toned muscles? And if I was in a coma, why do I even have muscles? I should be a withered spindly mess right now, not beach bod buff. About 30 pages later, but these beds aren't magical freeze chambers like in the movies. There's no special technology at play here. I think we were in medically induced comas, feeding tubes, IVs, constant medical care, everything a body needs.

  24:25

  Those arms probably changed sheets, kept us rotated to prevent bed sores, and did all the other things ICU nurses would normally do. And we were kept fit. Electrodes all over our bodies to stimulate muscle movement, lots of exercise. So he's still Ryan Gosling. He's Ken, you know? Yeah. He's a ripped, beautiful man in space, yes, with gorgeous hair, and it doesn't really matter. And I love that that's the choice that they make in the movie is to not even acknowledge that shit.

  They could have put in a couple throwaway lines of like these fucking electrodes on my arms made me ripped. Yeah. So he's given real, I I described it as like heartthrob, egon spengler from Ghostbusters type vibes. Totally. All right, back to moments from the movie. He's too looking. Grace, it doesn't hurt the movie, and they don't even bother explaining these things. And I'm just didn't matter to me whatsoever. I was like, he's just he's fun to look at. Grace quickly eulogizes his dead crewmates and ejects them into space from the probe.

  It's the first time we see Gosling cry in the movie. It's fine. I want to just say that I think this is just me and I want to ask you what you think. I think this is an inherently weak part of the storytelling that's probably unavoidable. In either timeline, these characters, and by the characters I mean his two dead cre his two dead crewmates. Yeah. They just don't matter. Yeah. I didn't give a crap.

  No, they didn't. And actually, here's the thing. So we didn't mention this character in the because it's not one of the main characters. The pilot, the the people who you would think would be the main supporting characters are all dead at the beginning of the movie. But Ken Lung, who plays the captain of the ship, is an incredible actor. I really, really love. I know him from industry, the HBO drama. hell yeah. He's so good in that. No, he's one of my favorite characters. I can't watch that show. He's sort of the it's really good, man.

  But I kept waiting. I was like, I hope.

  This guy. By the I realized but you were hoping he'd have something to do. I hope he would have more to do in the old earlier timeline. He just did. That was a bummer. They're thankless roles. It's also revealed that Grace has a really cool LED cage. It looks like an MMA cage, about twenty feet in diameter, that's made of hundred percent LED and he can fill it with like random visualizations or videos from planet Earth. It's like that's pretty cool. What's it what's it called in Star Trek in the next generation? It's the the holodeck.

  It was like yeah, it was like the f it was

  It's like a 2026 version of the holodeck. It's like it's or a poor man's sphere. I was that's what I was gonna say. It's like if they yeah, if they wanted to make a holodeck, but all they had was the Las Vegas sphere. Totally. Continuing in the space timeline, Grace finally arrives in this other star system. He eventually starts to orbit Tao Seti and he can see its Petrova line. he sees something obstructing the Petrova line, and he's like, the AI computer is like

  Blip A. And it's just like suddenly we've got some tension. The story's like it's heating up. Yeah. He attempts to pilot the probe away from the ship, but it follows him. Well, so we should say, maybe just to back up here, the reason they're at Tau Ceti et al is that they're basically every or most of the suns in the observable universe from Earth have this happening. Correct. They figured out, once they figured out why they're going to Venus, these the cause the astrophages breed in carbon dioxide or whatever. Yep.

  Then they're like, every one of these has a has a Venus like planet. Every one of these solar systems is about to die. So Tao Setti has the same situation, but it's not dying. So he's going to figure out why is Tau Ceti not dying. So when I'm looking when in this scene, when I see blip one, it looks like it's interrupted. I'm like, okay, there's gonna be something basically blocking the astrophysics. I thought the same thing. Right.

  Yeah. And so that's like And it's not. That's not what it is. And this is another way that it's just like sort of slowly this like idea of like we're investigating. This is science. Like, here's our our first most obvious answer is like, well, there's a break in something's blocking it. It's like he squints a little bit. It's like, uh-oh, blip A. He attempts to pilot the probe away from this thing, but it's it turns out it's a ship. It's following him, and it becomes one of my favorite scenes in the movie.

  A balletic car chase almost, except instead of cars, you've got

  A crude NASA probe and this and then this ornate looking ship that looks like some sort of intergalactic space scaffolding. It's like organic rock. It reminded me of what are what were the what were the underground Muppets? Yes, dude, the doozers. The doozers, yes. Wow, that's funny.

  28:41

  It looks like it was designed by users. Or it looks like the support you see if you've ever done like 3D printing. Yep. we learn that these creatures are kind of evolved as 3D printers. Dude, and you're right. That's such a good pull of the doozer thing. He is kind of like a doozer because he's playing with that space glass stuff that he's in the Xenonite. hell yeah. Yep. one of the best scenes in the movie. And we also find out that Grace, our very reluctant hero here.

  Tries to pilot the probe away from the alien, but it's almost like the ship is flirting with him. The alien ship hurls a projectile at him, but it looks like the capsules you it kind of looks like this capsules you send to a teller in a bank drive-thru. That's exactly what I thought. And then it's going end over end toward the probe and reminded me a little bit. this felt intentional almost, where like you have that that match cut in 2001 Space Odyssey. Grace shouts at the probe's computer AI, he's like, it could be a bomb. Is it a bomb?

  Shields up and the AI computer responds.

  There are no shields on board the Hail Mary. Why not? Great physical comedy. This is where it's like, this is why this dude comes back to SNL over and over again. Because he's so fucking funny. They cut back to Earth. It's not fair. I'm just going to keep saying. It isn't. He's just also a super good dude. That's what so the other just just back for a second when you were like, I didn't know if I wanted. Does Ryan, how often does Ryan Gosling miss? I don't even pretend to have seen half of his movies.

  But I'm never like, that guy makes bad decisions. On the way to our family trip to Hawaii a couple months ago, I rewatched Crazy Stupid Love and that's still because of him. Man, he's so good. Yeah. they cut back to Earth. The astrophage research continues. I think they do a really good job of keeping that exposition to a minimum because honestly, at this point

  What's happening with Grace on the probe with the alien chip is far more riveting. I'm like, give me exactly back to the editing principles. Give me exactly what I need to know from Planet Earth and get me the fuck back to finding out what's happening with Grace. So he retrieves the projectile. Turns out it's made out of some form of xenon. He he tests it with this little instrument that says it's xenon, which is a gas, and he's like, Fucking things broke. but it's like, no, it actually is a a solid form of this gas.

  And they don't say it in the movie, but we get a sense that like that's not something that's ke possible on Earth.

  Right, exactly. So this civilization, we don't know how it has an atmosphere. We don't what they are. But we do know that they their world is capable, has has evolved in such a way that they they're sort of tech stack, their tech tree. You know, this is if we're playing a game of you know, like a four X strategy game. It's like they chose the like we can turn Xenon into a solid tree where maybe we went the nuclear, like nuclear fission. You're such a fucking nerd. I love that you just put it in like blizzard Starcraft terms.

  Jesus Christ. There's a model inside that shows the planet where the inhabitant of this alien ship is from. It's a planet called Erid. This is back to your point earlier. This is why Andy Weir, or sorry, this is an Andy Weir fictionalized planet that does represent a theoretical or proposed exoplanet that is located in a real star system called 40 Eridani. So Grace sends back a message indicating that he's from Earth. And this is where I start really, really loving this movie.

