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Project Hail Mary · This Film is Lit

• 0:04
  Speaker A: This Film is Lit, the podcast where we finally settle the score on one simple Is the book really better than the movie? I'm Brian and I have a film degree, so I watch the movie but don't read the book.
• 0:15
  Speaker B: And I'm Katie, I have an English degree, so I do things the right way and read the book before we watch the movie.
• 0:22
  Speaker A: So prepare to be wowed by our expertise and charm as we dissect all of your favorite film adaptations and decide if the silver screen the or the written word did it better. So turn it up, settle in and get ready for spoilers. Because this film is lit. Humans have a remarkable ability to accept the abnormal and make it normal. It's Project Hail Mary and this film film is lit. Hello and welcome back to this Film is Lit, the podcast where we talk about movies that are based on books. We have so much to talk about. This is a switch episode. You know, when I read things, I. I write too many notes. Just write too many notes. We have every single one of our segments, so we're gonna jump right in. If you have not read or watched Project Hail Mary, we're going to give you a summary of the film right now. Let me explain. No, there is too much. Let me sum up.
• 1:30
  Speaker B: In the near future, middle school teacher and former molecular biologist Ryland Grace wakes up from an induced coma on the interstellar spacecraft Hail Mary. Suffering from amnesia, Grace learns that he is the sole survivor of a three person crew that was traveling towards the TAU CETI system, 11.9 light years from Earth. In a series of flashbacks, Grace recalls that scientists discovered a Petrova line of infrared light stretching from the sun to Venus. An alien microbe in the line dubbed Astrophage was proliferating on the sun's surface, dimming the sun at a rate that would cause catastrophic global cooling within 30 years. The head of the Petrova task force, Ava Straat, recruited Grace to study it due to his background in speculative astrobiology. Grace experimented on a sample and discovered that Astrophage was composed of unicellular organisms that absorb electromagnetic radiation from the sun and expel it for propulsion. Grace joined Strat's Project Hail Mary, an international long shot mission, to send a crewed spacecraft to Tau Ceti, the only star in Earth's solar neighborhood not occluded by Astrophage. The flight to Tau Ceti would be a suicide mission as the ship could only carry enough fuel for a one way trip. Any findings would have to return to Earth in smaller space probes. In the Present, Grace encounters an alien spacecraft that docks with the Hail Mary. It is made of a solid form of xenon, which Grace dubs xenonite. The ship's occupant is a rock like five legged alien from arid a planet in the 40 Eridani, a system. Grace names the alien. Rocky deduces that Eridians see via echolocation and creates a machine translation system to interpret Rocky's musical language into English. Rocky is a mechanical engineer and the sole survivor of the Eridians mission to save their own star from astrophage infection. Grace and Rocky agree to work together and become close friends as neither can survive the other's atmosphere. Rocky works aboard the Hail Mary inside a pressurized ball of xenonite. Grace and Rocky study the Petrova line of the planet Tau Ceti e, which Grace names Adrian and discovers that the line hosts an entire microbial biosphere. Rocky theorizes that microbial organisms in Adrian's atmosphere are consuming the astrophage, keeping the population in check. Learning that Grace cannot return home, Rocky offers to share some of his own ship's astrophage fuel with the Hail Mary. Grace remembers that an astrophage explosion killed the original crew's science officers. With no time to train replacements, Strat asks Grace to join the mission. During a risky maneuver to gather the astrophage predator from Adrian's atmosphere, a fuel leak causes the Hail Mary to spin uncontrollably, reacting, rendering Grace unconscious. Rocky breaks out of his ball to save Grace, but is severely injured. While Rocky recovers, Grace studies the captured astrophage predator, dubbing it talmoeba and selectively breeding it to survive the nitrogen in Venus's atmosphere. Rocky revives and the two celebrate their success. Grace recalls that he fearfully refused to join the Hail Mary crew, but Strat had him drugged and put aboard the ship anyway, believing he was the only one capable of completing the mission. Rocky and Grace say their goodbyes and begin their journeys back home. Shortly thereafter, Grace discovers that the Taomiba have evolved to escape its xenonite breeding tanks and is starting to consume Hail Mary's astrophage fuel. Grace stops the talmoeba leak, but realizes that Rocky's ship, being entirely made of xenonite, will have no way to contain the talmoeba. It will eat all of all of Rocky's fuel, straining him and dooming arid. Grace decides to use his remaining fuel to rescue Rocky and the Eridians rather than return home and sends his video logs and tao Moeba samples to Earth via the probes. Strat and her team receive the probes and use the Taomoeba to cure the sun's astrophage infection. Meanwhile, on Arid, Grace lives in an Earth like biodome the Eridians have constructed for him. Rocky informs him that Eridian scientists can prepare the Hail Mary for the return voyage to Earth. Grace ponders the news before beginning another day of teaching science to eager Eridian children.
• 5:58
  Speaker A: All right, that was a summary of the film. We do have a guess who this week. Kind of. Let's do it. Who are you? No one of consequence. I must know. Get used to disappointment. All right. This will be pretty easy, I think. Well, one of them will definitely be pretty easy. I added it as for fun. But the first one, I think you'll get two. She looked to be in her mid-40s, wearing a well tailored business suit. She carried a briefcase.
• 6:31
  Speaker B: Okay, well, unless there are other characters that are in the book but not the movie. I feel like there's only really one person this could be and that is Ava Strat.
• 6:42
  Speaker A: Yes. I believe she has a different name actually now that I'm her first name, it's Strat, but I now I can't remember. Maybe it might just be Ava Stratt. I know they changed her background. In the book she's from like Norway and in the movie she's from Germany or vice versa because of the actress. But yeah, that is Strat. I was there was. I was looking for some other descriptions and there aren't really that many. Kind of had one of Commander Yao but not. It was like one sentence that wasn't really anything. But I did have one more that I just moved up here that you had in a different section. And I'm just going to read it and see if you can get it. He's about the size of a Labrador. He has five legs radiating out from a central carapace looking thing. The carapace, which is roughly a Pentagon, is 18 inches across and half as thick. I don't see eyes or a face anywhere. Each leg has a joint in the middle. I'll call it an elbow. Each leg, or should I say arm, ends in a hand. So he's got five hands. Each hand has those triangular fingers. I got a good, I got a good look at last time. Looks like all five hands are the same. I don't see any front or back to him. He appears to be pentagonally symmetrical. He wears clothing. The legs are bare, showing the rock like skin. But there's cloth on the carapace, the sort of like a shirt with five armholes. I don't know what the shirt is made of, but it looks thicker than typical human clothing. It's a dull greenish brown and inconsistently shaded. The top of the shirt has a large open hole, like where the neck goes on a human's T shirt. That hole is smaller than the carapace. So you must have to put that shirt on by pulling it downward and sliding the arms through their respective holes. Again, like a human shirt. But there's no neck or a head to go through that hole on top. Just a hard looking rocky pentagon that sticks up a little bit from the crusty skin.
• 8:22
  Speaker B: Gosh, who could that possibly be?
• 8:25
  Speaker A: Yeah, I decided to throw that up there just for fun, because you did have a question later in. Was that in the book? Is. Was that. Does Rocky look the way he is described in the book?
• 8:33
  Speaker B: Yeah, yeah.
• 8:34
  Speaker A: And yes, I would say that basically. Exactly.
• 8:37
  Speaker B: Yeah, I would say that's pretty.
• 8:38
  Speaker A: He doesn't have a shirt. No, but he does at other times, which I have some notes about later, have clothing, like items and stuff like that. But he does not wearing like a shirt with sleeves.
• 8:48
  Speaker B: Right. Most of the time. He is apparently nakey.