  I'm like, this is so much fun. Yeah. The heart and soul of the movie is just starting to come to life. This Iridian spacecraft sends this kind of tube like tunnel to connect with Grace's ship. The design of this stuff is really cool. It's not like H.R. Geiger. It doesn't need to be. No, no, no. This tube connects to Grace's ship and it's an invite to come aboard and do a little bit. It's basically a docking platform. Yeah. It's like a meet and greet. And you can kind of tell it's where this is headed.

  And so Grace and us as an audience, we get to meet the highly intelligent Iridian alien aboard this ship.

  We just talk about though when he's making this so the first spacewalk and is just hilarious. And then you also we get a sense that this must be intelligence because he actually they actually throw throw two probes out. Yes. And the first time he 'cause I think because Rocky doesn't know where he's supposed to throw this thing because he's from another planet, he's never experienced humans before. He's like, Where's the the sentience at? Totally. He has to like run down the entire ship to cra catch it.

  But then Rocky obviously figures out where it's coming from. And that's also how the docking platform goes right to the docking spot. Is and again, it's like it's playing off of like the physical comedy we've already experienced. This is why I think it's just really deft filmmaking in service of a really fun film. Cause like Ryan Gosling, the next probe is about to come and he's like about to jump out of the airlock, and then he realizes it's literally coming right to him and it's like a perfect pitch right into his chest. Totally. Yeah.

  33:07

  Grace and us as an audience, we get to meet this highly intelligent Iridian alien. They're separated by like a thick piece of space glass in this tunnel. And we when we eventually get to look at him, he is basically a slab of rock with five limbs, also made of rock. And his movements and his shape give him a kind of I'd describe it as a slight hermit crab vibe. Totally. I I like arachnid. Yeah. It had to be kind of like a crab. It had to be intentional, right? No face, no eyes. Grace calls him Rocky.

  They somewhat mirror the way that the two ships were engaged in that balletic dance chase sequence earlier. They do this pantomiming dance move thing back and forth, it's super adorable. No no no no I'm sorry, I'm sorry.

  Rocky taps on the glass and makes a sort of whale song for speech. And then they do this very, very fun nod, which I'm like very few people in this audience, including Kayla, our producer, was not familiar with Close Encounters of the Third Kind.

  I could hear that anytime. I'm like, I'm there. There's a section of the movie where Grace waits for the Iridian ship to prepare for the tunnel connecting the two ships for a human being. And we we find out that, like, Rocky, back to your point, he's paying attention to whatever's on the other side of this thing. He creates a breathable atmosphere and he creates gravity so that Grace can be comfortable. Yeah. And there's a funny moment where they exchange gifts. So Rocky has constructed one of his many beautiful Xenonite sculptures.

  And Grace reciprocates of the model of the Iridian chip that's made out of ramen. That's pretty funny. This stuff is this is where it's like, all right, it's precious. Yeah. I'm also, whatever disbelief, whatever cynicism has been completely fucking dispelled. I'm just all in. Yeah. We learn that Rocky has created a breathable atmosphere that gives Grace what looks like a and he gives him what looks like a necklace. That's a very funny scene too. He's like, I'm not putting this on.

  but it's shaped, it's shaped like an O and it's there's two of them, and he's like, he's communicating that it's O2, it's oxygen. And it's the first real goosebump moment of the movie for me, admittedly. Yeah. He looks at looks back at Rocky through the glass. He has the two O's, this necklace thing, and he's like, Still don't think I'm gonna do it. Because if I'm wrong, I'm really wrong. He takes, but he eventually takes off his helmet. Yeah. I love Daniel Pemberton's score through this and

  entire section of the movie. It's pure like exaltation and uplift. It's just so, so good vibes. Grace isn't solving this crisis in isolation. Yeah. Back to your point earlier. He's got his buddy. Yeah. He's ready to do some pair programming. They're going to team up and they're going to fucking figure this shit out. Yeah. We learn that Rocky's Planet is also being affected and threatened with extinction from the astrophage. And Grace starts to record home videos for NASA, should they ever see them. Yep. Classic trope.

  But it totally works, just as it worked with Matt Damon and the Martians. Like they had a proof of concept. Lord and Miller weren't gonna shy away from it, nor should they have. And that's still the only way you can communicate across planets. We were doing it in the 60s, in the moon. And like that's literally it's it's like it's a conceit, but it's also the only way humans can communicate over those kinds of distances. So yeah.

  Rocky and Grace ultimately find a way to communicate with a a kind of expanding vocabulary. they create these, Rocky will create these Xenonite sculptures for puppet shows. Great line from

  36:51

  Ryan Gosling as Grace. He says, if I can't understand what he's saying, which is most of the time, he puts on a little puppet show for me and my tiny brain. And you know what? I don't mind it. Rocky tells Grace that there were 23 crewmates on his ship and 22 of them died. It starts to hit. There's some good feels stuff there. It's the first issue of the line, fist my bump. Comes up many times. I'm sure by the time you probably listen to this podcast, you're gonna have seen those memes or you've seen the movie, I would hope. Yep.

  Luke, does the the movies

  I feel like this is like such an obvious question. It's quite rhetorical. But does the movie for you land this tonal shift or does it feel like Rocky is a gimmick? Is he a gimmick or is like a core story element to you at this point? I think what Andy Weir is saying in a a bunch of different ways, he's like a guy who's committed to sort of popularizing science and popularizing what's possible with science. Lord Miller obviously liked buddy films, and that's like perfect because like, you know, the the entire thesis is.

  You need people to make science. So, you know, like it has to be like going back and forth. So it's like we don't know how long Rocky's been there alone. No. And then Grace comes up and he's not doing great, you know. Yeah. and once they start working together, that's when they start making progress. Well, they were producers on Mitchell versus the Machines. They were the directors, writers of Cloudy the Chance of Meatballs. These are movies that have these kind of science very effects, very and very fun. Yeah. But they're adventure movies. Yep.

  And then you take the fact they made those two things, and I know this will sound hilarious to anybody who has not seen these movies, but trust me, if you haven't, twenty one and twenty two jump street. It's they're fucking amazing stellar buddy movies.

  Yeah, I am. You want to be friends? So it is such a great fit that this novel by Andy Weir ends up in the hands of Lord Miller. So at this point in the movie, this is Grace and Rocky, aka odd couple in space. They're building on their communication, they're exchanging knowledge and they're solving problems together. And this becomes both, I think, the emotional and intellectual center of the rest of the movie. Absolutely.

  They have a voice to text. So Grace finally has this epiphany. He's like, why not give Rocky a voice? Kind of like Siri. I have currently a British Cockney voice on Siri. They try out a bunch of different ones, a Scottish male that's pretty funny. They have a Merrill Street moment. That's also very funny. And Gosling has a very kind of meta moment. He's like, she could do anything. Yep. They settle on the voice of James Ortiz. Ortiz is also the puppeteer, and they nicknamed these puppeteers in the movie because there was

  many of them for each of the limbs or whatever. the Rocketeers, which is kind of funny and very cute. The Iridians also like to watch each other sleep, we find out. And so Rocky has this moment where he insists that he watch Grace sleep. He's like, I lost my entire yeah group of friends, twenty three crewmates. I'm the last one. And because I was watching them sleep or whatever, and then they never woke up. So he's got some trauma, right? Yep.

  Grace obliges him. He basically brings a sleeping bag into the tunnel to have a little sleepover. They're just like a couple taking things too quickly. All the different facets of like a rom-com. Totally. It's like, hey, we have a lot in common. You make me laugh. I make you laugh. They start sleeping together. Sure, the first time it's just on the couch, but eventually Rocky moves in. Rocky moves in. And they start living together on the Hail Mary. But before we get to that, Rocky wants to know why. And Rocky kind of actually does it.