• 8:52
  Speaker A: Yeah, in the. Yes, in the. In the film. All right, Katie has a bunch of questions. We're going to jump into them. And was that in the book?
• 8:59
  Speaker B: Gaston? May I have my book, please?
• 9:01
  Speaker A: How can you read this?
• 9:03
  Speaker B: There's no pictures. Well, some people use their imagination. Okay, so right off the bat, does the book start in media res with Grace, waking up in the spaceship with no memory of how he got there? Because that's how the movie starts.
• 9:19
  Speaker A: Yes, identical start. And by the way, spoilers, it's gonna be a trend. Identical start. But yes, he wakes up unable to move or speak. And immediately the computer starts asking him what two plus two is as, which we hear in the movie as well. But yeah, exact same opening.
• 9:36
  Speaker B: All right, Is there a room on the ship that's like an omnimax of places on Earth?
• 9:49
  Speaker A: There is not. So that room we see that they have like an entertainment room in the movie that. Yeah, it's like an omnimax for people that don't know who aren't denizens of St. Louis, Missouri. Our science center has this thing which I assume other cities have maybe similar Ish things, a theater called an omnimax that is this big round projection theater where the screen wraps all the way around you in like a dome that is primarily used, or at least it used to Be primarily used to show like nature. Specifically shot nature documentaries that were really cool. Cause there's like you can do things where it really messes with your sense of balance. Not balance isn't right, but your inner ear where it will. Like if you're flying through the air, like watching footage of like from like the first person perspective of like in a plane, in an Omnimax, it feels like you're moving. Or like as stuff moves, it'll feel like you're moving in a way that a normal traditional theater screen does not. Nowadays they use it a lot just to project Imax. Cause it's a huge screen. So they use it to project like IMAX films on and stuff. But they also still do the Omnimax showings. Anyways. It's kind of that idea where it's a fully like wraparound television screen that is not in the book. I have mixed feelings on it. I think they use it to good effect in the film. I think it's a really neat visual space and offers some diversity for the moments of bonding between Grace and Rocky. I also think it's wildly impractical from a spaceship pov. Like a spaceship perspective. Which is something the story kind of does its level best generally to kind of abide by. Like Weir does. Tries to make the stuff in the spaceship as realistic.
• 11:24
  Speaker B: Ish.
• 11:26
  Speaker A: There are some leaps here and there which we'll talk about. But overall he tries to make it kind of grounded in reality. And having a whole giant room that is just video screens for entertainment isn't really like a very useful, efficient use of space. Particularly I find it kind of interesting because part of the point of putting them in a coma that is addressed in the book is to avoid the four year. Avoid them losing their minds during the four year trip right on the way to Tao Ceti. And so this room doesn't have a lot of necessity in my. Because you would think the purpose of a room like that would be to help them deal with the monotony and the blah, blah, blah. But they're in a coma the entire trip and then when they get there they're kind of doing science stuff the whole time now and then. Like again, it's not a big deal. You can argue that it, you know, they would still be used for it while they're there to help like get their mind off stuff and make them like give them some leisure time or whatever. But it's not as, you know, maybe useful as it would be were they not in comas for the entire trip. That Is fair, but I don't really mind it. Again, it makes for a good visual moment where we get some cool scenes where he gets to show Rocky, Earth and stuff like that, which does not appear in the book. So it's fine. I think it's a fun addition for the movie.
• 12:42
  Speaker B: So we do a lot of flashback
• 12:46
  Speaker A: in this movie and you don't really have a direct question about that. That's exactly how the book is structured, where we go back and forth between. Yeah, sorry, you do have. I read the first part of this question and I didn't see the second part of this question.
• 13:00
  Speaker B: Right. So this is a two part question.
• 13:02
  Speaker A: Apologies.
• 13:03
  Speaker B: My first question is, was Grace a middle school teacher? Cause we see him being a teacher when we're introduced. When we start the flashbacks in the movie, we see that he's a middle school teacher. And then hot on the heels of that is my second question. Are parts of the story told via flashback?
• 13:24
  Speaker A: Yeah, so the structure of the story is identical. We open in space and then we jump to flashbacks to reveal the backstory. I was interested to know if it was clear to you in the movie that. That those flashbacks are Grace remembering those things as we see them or if you interpreted and that they aren't simply flashbacks for the audience's sake, but they are, in fact, he is like remembering what we're seeing as we're seeing it.
• 13:51
  Speaker B: So I definitely interpreted it that way. Like the first half of the film. As the film kept going, I feel like I kind of lost a little bit of that specific interpretation. Yeah, but I. I mean, that could.
• 14:09
  Speaker A: But you at least got it there. At least.
• 14:11
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 14:11
  Speaker A: I do think they do a good job with that in the first one where they do that. They're like the way we edit into the first flashback. There's this montage of like flashes of color and like different things that kind of make it feel more like a memory or something. As we. And then later on as we transition into those, they're a little bit more clean. Just like we cut back to the flashback where we don't get that kind of like hazy memory transition type thing. But yeah, that is. That is how the book. It's a big component of the book is that as he's doing something in the current mission in space that will spark a memory that we then flash back to. And then once we get back to space again like the current story, you know, the. Of him on the mission, he now remembers all of the information from that flashback.
• 14:58
  Speaker B: Right.
• 14:58
  Speaker A: So that's kind of how he learns about, he remembers his past is. He's, as we're reading the fl. Getting the flashbacks, he's also remembering those things. And like I said, I just, I was interested to see, like, curious to know, like, how obvious that was in the movie. Because you could do it both ways in a film where those flashbacks we're seeing are simply for us as an audience. And sometimes it does feel more like that, but then other times it's like, yes, he is remembering those things. And to your first question, yes, he is a middle school teacher that he doesn't remember that at first. There's a funny line. I had a note about it later, but it's a good point place to talk about it. There's a moment in the book that doesn't make it into the movie where he, he realizes he doesn't. He doesn't remember anything about who he is or anything, but he realizes he has this memory. He's like, I like kids, but I don't think I have kids.
• 15:44
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 15:44
  Speaker A: And then he has a flashback where he remembers he was a teacher and he's like, oh, thank God I was a teacher. Like, that's why I, like, have this weird affinity for children. I don't. Yeah, it's. Yeah.
• 15:55
  Speaker B: So we see him being a teacher. He seems like he's a good teacher, but then does he get yoinked out of that by an international task force to analyze the samples of the astrophage? And is it because he wrote a dissertation about how maybe water is not necessary for all life?
• 16:20
  Speaker A: Yes, that is all identical. Strat shows up at the school, walks into the classroom after class and forcefully enlists him in the project because he wrote a paper and it's the exact same paper about non water based life. And he was kicked out of academia
• 16:35
  Speaker B: and left out of academia. Yeah.
• 16:37
  Speaker A: Yeah. Although it's a little more complicated than that. Initially it's kind of presented, and I think the movie does this a little bit. But there's, it's. Initially it's kind of presented as like he was like kicked out or like was rejected or whatever. And it becomes clear later in Conversations with Strat that it was more so he. Because the whole thing is about him being a coward and like, it's that he just gave up and was like, oh, well, if people don't like. Yeah, he basically kind of just chickened his way out of academia because he couldn't take people like saying, no, we don't agree with this. We think this is dumb. And it's more so an indictment of him than it is of, like, academia, necessarily.
• 17:16
  Speaker B: See, no, in the movie, I definitely interpreted that as an indictment of academia, but maybe that's because I come from academia.
• 17:23
  Speaker A: Yeah. And like I said, it definitely starts that way in the book. Like, that's how it's presented at first, is like, that's what we're supposed to kind of think is what's going on. But then later, Strat calls him out and is like, that's not the. That's the reason this whole thing, like. Like, it's in the whole conversation where they. They talk about where he tells her he doesn't want to go on the mission.
• 17:41
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 17:41
  Speaker A: And she's like, you're a coward, or whatever. Which we get some of that in the movie. That's a. It's expanded alone in the book. And she goes, it's the same reason you left academia. It's because you're a coward and you couldn't take people telling you you were wrong and stuff like that.
• 17:54
  Speaker B: So he's experimenting with these astrophage, and I wanted to know if there was anything, like, from that first scene, specifically, where they're all, like, watching him from another room, and he's like, am I here because I'm expendable? Because they don't know what it's going to do yet.
• 18:12
  Speaker A: So the identical. The dialogue is not exactly the same, but almost the exact same thing, like, situation takes place where it's Strat and a bunch of random government, military, and, like, world leaders in a room watching him. And he asked Strat why they aren't having other scientists work on this. He's like, this isn't how science works. One guy in a lab is not how you do science. Like, there's, like, whole teams of people and stuff. And then it dawns on him, and he says, you're not taking any chances, but I am. And Strat says, it's not like that. Okay, it's exactly like that. And then later he asks, am I a guinea pig? I'm a guinea pig. And she says the exact same thing again. She's like, it's not like that. Okay, it's exactly like that. And that's kind of the exact same interaction we have there, where he's like this, because I'm expendable. And then she's like, yeah, pretty much.
• 19:02
  Speaker B: So then shortly after that, in the movie, I can't remember exactly how we get to this. I think she's like, okay, thanks for your work. Bye. And he's like, no, hold on. A second. I want to keep working on this. And I wanted to know if this specific exchange was from the book. She says, I don't know if I got it exactly right, but she says something to the effect of, I need people who think they're right when everyone else thinks they're wrong. I need people who piss people off. And he says, that's me.
• 19:35
  Speaker A: Yes. That exact exchange is not in the book. To my memory. I couldn't find it. I also found a PDF in this and was searching and I didn't see it. But it's very much the kind of person Strat is and what she's looking for. She wants brilliant people who look at problems differently. And she. This whole project is like, go as fast and quickly as we can because we do not have time to mess around. So it's like, it's move fast, break things. But, like, we have to move fast and break things because we have literally no other choice. The world is going to end. Which is a whole different discussion about what this book is. It's a whole different meta element of, like, kind of commentary about this book in that it kind of glorifies that, like, move fast and break things mentality. Because in this, which I think is something Andy Weir kind of likes generally, but, like, you have a really good excuse for it in this book because the world is ending. So we get to valorize that whole concept of, like, the tech bro. Like, just, you know, doing crazy stuff to get results. Like, this book valorizes that, but it's like, oh, but in this situation, yes, that is what you would need to do, because we have no other choice. That's a different discussion. One of the things I have a note about it later on a similar note is that in the book, they recruit a guy that's, like, currently in prison, which is a similar. Like, they kind of put together a ragtag group of, like, scientists. And, like, one of the guys they go get is literally in, like, prison in South Africa or no, New Zealand, I think, for manslaughter. I'll talk more about it in a
• 21:02
  Speaker B: little bit, but so we get a. A kind of doing science montage in this particular flashback. And one thing that I really liked about it was Grace's friendship with Carl, who's, like a bodyguard type.
• 21:21
  Speaker A: He's with the government. Yeah, he's with government agent of some sort of.
• 21:25
  Speaker B: And he looks like a government agent.
• 21:27
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 21:28
  Speaker B: But they. They strike up a friendship. They have a fun time at the hardware store when they're going to build their dark Room thing. So I was wondering if there was anything similar in the book.
• 21:39
  Speaker A: So there is something similar. Carl exactly is not in the book, but there is an army guy who's one of the guards that like help go follows him around everywhere named Steve that he mentioned several times. And he says he likes Steve. But the movie amps up this relationship a lot. In the book. It's a very one sided relationship where Grace in his inner monologue mentions how he likes Steve and Mrs. Steve when he's not around. But it's kind of more a jokey thing and they don't really interact that we see it's more of. So it's used more as a revelation of the kind of person who Grace is as opposed to like an actual relationship. I like this in the movie. They definitely don't have a scene in the book where they play around at the hardware store or anything like that. Like I said, I enjoyed this. I like what it shows us about Grace's personality and the way he works with people. And it kind of just reinforces like the. The way he looks at problems differently and it kind of reinforces his like teacher personality. He's like asking this guy, you know, questions about like, what do you think about this? Like, he just. It's a good way to really like build up who Grace is as a character. And I like their dynamic. I think it's fun.
• 22:44
  Speaker B: Another little moment from that scene at the hardware store that I really liked. When they're checking out, the cashier asks if they have a coupon and Carl's like, we don't need a coupon. We're from the government. We're from the government. And she says, which government? And he says, all of them.
• 23:02
  Speaker A: Yeah, that line is not in the book. I do like it. And that general sentiment though is true and comes from the book. Strat has the authority of all of the governments and can do and get basically anything she wants or needs at any time. When she first meets Grace, he asks what she means by saying that she has a certain amount of authority to do whatever. And she replies by. He's like, what do you mean you have a certain amount of authority? And she goes, I mean, I have all of the authority. So it's a similar exchange, but not exactly similar idea. Yeah.
• 23:32
  Speaker B: So we move forward from that and Grace kind of accidentally figures out how to breed astrophage.
• 23:40
  Speaker A: That's all in the book. All of that's identical.
• 23:43
  Speaker B: Yeah. And so then he gets ushered into this meeting and doesn't know what anyone is Talking about. And they like.
• 23:52
  Speaker A: Cause they start referring to Project Hail Mary.
• 23:54
  Speaker B: And he's like, what is that? And they're like, oh, he doesn't have clearance. And Strat has him stand up and grants him clearance in the middle of this meeting. Does that happen in the book?
• 24:05
  Speaker A: Yeah, almost exactly. When he gets to an aircraft carrier, Strat hands him a piece of paper about Project Hail Mary. And someone there with him, another scientist, is like, does he have. He doesn't have clearance for this. And she puts her hand on his shoulder and says, Dr. Ryland, Grace, I hereby grant you Topsy Secret clearance to all information pertaining to Project Hail Mary. And then he has clearance.
• 24:25
  Speaker B: Nice. So back in the present storyline on the ship, we find out that the other two people that were on this mission with him did not survive. They died while they were in their comas. And he gives them a burial at space, essentially. In the movie. Does that happen in the book?
• 24:48
  Speaker A: It does. It's very similar. Plays out very similarly. But to me, this one scene is much better in the movie. It's good in the book. It has its nice moment, but basically we just kind of hear him, his inner monologue about, like, what little he knows about these people. And he. He says a nice little words where he, like. As he sends them out into space, he says, I commend your body to the stars. And there's a fun little line with that. He says, like, where he thinks to himself, it's corny, but it makes me feel a little bit better or whatever, which is nice, but that's kind of all he says. I thought this scene is really touching in the movie. And the first time we saw this, this was like the main. That, like, really got to me emotionally. For whatever reason, the score, the monologue, and Ryan Gosling's performance in the scene, I think it all just feels really genuine. And I like the little details that they add that weren't in the book. Like where he holds up the photo of Illikuna. I don't know how to pronounce her name exactly. It's like her appears to. He's like this picture of you sneaking into what appears to be the Kremlin is legendary. And then just his whole monologue, which none of this comes from the book, where he says, I wish you were still here. I wish I wasn't alone. I wish I was doing a better job. You were both very loved. You deserved much more than this. I'll do my best to make sure that you don't. That, you know, that you didn't. I'll do my best. And I really love the fact that he can't get out. That he'll. He can't finish and get out the sentence that he'll make sure they didn't die in vain. Like, he can't actually bring himself to say that because he's. He doubts himself so much that he's like, kind of already thinks their deaths will be in vain. He's like, I'm probably not gonna be able to do this. And I think that moment is really touc.