  In the way of some of those sort sorts of relationships, Rocky doesn't give Grace a choice, really. No, Rocky just shows up. Yes. Rocky wants to know before we get to Rocky moving in, he wants to know why a school teacher in space. And it's a perfect trigger for the next sequence on Earth, which is dun dun dun, how did Grace end up in space? We meet the original crew that was intended to go on the Hail Mary, a pilot, engineer, and a science officer.

  And it turns out the science officer is a guy named Dubois, who you want to talk about a thankless role. Jesus.

  40:49

  Grace gives a demo about the power of astrophage. They take a little small amount of it and they meant they melt a metric ton of of steel or something. Yeah. Yeah. so it's been harnessed. They have figured out how to harness the energy of astrophage. So it's like that is what they use as the engine to send them to the the stars. Exactly. So Project Tail Mary becomes viable at this point in the Earth timeline.

  Back on the Hail Mary, Grace hears a knock on the door. It's Rocky. He's in a hamster ball. It looks like a 20-sided die made of like space glass. Space glass, yeah. It's more than it's a yeah, it's a hamster ball. It's more than 20 sides. Yeah, much more. But every risk they took financially or creatively with this movie has to pay off with this choice. Yeah. And otherwise, this movie fails, right? They fucking nail it. It becomes full blown back to your idea that like

  Grace was given no choice. It's like full screwball comedy. Yeah. Like Preston Sturgis Eat Your Heart Out stuff. Like Rocky's rolling around every square inch of the Hail Mary and very quickly. And he's shitting all over Grace for being a slob. Yeah. And it's like, why is this so messy? Is this where you keep your trash? Yes, exactly. And Rocky has this great line he from James Ortiz, Rocky will build workshop here. We'll need much more room for Rocky and much less space for Grace.

  It's at this point you realize Rocky's all also only like two feet tall. I don't know. When he was in the tunnel, I some part of me was really you thought he was bigger. I couldn't quite tell. It was like not clear to me. And then you're like, he's a little guy. Yeah, the little guy. Grace keeps doing the home videos, takes on a very 1999 MTV Real World Big Brother vibe. Maybe the funniest moment in the movie. They're both eating. Grace is eating ramen. God, this is so funny. Rocky says, Grace looks disgust when eat.

  And Grace says, Well, how do you eat?

  And the way they shoot this is so perfect. It's through the hamster ball, and Rocky is out of focus in the foreground with his back turned to the camera, but we see Grace's reaction. He's mid slurp this ramen. And like by the way, Ryan Gosling, another thing that he's just like so good at, like Brad Pitt, Hall of Fame, sexy eater of food. It looks like Rocky is eating space jello. Something like that. But he's like basically impales himself with one of his limbs. He fists his bump.

  He fists his bump, dude, into some mysterious orifice. He it and it looks like it it's where a human would a human anus would be. Where a sphincter and basically feeds himself up a what we would think of as the like the butt. Which he had shown before in the movie and thrown into the glass. But yeah, it got the biggest laugh in the theater of the whole movie for me. Real quick before we move on, we've talked a lot about Ryan Gosling as this, you know, teacher sort of fish out of water.

  43:36

  Rocky's crewmates are all dead. He's the only one that survived. Did you did you catch why they died? Who survived? No. The other members of his species die of radiation poisoning, which is why I mentioned fission when I was talking about the tech trees. They live on a planet where they're not as familiar with how deadly radiation is, like the sun's radiation and other like forms of radiation. The astrophages give off radiation, and that's how they travel. Okay. Or no, they eat radiation. Sorry, God, I'm missing this up.

  Grace's hypothesis is that Rocky survived because he was close to the astrophage engine and everybody else was on a different part of the ship and they got exposed to too much radiation. Rocky didn't because the astrophage was eating the radiation, and that whole crew died. But that means that Rocky, again, is basically the ship's mechanic. He's not like the greatest scientist on the planet. He's the dude who's meant to keep the systems running, which is why his like primary tool looks like a soldering gun.

  Mm. And I love that aspect. You picked this up from watching the movie one time? Yeah. You son of a bitch. The screwball gags continue. Rocky's hearing is so good that he can hear Grace complaining on these home videos even when he's barely whispering. This is all super funny. It all works because you want it to. Yep. It's like disbelief completely suspended. It's because the joy of spending time with them. This is the section of the movie where it's like, this is why

  I was Jonesin for some more Rocky and Grayson next time. This is one of those moments where like science fiction is capable of kind of creating greater joy than like fiction, greater fear, greater peril, all of those things. This movie is sort of like all of the things that both can kill us or bring us joy turn to eleven, and I really love that about it.

  And this is why casting Gosling for this role, despite his status as Hollywood's greatest living Adonis, like works out. Because to me, it's like whether it's Emma Stone in La La Land or Steve Corell in Crazy Stupid Love, also Emma Stone in Crazy Stupid Love, or Russell Crowe in The Nice Guys, he's so good at being generous as a scene partner. He pays close attention to his reactions to the actors that he's across in a scene. In this case a rock.

  In this case, a rock. Yeah. and I think it's why his appearance on his appearances on SNL are just becoming so legendary. I can't go five minutes on Instagram without seeing one of those clips. it's the gentleman in the blue shirt and blonde pompadour.

  you mind moving? I'm sorry. Me you're talking about me? I have no idea what's going on. I'm sorry. What? Yes, can you move the seats? okay, sure. I'm sorry. I just I've never heard of that cartoon character. We can't say enough about how well this works because they used a real puppet. Well, I was gonna as you were saying that, I'm like, you can't you can't be a scene partner with a CGI thing. No, with a

  Tennis ball on a string or whatever, which is what they normally do. And and green sc and green screening and keying things out. So it's James Ortiz and these other puppeteers. It's Neil Scanlon, the creative effects supervisor, who worked on the Star Wars movies, also worked on Andor. That stuff's amazing. My God, the bots, the the droids in that show. So how many puppets or how many puppeteers did it take to do five or six. Wow. So one for each one for the body and one for each other. I think so.

  It's Greg Fraser, the cinematographer. He's my favorite currently. Dune movies. yeah. The Dune movies. He did The Batman. He did a great Jane Campion movie called Bright Star. He did Killing Them Softly, which is a great Andrew Dominic film. He did Zero Dark Thirty, which you and I talked about when we did A House of Dynamite. He did Fox Catcher, which we talked a lot about with Carson Lund. Shout out, Carson. We know how much you love Fox Catcher, which is gorgeously shot.

  Gorgeously shot in one of the bleakest movies you will ever see. And like, oof. But rush off to Letterboxd and Carson Lund's review of it and you'll get a good chuckle. I just got I got a little nauseous even thinking about that movie. all working in perfect harmony with Lord and Miller, the co-directors. Some notes from Kayla about James Ortiz. So Ortiz was responsible for building and operating Rocky, but wasn't a sure thing to become the voice until everyone saw how effortlessly he was working with Ryan Gosling.

  So Gosling said that Ortiz seemed to know exactly what Rocky should say and how he should say it, making the choice for Ortiz to be the voice quite an easy one. Ortiz promised Gosling that he would make sure they could keep working with the puppet as loose as possible in order to have room to play. These things can be very rigorous and kill the creativity vibe, it seems. I think this is Kayla's words. I think Ortiz's attention to that point is what made their interactions shine. That's really great.