• 26:28
  Speaker B: And it's a good character moment.
• 26:30
  Speaker A: Yeah, it's a great character moment. And it's done really well. And I also. I really love the shot of. It's like this lockdown shot on. He puts them on this little, like, thing that, like, moves and pushes them into space.
• 26:44
  Speaker B: Like a conveyor belt.
• 26:45
  Speaker A: Yeah. But he, like, tucks their phone. Their personal photos, they brought, like, on their chest, under their hands. And we get this shot, like, locked down. Seeing the photo of them alive under their. Like on their corpses. And it moves with them as they go out into space. I think it's a really cool shot and it's just a really well done scene. And I love everything about it. Like I said, the scene is mostly in the book. It's just not as moving as it is in the film, in my opinion.
• 27:09
  Speaker B: So then shortly after that, we encounter Rocky's ship for the first time. And I was curious if that was described at all in the book and if it looked anything like it does in the movie.
• 27:24
  Speaker A: Yeah, so it is described, but it's kind of hard to tell because the book doesn't go into, like, excruciating detail about. It goes into. As we heard earlier, it goes into pretty excruciating detail about what Rocky looks like. And it's very clear that for the most part, what we see in the movie tracks pretty specifically. I would say the movie took some liberties, but it's also not wildly off what you might imagine based on the book. Describe this book's description. And so I'll read the description from the book here. Again, to me, it's just not quite as specific to what we see in the film. The center of the ship is diamond shaped. A rhombus. Well, I guess it's an octahedron, really. Looks like it has eight faces, each triangular. That part alone is about the size of my ship. The diamond is connected by three thick rods, I don't know what else to call them, to a wide trapezoidal base. That looks like it might be the rear. And in front of the diamond is a narrow stalk just making up terms at this point that has four flat panels attached parallel to the main ship access or axis, maybe solar panels. The stock continues forward to a pyramid shaped nose cone. Nose pyramid. I guess every part of the hull is flat. Even the rods have flat surfaces. I would say that the movie does this thing where the movie is very clearly going on using the aesthetic of 3D printing for the ship. Which makes sense from what we see and know of how Rocky builds things. And so we get this thing where it's like a bunch of filaments almost all connected by other filaments in a way that's really interesting. It kind of contrasts a little bit with when we see Rocky build the xenonite tunnels and stuff. That actually is probably closer to what the book is going for. Because one of the things Grace comments on a lot of in about Rocky's technology is that they. They in all of their pressure vessels, they have flat surfaces. Like big, flat surfaces, which is not a good idea for pressure vessels. Like, if you're making like a submarine. There's a reason submarines are usually like spheres or round is because it distributes pressure a lot better and it can withstand pressure a lot better. Whereas a big flat panel surface, the pressure of space or the negative pressure of space or whatever, it just doesn't hold up as well. But the Xen and the stuff they make their ships out of is so strong that it doesn't matter. They can build in these big flat, like surfaces, which is kind of what we hear in the description here. Whereas the movie takes it and goes like. It's all like these rods. And again, it's different, but it's similar. Ish. Kind of. I think. And I do think the movie's version tracks from and is a very clever take on an alien spaceship that's kind of unique.
• 30:09
  Speaker B: So he encounters this other spaceship which immediately, like, launches something at him.
• 30:17
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 30:18
  Speaker B: And he realizes that they're like trying to send a message after it, like blows right past it bounces off, bounces off and goes out into space. And then they immediately throw a second message out.
• 30:35
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 30:36
  Speaker B: But much slower. And he's like, why did they throw it so much slower? And then he goes, they think I'm dumb.
• 30:43
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 30:44
  Speaker B: Is that from the book?
• 30:45
  Speaker A: It is not. But I do love this change. It is based on a thought he has in the book. In the book, when the first. It does throw a canister over at him. But he Immediately kind of realizes, oh, they're sending me a message, and goes outside to catch it. They immediately. The first time they throw it in the book, throw it really slow. He has, like, 45 minutes to get out there and get positioned to catch it. It. The movie makes it much quicker, just for the sake of pacing, obviously. But he does have the thought when he's going out to try to catch it that he worries that if he misses it and messes up, that they'll think he's dumb. So that moment is based on something from the book. I do like the movie's version of the first one just bouncing off the ship and then him realizing. Because you wouldn't really know exactly what's going on. I thought he, in the book, kind of realizes relatively quickly that it's a. That it's like a message. Because I also like the little detail in the movie of him yelling, like, shields up to the computer, because he doesn't know anything. Again, he just woke up and he still, like, doesn't remember anything. And then. And then again, the detail of the robot throwing the next one slower and the whole, like, drama of the diving catch with it is fun. That's not really in the book. He just. It just flies right to him and he catches it, and it's, you know, relatively easy. But I think the movie makes a meal out of that in a way that's fun.
• 32:03
  Speaker B: Yeah, it's fun. Fun movie moment.
• 32:06
  Speaker A: Yep.
• 32:07
  Speaker B: So he gets this container. It takes him a minute to open it. When he does get it open, does he immediately sniff the inside and then, like, freak out? Nope, because probably shouldn't have done that.
• 32:21
  Speaker A: Yeah. No, but this is a fun reference to a couple things, one of which is the fact that everything related to Rocky in the book smells like ammonia, and he is. So the main difference in the book is that as soon as he gets the canister, he gets it inside and he takes his EVA suit off, he immediately smells. Oh, my God. This smells like ammonia. Like, really strongly.
• 32:43
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 32:44
  Speaker A: And so it's not like when he opens it because all of the stuff it's made out of smells. I do. But it's also. I like that moment in the movie, though, where he opens it and then it's, like, sniffs and goes. Oh, God. Because that's also a classic, like, chemistry class thing.
• 32:58
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 32:59
  Speaker A: Where they tell you not to stick your face in and sniff, like, chemicals that you don't know what they are. You're supposed to waft. Like, I'm sure everybody that took a high School chemistry class remembers you're supposed to waft gently so that you don't get a huge blast of chemical up your. In your nose. And so I liked that as a joke in the movie. It's fun. And it does reference a specific thing from the book. That it is all of his stuff smells very strongly of ammonia.
• 33:24
  Speaker B: So we move forward a little bit and I was wondering, does Rocky build like a bridge between their two ships? I assume that this is what. This is like a thing that he makes the bridge between their ships? Yeah, yeah.
• 33:42
  Speaker A: In the movie we see like a 3D. Again, they play into the 3D printing thing where this like, thing, these like bars shoot across and connect to the ship and then this machine comes across and like 3D prints a tunnel, basically.
• 33:56
  Speaker B: So that's from the book?
• 33:57
  Speaker A: Yes, it's pretty different. It's not pretty different. It's very similar in the sense that, yes, he builds a ship to connect or builds a tunnel to connect their two ships. The big difference in the book versus the movie is that in the movie it's this big long, dark tunnel that's like 100ft long or something in the book. Which is a surprise to me reading the book second after having seen the movie the first time. The tunnel is like 10ft long. And it's just immediately like the wall that they talk between is like right there. Which makes sense because they get their ships a lot closer to each other and they just don't need. He builds this little tunnel and then he pulls over and connects their ships together. And so, yeah, the wall in the ship is right there. I think making it a big, long, dark tunnel is obviously much more dramatic. I also think it just works better thematically in the film. He has to make this kind of scary trek into the darkness to meet an alien.
• 34:53
  Speaker B: Right.
• 34:53
  Speaker A: It provides better atmosphere, better visuals. It's just better storytelling. I. The version in the book probably makes more sense, like for what they're trying to do, like Rocky is trying to, you know, like, why would he build this gigantic long, dark, like weird tunnel? It makes a little more sense that it's like a little shorter thing. Because if you think about how like spaceships connect each other, they don't have a hundred foot tunnel. It just doesn't really make a lot of sense. But. But again, for the story, I think it just works better in the film. The other thing is that in the book they don't spin to create artificial gravity in the tunnel. And in fact, it's specifically mentioned that he cannot spin up the centrifuge while he's attached to Rocky Ship with the tunnel. I think that was a necessary change for the movie. So much important stuff happens in that tunnel, and I think him being floating for all of it just wouldn't really work. Like.
• 35:48
  Speaker B: Like, I. I agree.
• 35:49
  Speaker A: Like, it would be fine, but it's just, like, they have a lot of really interesting and important conversations. And just imagine, practically for filming it, obviously, it would be a much bigger pain in the butt to do that, to, like, make that all look good. But also just for, like, the, like,
• 36:05
  Speaker B: the emotional beats that happen in those first scenes in the tunnel, if he was floating, they would be too much of a distraction.
• 36:12
  Speaker A: It would just be more. Yeah, I don't think it would work as well as him being able to just walk. Walk over there. And so, yeah, I like the detail of Rocky telling him to get back in the ship, and then they connect and then he spins it and then they put the tunnel back on. I think that works, and it was a necessary change.
• 36:29
  Speaker B: Something that I think was interesting in the movie is that when we first meet Rocky, you know, he walks down, like you said, like, this dark, scary tunnel to meet an alien, and the movie kind of leans into a little bit of, like, a horror vibe for a few minutes.
• 36:45
  Speaker A: You don't know what.
• 36:46
  Speaker B: Yeah. And I was wondering if there was anything similar to the kind of jump scare that the movie gives us when we first encounter Rocky.
• 36:56
  Speaker A: Yeah. So there are kind of two distinct moments that the movie kind of combines into one. Basically. Basically, the second moment is just exactly what happens in the film. But the first moment is this. And I'll just read from the book. There are at least 20 little hexagons on this wall. They're all different colors and textures, and I think a couple of them might be translucent. I should catalog each one and figure out if I can identify what they're made of. Looking closer, I see there's a defined. A definite seam running along the edge of the hexes. That's when I hear a sound come from the other side. Knock, knock, knock. And that's the first moment. Then he goes back on his ship for something. Can't remember exactly what. He comes back later after that happens, and he notices a little clear panel in. I think he goes to get light, maybe like a flashlight or something. He comes back later and he notices there's one little clear panel in the corner.
• 37:43
  Speaker B: And.
• 37:44
  Speaker A: And he bends down to look through it, and then this scene happens. Suddenly, a rock hits the other side of the hex. It stays there. It's just a few inches away from me. It's roughly triangular, kind of a dark brown, and has rough, jagged edges like you might see on the tip of a spear from a caveman. Have I met space faring cavemen? So there is a moment where he's looking through the little window and his. His fist comes and hits the window. So it's. Yeah. It doesn't operate like a jump scare in the book necessarily.
• 38:10
  Speaker B: I think it's hard to do.
• 38:11
  Speaker A: It's hard to do a jump scare in the book, but, you know, it doesn't really. But yes, that is the moment we get in the. In the.
• 38:17
  Speaker B: In the film also just want to say that space faring cavemen sounds like an OG Star Trek plot.
• 38:26
  Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, I'm sure we've seen that caveman flying fighter jets.
• 38:29
  Speaker B: Even that is true. We have seen cavemen flying fighter jets.
• 38:32
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 38:33
  Speaker B: So they. They kind of. They get their friendship kicked off. And I was wondering if. If Rocky makes a little model of Grace and his ship, and then on top of that, if Grace makes Rocky a model of his ship out of some ramen.
• 38:50
  Speaker A: So Rocky does make a little model of him and his ship, and then he uses it, like he does in the movie, to gesture that he should get back on his ship. And he does that so he can replace the wall entirely with the clear panel, which I think I have a note about. Later we'll talk about why he does that or what's going on there. Grace does not make a ramen model. He does make a model of, like, the solar system. When he shows, like, where he came from and stuff, he does all of that, but he doesn't make a model. He might even make a model of Rocky ship, but he does not make it out of ramen. That is not from. I thought that was a fun little addition in the film of it being made out of ramen because it does kind of look like.
• 39:28
  Speaker B: Yeah, it does.
• 39:29
  Speaker A: The material that his ship is made out. So I thought that was clever and made for a fun little detail.
• 39:34
  Speaker B: So what about the scene where Rocky wants Grace to take off his helmet while he's in the tunnel?
• 39:41
  Speaker A: Yeah. So this does not happen in the book. And I like this change in the film. In the book, Grace realizes pretty much immediately that his atmosphere is in the tunnel and just goes in without his helmet. He pretty much immediately, like, looks and goes, oh, there's oxygen. Like, this is just air. Like, it's my. Cause when he opens the door, you see it in the Film, he gets, like, blown back.
• 40:00
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 40:00
  Speaker A: And it's. He's realized that it's because his. His. His atmosphere is going into the tunnel or whatever. So he's like, oh, I can just not wear my helmet. So he immediately is not wearing his helmet. There's no scene where Rocky is like, take your helmet off or anything like that. I think making it a moment of, like, bravery and trust between him and Rocky is a good little character moment for Grace. It's more dramatic. I like it. I think it works fine. Again, this is one of those where you can kind of quibble with. Like, he would probably have known that it was fine for him to take off his helmet based on the readings and stuff he could take. But I think it works fine for the narrative.
• 40:36
  Speaker B: So they start trying to communicate with each other. And the first thing. Well, one of the first things that they do is show each other their respective clocks, because math is a universal language. And the specific line that I liked, after Grace brings the clock, Rocky comes running back with his own clock, and Grace says, were clock bros.
• 41:03
  Speaker A: Yes. That exact line is not in the book. But the first thing they show to each other are clocks. And it basically plays out identically where he holds up a regular clock, and then Rocky brings his little. And the clock he brings is very similar to what is described in the book. And that's how they start learning each other's language is with clocks initially. But he doesn't say, we're clock bros. That's from the movie.
• 41:26
  Speaker B: What about their fist bump through the. The crystal or whatever. Exactly. That's supposed to be.
• 41:34
  Speaker A: Yeah. So, yes. Except the movie does this earlier. Grace does it for the first time in the book after they discover life on Adrian. And Rocky realizes that that's the reason Astrophage isn't out of control there. That's in the book the first time he says, like, fist bump, but so the movie introduces it earlier and kind of uses it several times as a callback. Additional note, in the book, Rocky first mistakenly says, fist me, and then later says, fist my bump. In the movie, I assume for rating reasons, they only do the fist my bump joke. Yeah, because fist me, I think.
• 42:08
  Speaker B: Right. Maybe a little too blue for. Yeah, yeah.
• 42:13
  Speaker A: Second additional note. And as I mentioned earlier on the clear wall, I thought this is really interesting that the movie does not go into detail about this. In the book, Rocky explains that when he built the first wall, he gave a bunch of different material options for better sound transfer for Grace. So all those different panels of all those different Color material all transfer sound differently. And then Grace chooses the one that he can see through. That's transparent. Rocky didn't even consider that, because as we find out, Rocky sees, quote, unquote, through sound.
• 42:47
  Speaker B: Right.
• 42:48
  Speaker A: And so after Grace goes to that clear one, that's why Rocky then rebuilds the wall entirely out of that material, because he think thinks it translates sound best for Grace to hear him or whatever, until he then realizes, oh, it's because you can see through it. And once he realized, yeah, interesting.
• 43:06
  Speaker B: Yeah, that's fun. Not something that translated into the movie.