  48:28

  I don't think James Ortiz is merely good in Project Hail Mary. He's exceptional. But one thing we can obviously say is that being in a scene like that, looking at a physical puppet, yeah, and also hearing a person's voice right there makes it so much easier as a performer for Ryan Gosling. I mean, obvious yeah. Would you say that this is where the movie works best? Like the screwball section and them them getting to know each other and the all the T V real world shit. Yeah, no, absolutely.

  And and then just like they're trying to solve problems together too. Yeah, yeah.

  Building their relationship. Yeah. Great segue. This is all funny. It's all heartwarming, but they still got to save Earth. They got to save Arid. Is it Arid or Ares? I think it's Arid. Arid. They make a plan to gather a sample of astrophage and figure out why Tau Setti isn't being affected by it. It's adventure time for Grace and Rocky. They go out near Tau Setti to collect a sample. And there's a moment where Grace is looking at Tau Setti. Whew. Gave me real Danny Boyle's sunshine.

  Killian Murphy? Yeah, but it's been so long. I don't know if Chris Evans is in it. He has a kind of a small role in it. Way early in his career. Yeah. gorgeous looking moment using a combination of VFX, but also some simple practical effects. Two big Lexa sixty fives on a crane. One of them has the infrared filter pulled out, which allowed us to give you that IR effect. And on these close-ups.

  what we did was we built a chicken wire cage filled with tiny infrared blinking lights like Christmas lights that to the naked eye looked like nothing. And then had Ryan in the middle standing there in his spacesuit looking at his hands and looking around and it looked like nothing to the naked eye but with the camera with the IR filter off it was this beautiful blinking pink boca all around him.

  People are going assume that that's VFX. No, that's all practical. So cool. Kayla's fun fact. They interviewed a bunch of real astronauts to help capture the ambiance of space. And they had all described it as a very spiritual experience. And so they really wanted to get that right of how incredible it feels. He has a moment where he's like, Will you look at this? And Rocky's like, Yeah, boring. Well, that's that's the other thing. We realized like this, there's all these little moments where

  He's responding to something that he sees with his eyes. Yeah. Later on, Rocky basically has to create a little computer display because Rocky really sees sort of like differences in like scenery. So it's like topography is what right. Yeah. His his style of vision. That's right. He can't even really see these things that's boring because there's nothing there. Cause like he can't see them. Different. Yeah. Like his sensory perception is different than that. Totally.

  Grace tells Rocky that he gets to name the planet. and he says medium rough texture circle planet.

  And yeah, ex and because I that's how he perceives the Yeah, exact exactly. And Grace's it's a perfect segue from what you just said. And Grace is like, why don't you name it after your mate? Which he does some whale speech for that. And he's how about we just call it Adrian? Another reference that don't think very many people in the audience probably got, unless they're Gen X or older. was the reference again? Rocky, the movie Rocky. Yeah. There you go.

  Now we get a great musical montage featuring the song Rainbows by Dennis Wilson of the Beach Boys.

  51:52

  Rocky tells Grace about his mate on Erid and reveals that he's 186 years old. I thought at this point that so they Grace and Rocky do some karaoke in the MMA cage made of LED. And then we segue to a karaoke scene that I'm going to get to in a moment back on planet Earth. But I thought after this, I thought they were going to reveal. I was pretty sure that Grace was about to say that he was involved with the Lily from ATT. Maybe because I thought if I was him, I'd be pursuing Lily from ATT. But

  No, it turns out no, he's got a very simple ex exposition. His backstory is just not much. He's just kinda like, Yeah, I had a I had a girlfriend, but she ran off with another guy named Mark and Rocky delivers one of the greatest lines from the movie. He's like, I hate Mark. So it turns out that Sandra Huller, who plays Eva Strat, is a hell of a singer.

  She is in a bar. It's kind of it's coded a little top gun, Kelly McGillis. A hundred percent kind of a vibe. She belts out a strikingly soulful rendition of Harry Styles' sign of the times. We get to watch Grace watch Strat. I counted, Luke. I watched the scene, I counted 11 reaction shots. It's a choice by Lord and Miller, but I will admit that seeing Ryan Gosling.

  Do this 11 times. Really no change. He didn't really give anything else. It's just the same effect. I thought they could have cut that down by half. Much commentary has already happened been made about the way Ryan Gosling does or does not wear his glasses in this movie. The number of times I wish I could wear my glasses like this without getting fingerprints all over them. And like, you know, because he's like, they're down here like half the time. You know, he like when he takes them off. These

  I'm wearing what should be progressive lenses. So, hey, who amongst us, right? Right. Right. Eleven reaction shots. And yes, you're right. His go-to choice to say scientist was to put the glasses down the precious nuts. Anyway, Grace and Rocky get into the lab, they make a discovery. They realize that Tausetti isn't being drained because there's basically a predator on Adrian, something that eats the astrophage and keeps it in check. And we now enter the heart-pumping action adventure section of the movie. High stakes.

  Low probability mission to save Earth and to save Arid.

  This microbe eats astrophage. And now they just need to make a bunch of it. They need to grow a bunch in breeder tanks. They need to insulate it, toughen it up to survive the journey back to Earth. And for Rocky, of course, to get some back to Arid. And this is where Rocky learns of Grace's fate. Pretty touching, really well done scene. Lots of pathos. We we learn that Grace is going to die soon. He's like, hey, this is a one way trip for me. He's like, I know I'm not going home. I know why. And it's okay.

  Rocky offers Grace enough astrophage to make the He says, I've made peace with it.

  So Rocky's like, hey, I've got whatever, three million grams of astrophage. You can have some, you can have some of mine and you can make the return trip home. Grace breaks down, he cries. And I will admit to you, Luke, I may even do it right now. I stopped myself in the movie theater from crying because it worked. Yeah. Like Officer Carl, I stopped myself because I'm a grown man. He hugs the hamster ball and I just love the scene. I it's it's so beautifully done. It's like they have commuted, they have.

  probably exhausted how they can express affection or kindness or whatever, love for one another through speech. And even if it's a a 20-sided die made of space glass, he hugs the hamster ball and the need for touch, their affection turned tactile, it totally worked for me. Even though it's through glass, it fucking wrecked me. There's that moment where And I can't remember if it it was sort of prompted by something Rocky said, but Gosling says

  He's like, I said I said I had accepted it, but that's just the thing you say. I'm so not I had so not accepted it. Yeah. Like Yeah, he's like, wait a minute, you said you you're at peace. Yeah. He's like, I was lying. I didn't mean that. Just the thing you say. So Luke, man, Lord Miller's decision to use a physical model for Rocky in Project Hail Mary. It becomes at this point, it's like that was an essential decision. No way this movie works out otherwise. Yeah. I think it was a billion dollar decision.

  It might not hit a billion, but this thing is gonna just crush. It's continuing to do really well. Yeah. All right. Back to the movie. On planet Earth, there's a massive explosion. Shocked the hell out of the audience I was with, shocked the hell out of me. Right. That's it. No explanation. Grace is in the middle of chatting with Eva Stratt about the upcoming mission and there's just this huge explosion. We click, we quickly cut back to Rocky and Grace.

  And I just feel like the two timelines become this these mega stressful set pieces. they're there to collect this microbe.

  56:40

  They succeed. They get back on the Hail Mary probe, but there's a hole in the ship. I'm not going to describe all the many, many things that happen in the action of this scene. I wouldn't do it justice, but Grace realizes there's a hole. He cuts the fuel tanks, the probe starts spinning like a top. Several, several G forces send both of them crashing into the walls of the probe. And I immediately I'm like, I'm getting emotional. This is tough. Rocky's badly injured.