• 43:09
  Speaker A: You see it in the movie. Like, again, the wall has all those different panels and everything, but they just never explicitly say it. Yeah, it's kind of an Easter egg for book readers.
• 43:18
  Speaker B: What about the instant translation program that they whip up in this part of the movie?
• 43:24
  Speaker A: Yeah, so that's basically identical. Grace does tape a laptops together, and on one of them, he has, like, a waveform analyzer that with a microphone that he uses to record the sounds that Rocky makes. And then he manually writes them down in a spreadsheet initially. And initially, he just has to look up each word as Rocky says it. Like, Rocky will say a word, and then he'll record the sound and then look at the thing and be like, okay, that's this word. Eventually, he writes some code that analyzes the sound that Rocky makes and then cross references with the spreadsheet so that it types out what Rocky is saying.
• 43:59
  Speaker B: Gotcha. Is there a gag where they're going through different voice options for Rocky?
• 44:05
  Speaker A: So no. And this is one of the bigger changes in the movie that I really can't put as better in the book or better in the movie, because each choice, I think, makes perfect sense for each medium.
• 44:13
  Speaker B: Okay.
• 44:14
  Speaker A: In the book, Grace never uses a voice generator to audibly hear Rocky in English. Initially, he just reads the screen like we see in the movie, where the words pop up. And then eventually he just starts learning the language. He could just start understanding what Rocky is saying. For much of the mission, Grace just completely understands him and knows what he's saying because he has learned eridion. We see this in the end of the movie, like in the epilogue, where they're on the beach and we get captions for what Rocky is saying and Grace can just understand him. And this obviously works fine in the book because the book just writes what Grace understands Rocky is saying as normal dialogue. So when Rocky talks in the book, we just see what he's saying, what Grace is hearing him say in the movie, obviously, they can't do that because we can't. We're not getting Grace's inner monologue. So completely makes sense that you would add a voice thing. And it's also completely, like, easy thing. Like, that's not even like a stretch or anything. Like, if he already has a program that can write out what he's saying, you just add a voice reader to it, basically an audio reader or text reader to it, and boom, there you go. And again, I really like the scene. I think it's a fun little moment where they're picking the different voice options and everything. I think it's got some fun little jokes in there. And you have to do that for the film, but you don't need to in the book. So they both work in their own way.
• 45:35
  Speaker B: Does Rocky want to watch Grace sleep to make sure he's safe?
• 45:41
  Speaker A: Yes, this comes from the book and is again, basically identical. Eridians watch each other sleep because while they are sleeping, which I think the movie explains all this. While they're sleeping, they're paralyzed and they literally cannot wake up even if they're in danger. And they sleep a random amount of time between like three and a half hours and 12 hours. They do not know how long they're gonna sleep. When they go to sleep, they just go to sleep and eventually wake up in some. Some amount of time.
• 46:08
  Speaker B: Sounds like the most stressful way to sleep.
• 46:10
  Speaker A: Which again, that's why they watch sleep, is because. Yeah, they can't literally, if something were to come, attack them. They can't. They just. They can't do anything.
• 46:21
  Speaker B: Does Rocky eventually build himself a hamster ball so he can come on board the Hail Mary?
• 46:27
  Speaker A: Yes, he does. Again, basically identical. He builds the ball and moves in and then also builds tunnels all over the ship. That's all exactly the same.
• 46:36
  Speaker B: When he first comes in, does he roll around judging Grace's cleanliness?
• 46:44
  Speaker A: Not really. And this leads me to one of my biggest and really only complaints in the film. And that is kind of the characterization of Rocky. The movie really dials up his adorkable ADHD ness to, like the nth degree in a way that I found a bit grating in the film. Yeah, this scene in particular, the way he rolls around like a hyperactive toddler is just like, dirty, dirty, dirty. And it's just like in the book, he's excitable and he. And demanding. Like, those are elements of his personality in the book. He gets very excited about stuff. He is very excited to. To see his spaceship and see all the different stuff. But he's not, like, constantly, like. Like a million miles an hour and, like. Like, again, like a toddler on Way Too Much Sugar. The movie amps that up in such a. To such a degree that I just. I felt it was a bit much. It's. It's not completely devoid, and they're not completely absent in the book. It's just way less obnoxious in the book. And there's parts of it in the movie where it's fun and I. I find it kind of, you know, endearing. But there's also times where it. And I have more about this that we're going to talk about in Lost in Adaptation. I want to talk about this whole element of Rocky's character. It's very. I don't know if I don't think I've ever heard anybody talk about this in relation to this movie. And I'm. I want to have this conversation. But that element is. Yeah, it's dialed up quite a bit in the film, but there are elements. There are the. The whole, like, judging his cleanliness. What Rocky does do quite a bit of is just, like, commenting on the ways that humans are weird in the book. That directly comes from the movie about, like, the way they do things. Like, that's weird. Or, oh, you sleep like that. That's weird. Like, he does kind of judge humans for, like, the way we are, which is fun and. But I just think the movie, again, it's not even that he's doing it. It's just the way it's depicted in the film where he's just, like, bouncing off the walls. And, like, it's just like, okay, all right.
• 48:49
  Speaker B: So they're hanging out, getting to know each other more, doing science. Science Bros.
• 48:55
  Speaker A: Yes.
• 48:56
  Speaker B: And at one point, Rocky and Grace have a conversation about Rocky's mate first off. And then Rocky asks if he has mate. And Grace is like, well, I had somebody, but it didn't work out. And now she's with Mark. To which Rocky immediately says, rocky, hate Mark. And I was like, that's a real bro right there. Is that from the book?
• 49:28
  Speaker A: That is not from the book. I think that scene's funny. I want to talk more about the first part of that scene later. I have a note about it. But that specific exchange about Rocky Hatemark, not from the book. I think it's fun. They never actually discuss Grace's private life. The first part about Rocky's mate is in the book, and we'll get to it. But they never talk about Grace's Private life. And from my memory, there's not even any real talk of Grace having an ex that he's like, thinks about or matters. There's never a name or, you know, and at one point during the Big Thing at the end where Strat calls him out for being a coward, one of the things she calls him out about is that he's not in a relationship and he. Because he fears rejection and all that sort of stuff. And. Yeah, so that's not in the book. I think it's fun. And again, I like that it's a fun little moment of characterization for developing their relationship together.
• 50:22
  Speaker B: I do think it makes sense, considering the character arc, for Grace to explicitly have him have a relationship that didn't work out. And we can kind of fill in the gaps of maybe why it didn't work out. I think that.
• 50:39
  Speaker A: No, it does make. I agree.
• 50:40
  Speaker B: It makes sense.
• 50:41
  Speaker A: And that is basically what Strat calls him out for in the book is like, the reason you're not in a relationship is because that. And so the movie just making it a more concrete, like, well, he was in this relationship with this woman. And then.
• 50:51
  Speaker B: Yeah. Okay, so we have some more flashbacks. And I was dying to ask you about this exchange because I had a feeling how you would feel about it.
• 51:02
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 51:05
  Speaker B: So Grace is talking.
• 51:07
  Speaker A: I have a suspicion this entire scene was reshoots all of this. That's my suspicion about the film. But I think this is like a producer note. But we'll get to it.
• 51:16
  Speaker B: Okay. Grace is talking to Strat and they're talking about generally kind of like what a long shot this whole plan is, and like the imminent danger that the Earth is in.
• 51:32
  Speaker A: And they're standing on the aircraft carrier.
• 51:35
  Speaker B: And Grace asks Strat, do you believe in God? To which she responds, it beats the alternative, which. And it's an exchange that kind of both comes out of nowhere and then also doesn't go anywhere that.
• 51:53
  Speaker A: Yes, so.