  Grace is knocked out. Rocky's gets badly injured saving Goslin. Yes, because he climbs out of his hamster ball. And you know that he can't tolerate that atmosphere, but he manages to attach an oxygen mask to Grace, who's passed out. And get him to the robot doctor. And get him to the robot doctor. God. And I'm like, I did not expect this to hit me like this when I was watching this movie. Back on Earth, we learn that the explosion had killed Dubois, the science officer.

  they were doing tests with astrophage we just learn like how volatile this thing is. Yep. and it dawns on Grace that Strat intends to replace Du Bois with him. Back to the Hail Mary. Grace wakes up on the probe. He's in a kind of makeshift medical bay being attack being attended to by Armando. He's patched up thanks to Rocky, but he gets out and finds that Rocky's in super bad shape. I totally curious if what you thought. I was gonna die. Rocky, I was like, it's necessary. They're gonna it's gonna happen. I'm gonna be a puddle.

  Grace holds vigil for Rocky. He watches him sleep. He says, I'll watch you sleep, buddy. Grace analyzes the microbe. He names it Tao Meba. He's talking to Rocky, even though Rocky's passed out. And we assume he is either dying or dead. Right. he preps the Tao Meba for the trip back to Earth. They say earlier the reason the Iridnians watch each other sleep is like the way they sleep, they basically are like paralyzed and they can't revive themselves. So they basically it's sort of like it's a it's a protection mechanism to like

  Sleep in shifts, maybe, or you're you're watching over your loved one so they don't get attacked. I don't know what predators are on their planet, but that's the idea. And so it's like he's he's gonna be like sleeping like a rock, whether he's alive or dead. And that was one of the moments I thought like whatever reason Andy Weir had for making that choice in the book, that just like that weird, like it's really a moment about sort of

  human or extraterrestrial connection, like watching your partner sleep is like a sign of love and affection, but it also works really effectively here to be like, I don't know if this guy's alive or dead. And I and I think none of what happened to that point was surprising to me. and I guess what I'm trying to say is I don't like not many movies are really that good at holding the suspense of whether something's gonna happen or whether it doesn't happen or which of these two look you know I felt like I was in

  Like I was Schrodinger's cat for so long. That's a great know. That's a great way of describing it. And it was really effective. Yeah. I was held in suspense really effectively by this. I think the editing, the pacing, the performance by Gosling, everything about it. he eventually the Grace character passes out. He's exhausted. He wakes up to see that Rocky is there. He has somehow found a new hamster ball. And I think, again, this is one of the best things about the movie.

  The book has 500 pages to get through these major story elements. Right. Lord and Miller, they very, very smartly elide many of the major things that happen. So the viewer is invited to just think, I'm sure Rocky ran a quick trip back to his ship to build another hamster ball. They hug. Or he just used the weird little like extraterrestrial soldering iron he has like attached to one of his arms. Totally. when it at first Grace is kind of in disbelief. He's a little bit

  his mind is scattered from waking up from probably a really long and deep sleep. They hug again and again their need for touch. Again, my need to cry. This time I definitely do. I had a couple moments in this movie where I teared up. And it's like, hooray, they did it. Resolution music from Daniel Pemberton's score. They party on the ship. But we get basically a 20-minute epilogue that's punctuated by a crisis. So I thought this is one of the

  the first kind of natural endings to the movie, but I realized there was at least 30 minutes left in it. Yeah. it starts with an emotional goodbye. Grace goes back aboard Rocky's ship. The resolution music tempo increases. It it feels appropriately ABC after school special. Yeah. Very choral world music sort of vibe from Pemberton. Literally like there it is sort of like this could be a like an intro to a song on

  01:01:06

  Paul Simon's Graceland or something. Yeah, and he's he's not shying away from it. Or you know what actually no, this is it actually reminds me of some of that choral chanting in the Thider and Line. That's a great, great pull. It's uplift dialed to 11. It's on steroids, but I'm completely into it. Back on planet Earth, we get the reveal of how they got Grace aboard the Hail Mary. They effectively roof him into being the replacement for Dubois. Yep. Hence.

  Grace waking up on the probe not knowing how he got there to begin with in the opening of the movie. I thought when watching this the first time, funny, also a little disturbing. Extremely disturbing. Yeah. They don't have an ounce of consent from Grace. No. And there's a funny chase sequence involving Officer Carl. And the last words that we hear from Grace is before ostensibly being imprisoned and thrown onto the Hail Mary is from Officer Carl when he's like face down in the dirt. He's like, You know who you are.

  You're gonna do great. Mm-hmm. I want to admit, I talked to Ray about this movie, my wife Ray, about this movie last night. And I'm gonna save my thoughts about this moment until we get to our takeaways. But it made me rethink how I thought about this. Interesting. Yeah. So back in space. But we are gonna talk about it more. Yep. Okay. So back in space, the resolution music slows and fades, and Rocky and Grace have a lovely goodbye, some final words from one for one another. And I'm like, how are there still 15 minutes left in this movie?

  So with the astrophage that's been gifted by Rocky, it's gonna take Grace, we find out, four years, two months, and eleven days to return to Earth. But there's an alert on the Hail Mary probe. His computer AI is telling him there's a problem, right? Another record scratch, the movie's not over. Grace discovers that the Tao Meeba has evolved to evade Xenonite. I had to it's I'm I'm glad I watched this twice to figure this out. Basically, the Tao Meba develops this evolutionary property to leak.

  From the xenonite containers that they used as breeder tanks. Right. And it tries to eat the astrophage. It's like, it's got a mission. Not only does it like astrophage, it's like fucking nothing's standing in our way. So it evolves to get out of the xenonite containers. And that's a huge problem because that fuel, the astrophage is their fuel. The this tao meeba eats the astrophage, and that's Grace's and Rocky's fuel to get home. This is a crisis for Grace, and he is able to just like take.

  I think he basically wraps it up in plastic. Yeah. And that's and it's done for him. But obviously Rocky's entire ship is made of out of the container that they were keeping the Tao Meeba in. So he immediately is like, Well, Rocky's gonna die. Yep. He's gonna be stuck in He doesn't even and he has no clue. And he's not and he's probably not gonna have a Ziploc bag like I do because we were come from different planets. Like his entire world is constructed out of this material that this the savior of his world

  Is now able to eat through. Yes. And he realizes not only that, Grace is like, he's gonna be stuck. He'll have taoeba, he'll have no fuel, and his death will also be super slow. And he might not even realize it's happening until it's too late. Yep. Grace can either return home or he can save Rocky. And this is, you know, he can't do both. I was a little bit surprised this happened. I think that the movie felt like it was close to perfect, and I mean perfect in like platonic movie perfect terms.

  Of its pacing, its length, its emotional trajectory. But we get this big crisis. He decides to send a bunch of probes back to Earth with the humanity saving Tao Meeba. He labels them with the names of the Beatles. Yeah. We get a nice needle drop. It's the song Two of Us. quick note from Kayla: Two of Us is literally a song about two people going nowhere, taking the same road. It's doing a lot of work in that scene. Yep. Grace decides: no, I can't let.

  01:04:55

  Rocky die. I have to go save him. Yeah. Does this moment in the movie work for you? Does it feel like a sacrifice, a transformation? He had his agency taken from him when they put him into a coma. He hasn't actually made that many decisions for himself in the entire movie. He just kind of, he's like, Well, I guess I've got this mission now and I'm the only one left. I'm gonna go do it. this is his first opportunity, kind of to make a choice for himself that has real consequences. Yeah, it's almost like I actually kind of did like it. Me too.

  It's almost like strat.

  By roofying him, woke him up to like, hey, we should all feel some form of obligation to help planet Earth do better. Yeah. And honestly, that's what Ray's challenge was when I was talking about my hesitance about the roofie thing and the consent issue. She's just kind of like, yeah, but you know what she's basically saying to him in that moment? Suck it up, buttercup. Yeah. You are probably necessary for generations of human beings. And I I have always found the idea.

  That a human being doesn't care about human beings that come after them. A little off-putting, I'll just say it gently and politically. Yeah. Fucking really bothers me when people have an attitude. I think the transformation is real. It works. It lands. So I'm first going my movie critic mode thing, going, What are they doing? It's perfect. And I think the I think what this leads to is an even better choice later. We can talk about that. Absolutely. So he finds Rocky, the probes get to Earth.

  Eva Strat is still aboard the aircraft carrier for reasons. It's been four years. I don't know if she ever leaves the aircraft carrier. I thought that was kind funny. she gets to watch Grace his home videos, including the existence of Rocky. She has a nice little smile. I'm glad they didn't linger on it because I was like, I don't really care what Eva Strat sorry. For the second time, I'm assuming the movie's over. It has to be right. But I'm just like, there's still five minutes left. What are they gonna do with this?

  Fade to black on a beautiful shot of planet Earth. The sun is cresting the horizon.

  Wait a minute, what's this? There's a knock at the door. The odd couple is in space again. Grace is on Arid with Armando, his droid, and his robot assistant. There's a knock on the door. It's Rocky. we find out that the Iridians have built a biome with human friendly atmosphere and a big old beach with a giant machine that makes tidal waves. Yep. I love the movie.

  I think that this stuff might have been a little bit too perfect for me. How did you feel about this stuff? I made it silly. So he so basically what's happening is Rangosling is in this in this biodome, basically, he's poly shore on Aridney. yes. And but he also has a job. Cause he's they're walking across the beach, he and Rocky. Rocky now has graduated from a ball to more of like an exosuit that he's made with the glass and stuff. It's pretty cool. Yeah. but they're he's more fitted. He's basically walking he's

  It's a lot more fitted. Narrow fit. Yeah. Yeah. and it's a testament to how much Rocky loves his friend, that he's like kind of, you know, continues to put himself into the suit in so he can go breathe in or be in an atmosphere that would kill him instantly and almost did. but Rocky's basically walking Grace to work because we get to the end, and Grace is now a teacher again, teaching Iridnian children about whatever science. Yeah. I mean, Rocky has been.

  To some degree anthropomorphized in this movie, you'd expect that. Come on. Again, disbelief suspended. I don't care. I'm into it. But now I just felt like this again is just a nitpick. I love this movie. He kind of behaves like a dog, you know. He's scurrying around the beach. I halfway expected Grace to throw him a bone, you know? Yeah. It was a little, here boy.

  It was like, yeah, it was literally I mean he calls him pal, he doesn't call him buddy, it's not quite dog language, but it's it's get it's like they don't present as much as equals in this moment to me. I just felt like interesting. I don't know that I got that. I I'm I'm I'm being shitty. Yeah. He's walking him to work, but he's saying, Hey, we've got enough astrophage to send you home. Right. And this this is a counterweight to what I'm describing. Yeah. Because he's like, We've got enough our scientists have figured out how to get you home.

  Yeah. And

  Again, back to the idea of consent. I think the way that you've articulated this has helped me with my own reading of the movie, which is like he did not make the choice to help humanity. He did make the choice to help Rocky and ostensibly Iridians. That entire planet. Yeah. And at the end, when he's presented again with a choice, he's like, We've got a way to get you home. He goes, Yeah. I wanna can I think about that? Basically. Yeah. Great line from Rocky. He's like, Yeah, think about it for a long time.

  Yeah, because he doesn't want his friend to go. Yeah, like

  01:09:23

  We didn't really talk about the lack of any sort of love interest for Ryan Gosling. He was sort of he was this driven scientist, clearly, who had this crazy idea. It ended up being wrong, but it also kind of destroyed his career. He we see him as a teacher and he clearly loves interacting with the students. He's good at being a teacher, but there is a sense that like his life did not go the way it planned. Yeah. Yeah, and it's kind of rad that this movie doesn't fuck with his sexuality at all. It doesn't even matter. No.

  Yeah. And so he's like, he really had not chosen, he didn't have much community on Earth. He actually ends up finding community on this weird planet. So the fact that in he's he has a friend. Like we don't even know on earth if he had one friend. Well, so two of the scenes in this movie that I'm kind of picking on the karaoke scene and now this one, you're helping me, you're providing this counterweight because I'm going, I kind of like that he has this just affection for Eva Strat while she's singing this cool song, you know, and doing such a great job out of it.

  He doesn't like flirt with her. It's not seduction. It's amusement. And that's fine. Yeah. I like that. that's the end of the movie. He does. He goes into a a classroom filled with little baby Iridians, and it's a perfect bookend. He starts the movie as a teacher, he becomes a savior, he ends the movie as a teacher again by asking a question. And again, back to your observation w when you made the kind of blizzard Starcraft thing of like,

  Look, there are gaps in knowledge and what is known by Iridians. They're not I love that he doesn't fetish the Iridians as being like, fucking, they know everything and humans are morons. No, it's actually like the Ryan Gosling's character knows things that Rocky doesn't know. Yep. So when he asks these Iridian kids speed of light, they don't know. And he's gonna teach them. Yep. But they're gonna teach him a ton of shit that he doesn't know.

  It's really that part is cool, even though it's a little I felt a little handled by Lord and Miller with that. But again, I'm like

  I'm a 50 year old man. This is not I'm fine with just looking at some Grogu esque, you know, Iridians. Can we can we return briefly to Top Gun? Yeah, of course. I would not have wanted a celebration on the aircraft carrier type of ending here. Like the point of Grace's growth for me is not that he becomes the hero of the world. He finds community for himself. And that's maybe where he wants to stay. He doesn't actually care much about fame. Dude, it's the ending of Boys Go to Jupiter.

  That's what I was just about to say. You you beat me to it, but that's exactly what it is. Hey, one of our 16 episodes is about Julian Glander's brilliant Boys Go to Jupiter, where the bo the character of that movie decides, I'm gonna go live with a fucking spaceworm. Exactly. Because that's better than Earth. And honestly, like that, that feels right to me. Because that's the only thing that character had not like the character had his own growth to do, and he did it. Not he chose he did not choose to save his own planet.

  He did chose not even necessarily to save.

  Rocky's planet, he chose to save his friend Rocky. And I think that's the most beautiful part. Let's take a quick break here. We'll come back and give our final thoughts and takeaways about Project Hail Mary.

  01:12:28

  So let's use this framing for our takeaways. Grace starts as a teacher, becomes a savior, ends as a teacher again. The thing you just described, Ray said the same thing last night when we were chatting about this movie. My wife Ray, she's a a character on this podcast at this point. She processes so many of these ideas with me. she talked about that. She said, you know, the celebration on an aircraft carrier would have fucking sucked had they done that. So whether I was like, okay, it's a little too precious.