• 51:55
  Speaker B: So is that in the book?
• 51:57
  Speaker A: No, and I hate this for the exact reason you just stated. No, it's not in the book, and I absolutely hate it. I think it's a bit of a stand in for a scene in the book later where Grace talks to this scientist who designed the beetle probes. We get this scene where he's. He's talking to this guy who designed the beetle probes. And that scientist mentions believing in God and talking about, like, God's plan or whatever. And Grace just kind of like, like quietly and politely moves the conversation along, subtly implying to us as readers that he's probably an atheist and doesn't believe in God. But the beats, the alternative response with no further exploration or explanation of that felt so lazy and pointless to me.
• 52:37
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 52:38
  Speaker A: Like, I get the idea that maybe what the movie is going for is that it's kind of surprising for her character of Strat, who is this, like, very buttoned up, logical, practical, blah, blah, blah. Like, you kind of assume that maybe she wouldn't believe in God or whatever. She's kind of like the.
• 52:58
  Speaker B: She seems like a hard science kind of a lady.
• 53:01
  Speaker A: Yeah, exactly. And so I think the idea is that it's. It's kind of surprising for her to be like, oh, yeah, I believe in God. And that whole scene, you know, that's part of a broader scene that is there to humanize Strat because right after that, we go. She goes inside and we get the whole scene where she sings karaoke. Yeah, but just throwing out that line and then exploring it. 0% was so lame to me and felt like this weird producer note or I just. I couldn't. Again, I think it's there for. Just to humanize her in character, give. Add a little bit of characterization to her because. And that's why I think this whole thing feels like this whole scene here, this and the karaoke scene almost feel. And I'm not saying they are. I don't know, I haven't looked it up. Almost feel like a rewrite or a reshoot. None of this is in the book.
• 53:50
  Speaker B: But it's a karaoke scene too.
• 53:52
  Speaker A: No, none of this is in the book. And it feels like to me, after the first pass of the movie, they go, strat is such an important character. We need to feel more about her. We need to know more about her. We need to have a better idea of who she is, even just a little bit, even just a hint.
• 54:10
  Speaker B: It's a moment where we can emotionally bond with her.
• 54:13
  Speaker A: Just even the tiniest bit of revenge that even just. Just because we don't learn much about her. But like it. It adds. Provides this air of mystery that there's something more going on with her and it makes her a more compelling character, which I don't even disagree with because I do like the karaoke scene. I think it does humanize this robot lady in a way that's kind of interesting. I think her singing a Harry Styles song, of all things, is also interesting. It feels. I felt like they primarily chose that song because it has some vaguely spacey, contextually relevant lines about meeting again somewhere far away from here. And all of that. But I also think again, similarly similar to her saying she believes in God is that her picking a Harry Styles song feels very weird and kind of out of character for her. Like why would this 45 year old, 50 year old engineer bureaucrat lady, whatever she is, we don't even know exactly what her background is in the book. We do. I think she was in management or I don't remember the exact details, but she's not a scientist. Even like she's, she's more of like she does say exactly when she went to college for in the book. I just can't recall. But the idea that yeah, she's like singing a Harry Styles song is like, why is she in the Harry. This is not what you would think this like Eastern German lady would be into. And so I think that's what we're doing with this whole scene is just like here, let's humanize Strat a little bit. Make the audience go, so she's interested, she's something going on with her more than just like the, the hard nosed lady running the show or whatever. And so to me that whole thing just feels like after they made the movie they were like, we got. We're gonna add this. I don't think that that's probably not especially because they had all of those. The other actors in the karaoke scene, the God discussion scene could have been added after the fact pretty easily because it's literally just the two of them. Literally just them standing on what could be a green screen set. It looks like a real set. It looks like they're actually on a ship, but you never know. And so yeah, I, but anyways, point being, I do not like that exchange. I think it's dumb. I don't think it. If you're going to bring that up, at least go somewhere with it that feels interesting.
• 56:19
  Speaker B: It's not like the movie explores that idea like at all, at all.
• 56:23
  Speaker A: Even thematically in the rest of the movie. Like there's not even like we come back to that in some way or like that's a thematic through line where like Grace is grappling with God or anything. Like none of that is relevant at all. It's just she just says says beats the alternative. And you're like, I mean like I
• 56:38
  Speaker B: think you could like squint a lot and say like, oh well, they succeed in the end because Grace and Rocky happen to run into each other and blah, blah, blah. But like I hope you stretch before that reach.
• 56:57
  Speaker A: Yeah, no, I, Yeah, it's just a very strange scene to me. And again, I think it's truly just there to characterize or to add character to her. But I wish I don't even dislike that as a moment for her as a character. I think it's kind of interesting if they had continued their conversation, even just for a few seconds, where she asks him and he says, like, what he. Or yeah, something. Anything like that. You know, it just. It just felt so like, okay, well, I guess moving on from that. I don't know. Yeah, it was not a fan.
• 57:30
  Speaker B: So eventually Rocky finds out that Grace is not going to be going home because that was never part of the plan for the Hail Mary mission.
• 57:40
  Speaker A: Didn't have enough fuel.
• 57:42
  Speaker B: And he gets very upset by this and offers to give Grace the fuel that he needs. Does that happen in the book?
• 57:48
  Speaker A: Yeah, it plays out fairly similarly. But the. It's even more impactful in the movie. It's handled like relatively quickly and easily in the book. We don't get as much buildup of Grace putting off telling him. We get several times in the movie where he's like, really not looking forward to telling Rocky that I'm not going home because he's going to be really upset about it or whatever. In the book, he. That doesn't have that kind of build up and he just tells him and he kind of. Yeah, it just kind of gets solved relatively easy. I think Ryan Gosling does a great job in that scene in the movie. I really like the addition is after he tells. He tells him, like, he's not going to go home and all this sort of stuff and that he's made peace with that and blah, blah, blah. And then when Rocky is like, well, I'll just give you the fuel. Like, I have plenty. I can just give you how much fuel. He's like, how much you need? He's like, oh, yeah, I can give it to you. That conversation is like identical to the book. But I like after that, including Grace, like breaking down and starting to cry, like, oh, my God, I might actually survive. But I like that when he starts crying in the movie, a scene that is not in the book, where Rocky is like, I thought you had made peace. And Grace just goes, that's just something you say. Like, I wasn't actually looking forward to dying. I hadn't made peace with dying. There's just a thing you say. I really like that exchange. I think that's really good also that this is something that does happen several times in the book. And I think the movie really just does it here. But There are several times in the book where Grace is like, oh, my God, this thing happened. I'm. And then Rocky's like, idiot, I'll just fix it. Like, I can just fix that. And Grace is like, oh, yeah, I didn't think about that. That you can just fix that. Like, one of the big moments is, which the movie does address this later, but, like, when. When they get the fuel leak and they're spinning out of control, they get that all under control. Eventually, though, they get to a point then where Rocky is like. Or Grace is like, well, I had to eject my fuel tanks, and now I'm not going to be able to.
• 59:42
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 59:42
  Speaker A: Even if you could give me the fuel, I don't have enough. I won't have enough to get back to Earth. It'll take too long because of the amount of fuel I have. I can only go a certain speed. It'll take too long. I won't have enough food, and I won't be able to get back to Earth. And Rocky's like, I'll just make you new fuel tanks. And he's like, oh. And the movie does reference that later. He says, like, when he's leaving, he's like, how are your fuel tanks that I made? You did? And he's like, yeah, everything's great. So that does happen in the movie. But, yeah, that's a common refrain where he thinks he's gonna die. And then Rocky's like, dude, I'll just fix that. He's like, oh, okay.