  I now I think I'll look at it just completely different because I'm just so grateful that it there were no fucking aircraft carrier high fives and fist pumps, right? So Ray introduced me to the work of a woman named Joanna Macy who passed away last July. It sounds familiar, but I don't you know what's what's her So she was the co-author of a book that came out in 2012 called Active Hope. She was an author, an environmental activist. Okay. I think I know. Yeah, okay.

  And the kind of like Google description of this book that she co-wrote called Active Hope.

  A guide for finding resilience and purpose amidst global crisis like climate change, offering tools to move from despair to empowered action, introduces the concept of the great turning, a societal shift to a life-sustaining civilization, and provides practices to honor pain for the world, find strength in community, and contribute to this transition and make life more meaningful. So, you and I, Luke, we mentioned it earlier in the podcast.

  We are you gonna ask me how meaningful you make my life? The things we talk about on this podcast, these movies, no other choice, Eddington. It's easy to get caught sitting around and not participating in anything that makes life meaningful or better, right? Waiting for someone to inspire you to change instead of actively participating in creating inspiration for yourself or for others. And that's what I think this movie does really, really well. It's so life affirmingly positive and wholesome.

  I mean, yeah, it really, really is. the difference for me and why I kind of came in here being like, you know, blockbusters, fuck yeah, was like I just felt like an escape. And and for the for the escape to have to be so wholesome, I actually think I'm getting less cynical as I get older. Like I'm I think I would have thought this was cornier than I do now, you know, twenty years ago or something. Or I might have and it and it would have been an affectation, I think. My entire career in ways

  has been like an active rejection of the things that would make me the most money. I think maybe toward the only things I can think of doing that might bring me a little hope. The example of Joanna Macy and this idea of active hope is one of not giving into cynicism. Yeah. Because I've been the same way, man. Totally. And this interconnectedness, even with across the solar system with another alien life form.

  I think is really interesting. The fact that this alien Rocky is a rock. Think of Earth. You know, we we feel like, this is terrible. This is happening to Earth, but we're not, you know, it's, you know, we're not, we're not part of it. Like that we're somehow not part of the thing that's being destroyed by climate change. It's like, no, this rock that we live on. So the fact that Rocky is a that Rocky that the Iridians are rocks, I think is perfect. I also thought about the TV show Andor and how.

  Cassian is at one point in the really important episode from season one where he's been passive throughout the whole thing. He's just kind of getting by and Luth's working on him. He's like, You really want to get back at the Empire? Here's how you do it. And he's like, Nah, I'm not for me. And when he's about to get thrown in jail by one of the droids, he says, I'm just a tourist. He says it over and over again.

  Which is a way of saying, like, I'm just watching this shit go down. Yeah. He's like he's pretending to be a tourist, but that's right. Yeah, yeah. That's right. And he says it over and over again. He's getting ready to he's in prison. He's getting ready to meet the Andy Circus character. Spoilers for Andor. And he's like, I'm just a tourist. I'm sorry, there's something wrong. I wouldn't. We got enough trouble without a resisting judgment charge. I'm just a tourist. apologies all round then. This used to be a six month sentence.

  01:16:50

  Six years. Six years. No, no, wait. Change your guidelines. Take them away. I didn't do anything. Hey, take it up with the Emperor. Wait, I'm just a tourist. And it's like Joanna Macy or Ray last night we were talking about be no, you're not. Participate. I want to ask you a question. Okay. Because of how climate change with a twist is depicted in Project Hail Mary. Would human beings fight back against a climate crisis that happens to us instead of by us?

  As depicted in Project Hail Mary, right? So astrophage is this thing that's happening out there. It's like, we could all get behind that because it's not our fault. That's not why I thought it was galvanizing for people, but yeah, maybe. Cause like we like another. We like a we like to fight an enemy. Like that's I think one of the astrophage. Well, and it's like that's kind of one of the I mean, well, actually, both in like toxic and less toxic political movements. It's like you're like you're galvanizing around an enemy, right? Like

  Yeah. It's the oligarchs if you're Bernie Sanders. It's, you know, brown people if you're Donald Trump. and this is the history of neoconservatism. And I also think like it's also just like a lot more imminent of a threat. It's like gonna kill it's gonna it's gonna nuke the world in a like a decade and like, you know, twenty, thirty, forty, fifty years. Although back to the David Wallace Wells piece, I don't know. I mean Ray was talking to me again about some

  Recent thoughts that were expressed by another environmental activist, a guy named David Suzuki, who said, We're past the tipping point for climate change. However, this is a big however. If you have kids or grandkids, you better find you some active hope. You don't want to just read David Wallace Wells and curl up into a ball. And that's probably why I love this movie. It is so life-affirmingly positive and optimistic. Lord and Miller have built their careers around friendship movies, friendship through hardship and

  I think they they they just made me feel real good. So what's your cynical take? Well, my cynical take now that I'm thinking about it is the reason humanity came together in this way is that probably Elon Musk or his his antecedent in this world and people like him were like, wait, we we can't buy an island our way out of this one. yeah. You know what I mean? Like it's if the sun goes away, we all die. So yeah, let's commit all of our resources. Absolutely. We have to do that. You know, I think the people that are

  Writing the fine line who know better and are making too much money to get out of fossil fuels, all that stuff. They're like, Well, those people might die, but I'll survive. And this was a situation where no one there was absolute certainty no one was gonna survive. Well, you can't imagine in this world it's depicted in Project Hail Mary, the the Elon Musk's the world would be making sure they're on Project Hail Mary, you know? Yeah, no, that's absolutely true too. Elon would be like, fuck this Ryland Grace guy. Let me in there. I'm so smart.

  At first, I wrote

  about this movie that I felt transported, but not necessarily transformed. But through my conversations with you doing this podcast just now, or with Ray, when we were talking about it last night, even, I think I may have been. I don't know about, I don't know about how I was transformed, but I feel like I have been changed, altered to whatever degree as a person just experiencing culture and stories with people in a dark theater.

  I think now that you've brought up the hope thing and I think this is really great, it's helping me wrap a bow on like my feelings of like what and I'm not saying all science fiction and I'm not saying all dystopia, but like in general and especially like the golden age of science fiction and like what science fiction at its best tries to do, I think, is be a vehicle for hope. You know.

  despite whatever massive challenges there are, despite whatever rules you might have to change about the way the universe works to make the fucking, you know, propulsion drive on these engines, regardless of what, you know, thing you have to, you know, creature you have to create to make it work. It's the kind of hope that drives the kind of experimentation or the kind of change, the kind of societal change, the kind of, you know, scientific change that leads us toward something, right? It it

  keeps it is it is the astrophage projection. It is the toot and scoot that like pulls the world along. We have to believe there's something better. And that's what imaginations are for. Imaginations are for solving problems, but also imaginations are for imagining a better world and then thinking you might have the tools to get there. I don't remember who this was. I went to a like a sci-fi conference a long time ago that was in Spokane and there was a a panel with a science fiction author. I don't even remember his name and he was talking about

  01:21:35

  A short story that had basically turned him into a writer and made him a scientist. The idea to him as a child that was so compelling was actually the story about an ammonia planet, which is a planet like Rocky's from. So this story was about these sentient, like cloud animals that were floating through. Cause also ammonia gas is a lot more dense than like oxygen. So the whole story was about like.

  This life was possible. It's possible to have life that's not carbon based, that's not, you know, water based. And and this guy was talking about how beautiful that was. And I couldn't help but thinking about that when I was thinking about this, the only other creature that I've ever thought of that, you know, comes from an ammonia planet, Rocky. And I could have almost imagined like a young Ryland Grace reading that book when he or reading that short story when he was a kid and be wait, yeah, maybe I will figure out if there can be life, you know, that's not made you know.

  primarily composed of water. That is what literature does. That is what film does. That's what art does, I think at its best. We need things And I think this this movie's gonna do that for a generation of kids. And because we need we need hope, we need to toot and scoot our way to something. And if we and if movies like this do it and it's a little saccharine, sorry, I'll take that. And on the topic of hopefulness and one of the criticisms of this movie is its length and how it has all those kind of

  False endings, right? Those moments that look feel like endings, but they're just trapdoors for for more to dole out more positivity and more hopefulness, really. Let's be honest. That's ultimately what's happening. And I came down on that side of things. I was like, man, it's too long, whatever. But then I was like, if that's true, I was not expecting to be drinking coffee the next morning and going, I really miss those guys. I wish I could have spent more time. Those two things are kind of contradictory.

  Did it ever even though it's two twenty two hours and forty minutes or whatever, did it feel slow to you though?

  No. No, I was like used No I never once thought this was too long. No.

  All right, let's take a little moment here and talk about some other movies. You can't help it. I'm gonna use the word pastige. We've made jokes about that in the past. I don't mean it negatively. Lord and Miller have made it abundantly clear that they're familiar with all the great sci-fi action adventure movies. And they're also super self-deprecatingly funny when they talk about it. They're like, Yeah, we hope Project Hail Mary is thought of that way. Yeah. among them, some super obvious ones. Some have come up in this podcast already, 2001.

  The 1968 Stanley Kubrick movie, Arrival, the 2016 Villeneuve movie movie. I didn't like Arrival. No, we've had this conversation. I feel vindicated. But ooh, ooh. Did not like that movie. Partly because the buddies in that, that friendship does not work at all for me, which is Amy Adams and and the and the goom Jeremy Renner. And I see I did not I didn't hate it. I just it missed me. And I love Villeneuve. Alex Garland's Annihilation.

  Which is like the sci-fi horror kind of a version of like what happens when we interact with a weird alien species. I thought of James Cameron's The Abyss a little bit. And of course, already mentioned Sunshine, Danny Boyle's two thousand seven. The abyss where Abyss, which is basically like it's space, but it's under the ocean, right? Yeah. Like 'cause they are whatever. And they encounter an alien life form. When Ed Harris's helmet fills up with water at that point, I

  I still think about that. I have not watched The Abyss in probably 25 years. That is still one of the most terrifying moments. And it like has colored when Ryland was thinking about pulling his helmet off in this movie. I literally thought about You thought of it's hell yeah. Traumatizing for me. I was 14 when that movie came out. So I thought a lot about when Ed Harris is trying to save his wife character in the movie played by Mary Elizabeth Master Antonio. yeah.

  Two comp two comps that are like super on the nose, and these are my favorite ones to this movie. Moon, 2009 movie with Sam Rockwell, directed by Duncan Jones. Hauntingly beautiful movie about being alone in space. I've never seen it. He's like a contractor who's mining some material and he's got like three weeks left to go and some shit goes down, but it's so beautifully made. On the way home, my daughter Greta, 15 years old. You're so proud. She's a Cinephile. You're so proud. You what she asks me? Have you seen Interstellar Dad?

  01:26:04

  I'm like, have I ever? I feel like this is a kind of a primer of a movie for Interstellar. You watch Project Hail Mary, and then you graduate into watching Interstellar. But they both have the same thing. Love Tars. That's why I'm here. I'm gonna find a way to tell Murph, just like I found this moment. How? Love Tars. Love. It's just like Bran's head. My connection with Murph, it is quantifiable.

  Love is the story of Interstellar. I'm so proud of her. She also introduced me to Ty West movies recently. So check out Pearl and X if you haven't. they're both so great. Just watch those recently. And of course, Spielberg, we already talked about Close Encounters of Third Kind and E.T. I hate myself for saying this. I hope nobody like James Ortiz ever listens to this. I did think about short circuit. No wonder you're malfunctioning.

  Switches are my switches. Life not malfunction. Not malfunction. I am alive. Did do you know that movie? Johnny number They literally made a Johnny Five reference two days ago in a group chat. Because of this movie? No. Unrelated. You didn't think about it watching this movie? All right. No, but I've seen Short Circuit seven thousand times. So Fisher Stevens, if you know, you know.

  I pass no judgment. I'm just saying I thought about it for it's a different time. I thought about it for a few small moments, a few small beers. I just yeah. A few small beers. The voice of Johnny number five. I see. Reminded me a little bit of the way that the vocalization of Rocky's character. like I said, I hope James Ortiz never listens to this. I'll be like, fuck. Did he just say I sound like Johnny number five? Another comp that could be made is that there were two different versions of Solaris. There's the

  Classic, original, Andre Tarkovsky, Solaris. And then there's the Steven Soderbergh remake with George Clooney. Right? I love both. I've never seen the original, but I do like the second. Cliff Martinez score in the Soderberg version is sublime.

  Tried to find the rhythm of the world where I used to live.

  Silent.

  Conscious effort to smile.

  I think there's another version of Project Hail Mary that could be made that accomplishes the following. I did read somebody whose opinions I respect that said they wished it was 30 minutes shorter and 20% less unserious. I do understand where they're coming from with that. That there were moments where, in particular, you know, we talked about the hug, we talked about some there, there, there's there's room for a different interpretation of Andy Weir's novel.

  Hmm. Lorden Miller, in very Lorden Miller fashion, made their like a a quintessential movie for them. Right. But I do think there's room for somebody to do a different adaptation eventually. What does that look like? I don't know. But I I feel like I could see a more austere, not quite Nolan, but some different Nolan obviously wouldn't do it because he's done Interstellar, but the corniness helped me a little bit. The f the you know, the goofiness helped me. the bar's been said hi. Whoever does do this, and hopefully it's not within the next.

  Fucking 20 years. Yeah. But I agree. I don't know. I think that it's a perfect match, Andy Weir and Lorden Miller. Yeah. I think so. For all the reasons that we've described. I think so too. All right. I think that's gonna do it for this episode of all those moments. We hope you enjoyed your time with us. If you did, hit that subscribe button, give us a review, and fist that bump. Fist that bump, Benji.

  Our next episode will be David Lowry's Mother Mary, starring Ann Hathaway and FKA Twiggs. Love, love, love The Green Knight. So if you haven't seen that, Luke, that's your homework assignment. I actually had to read Gowan in the Green Knight when I was in for my degree, my English degree in college, and it was bad, but I heard this movie was good. So I'm trying to I love it. I'm trying I've I've wanted to watch this, but I haven't, partially to to rehabilitate Middle English literature for myself.

  So The Green Knight is fucking weird. Dev Patel shout out. He's so great in it. But I've heard that Mother Mary is extremely weird. So I'm super interested in doing a weird movie. I don't think it's a bleak movie, by the way. Don't want you to be scared, like we're gonna go do some existential crisis movie. Okay. That's gonna be our next episode. Thank you to the magic lantern. Thank you to everyone for watching or listening. Thank you to Matthew on Patreon. We have a Patreon subscriber, which is kind of cool and kind of out of nowhere. Yeah.

  01:30:45

  Especially k given the fact that we haven't really done anything with Patreon. Maybe someday we'll do a repertory film just for a paywalling purpose. If we get like five more of those, we could pay for our movie tickets. Exactly. Thank you to our dear friend Kayla Brooke for helping to produce this episode. And thank you, Luke. Thanks, Benji.

  does.

  In time, I'm not.

  Yeah.