• 1:00:13
  Speaker B: So we get another flashback, and we see that an explosion kills some of the original crew that was going to be on this. On the Hail Mary, which is what necessitates Grace joining the mission. Is that what happens in the book?
• 1:00:32
  Speaker A: Yep. That is all identical. As much as it does kind of feel like a movie thing. That is what happens. Dubois and Shapiro are the two science officers, the primary and the backup. Dubois is the primary and Shapiro is the backup. And they are both there running experiments together in some lab. And the quarter. And this is all laid out in the movie, the exact same thing. The quartermaster accidentally gives them a milligram of astrophage instead of a nanogram, which is like orders of magnitude more. And they were intentionally blowing it up. They were doing, like, a something to test what happens if something goes wrong. But they had requested this very small amount that if it blew up, would basically be, like, nothing. And the guy ended up giving them way too much. And when it goes off, it vaporizes them and blows up the whole building. And it even nails the detail in the film of them seeing the flash and then going, oh, shit. Before the shockwave hits. In the book, Grace is sitting in his office and he notices a flash in the distance out the windows and he thinks it's like lightning or something and turns to look and then all the windows get blown out and it realizes it was an explosion in the distance.
• 1:01:40
  Speaker B: Back on the ship with Grace and Rocky. I don't remember what this was a response to, but at one point Rocky has a line responding to something that Grace says, something sarcastic that he says. He says, oh, humor. Confusing.
• 1:01:59
  Speaker A: Yes. So no, this does not happen in the book. The book does have a handful of moments, like I mentioned earlier, where Rocky is kind of puzzled at the strange things humans do, but it's usually more like biological or cultural stuff. Rocky actually has a sense of humor and makes jokes in the book. This isn't like they kind of playing into the classic, like, movie trope of like the alien or the robot who doesn't understand humor in the film. That's not really the case in the book. He understands humor. His culture has jokes. At one point, Grace says to him, humans are stupid when we need sleep and when we take medicine to stop pain. I'm tired and drugged right now. And Rocky says, you should sleep, Grace. I stand up. I will in a bit. But first I have to stabilize our orbit. Our apogee and perigree are. Well, it's not a good orbit orbit. And then Rocky says, adjust orbit while stupid. Good plan. And so he makes it like a sarcastic joke. And Grace like laughs in response and says, new word sarcasm. You say opposite of true meaning to make point sarcasm. And then Rocky responds, making the noise for sarcasm in his language. So it's not like this unknown thing to Aridians. They have sarcasm and humor. And the movie kind of does, which I actually like that in the book because that is the thing that I. It's kind of a played out, like, yeah, this culture doesn't understand humor. It's like, okay, they have a bunch of other cultural stuff. They also have humor.
• 1:03:27
  Speaker B: So then we get the whole sequence where they're. They have to go down into the orbit of this planet to go fishing for whatever.
• 1:03:39
  Speaker A: Whatever is eating.
• 1:03:40
  Speaker B: Whatever is eating the astrophage. And it's a. It's a whole big thing. And then while they're trying to get them out, Grace gets hurt and Rocky leaves his hamster ball to save him, for all we know, in this moment, sacrificing himself.
• 1:03:58
  Speaker A: Yes.
• 1:03:58
  Speaker B: Does that happen in the book.
• 1:04:00
  Speaker A: Yes. And this plays out nearly identically. The only real difference in this scene is that Rocky doesn't flip the switch to start the centrifuge, which we see him in the movie. He likes, like, flips the switch that Grace was trying to flip. In the book, he just frees Grace from the chair and then collapses from exposure to the oxygen and stuff. And then Grace is able to start the centrifuge, which is the movie doesn't really explain this, but what happens with air is they're spinning really fast.
• 1:04:29
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 1:04:30
  Speaker A: And then when he hits the centrifuge, it stretches them out, which slows down how fast they're spinning so that he's not experiencing as many GS. And the way you can think about it is like a figure skater. Like, when their arms are out really wide, they spin a lot slower. And when you pull your arms in, you spin faster. So the act of stretching the centrifuge out actually makes the ship longer and slows down how fast it's spinning. So he starts experiencing fewer GS and is able to do stuff interesting. And there's actually an interesting component in the book where that he fixes a bunch of problems, but they still have the same angular momentum. So that once he gets to the point where he. He's able to fix everything, when he brings the centrifuge back in, they actually spin back up to the speed that they were going originally. And he actually passes out again. But he knew this was gonna happen. And Rocky has to, like, save him. But this time they have a plan for it and all of that sort of stuff. It's. It's an interesting little aside in the book that doesn't make it into the. The movie, anyways, mostly plays out very, very similar, including the detail that in the movie, like, Rocky leaves a message on the computer that says, save Earth, save Aid. In the book, he just says it to him like, as he's. Because Grace hasn't completely passed out yet in that scene. He's just pinned against the wall and can't do anything. A better. In the book moment that I do understand why they changed in relation to this is that in the movie, after Grace, like, wakes back up after Rocky, like, saves him, Rocky has just made his way somehow into the. His enclosure and is, like, laying there. In the book, Grace has to drag his body and put him in his enclosure. And then he gets to the enclosure and he has this airlock thing and he has to, like, pressurize it with the Iridian Atmosphere. And in order to do that, there's a bunch of like. Like, details about what's going on, but he has to, like, hit a button and jump out of it. And he ends up getting blasted by, like, the. The atmosphere. And it, like, burns, like, chemically burns his entire arm that he. And he deals with that the rest of the book and stuff. Point being, there's this fun, like, he has to save Rocky, basically after Rocky saves him. I do think what the movie is doing here is kind of saving Grace's hero moment for later in the film where he, like, has to go be a hero, like after the revelation that he chickened out earlier. It also cuts a lot of business. Of all the. Of him dragging, there's a whole lot that goes on there. We have to drag him to, like, a whole different part of the ship. And he's got to deal with all this, like, the airlock and all this stuff. It just streamlines a lot. But I do like that scene in the book.
• 1:07:13
  Speaker B: Speaking of Grace chickening out, we get another flashback where Eva Stratt tells him
• 1:07:23
  Speaker A: the meeting where they're telling him that
• 1:07:24
  Speaker B: he's gonna have to go on Project Hail Mary, and he says, I put the not an astronaut. Is that line from the book?
• 1:07:34
  Speaker A: That line is not in the book, but it is very much in line with Grace's sense of humor.
• 1:07:38
  Speaker B: So does Rocky use question and statement while he's talking? I think we hear him do question more in the movie when he'll say something and then say the word question.
• 1:07:50
  Speaker A: Yeah, he does use question at the end of questions in the book, but he never uses statement because it's implied that it's a statement if he doesn't say question.
• 1:08:00
  Speaker B: Fair enough.
• 1:08:00
  Speaker A: So, like, he doesn't actually say statement. I do. The one detail of that I do really, like, in the movie is the exchange when they're trying to get out of the orbit of Adrian and Rocky says, we leave now question, and Grace says, we leave now statement. I think that's a fun exchange. But, yeah, he doesn't. He does say question at the end of questions, though. That does come from the question.
• 1:08:20
  Speaker B: Does Rocky make Grace a crystal suit space suit so that he can see Rocky's ship?
• 1:08:29
  Speaker A: No, but this is like a fan service moment from the book because the book makes an explicit point that, like, Grace is like, I would really love to see your ship. But he kind of realizes that it would be a waste of time and resources to figure out how to get him to be able to go into Rocky's ship. But I think the movie knew that the audience would like to see the inside of Rocky's ship and was like, nah, who cares? We'll just do it. And so it is. The suit is kind of silly. It's fun. It's a fine moment. It does not happen in the book. And again, it kind of directly contradicts what happens in the book where they're like, nah, we can't do that. I can't get in your ship. But I think it's a fun little 3 second moment in the film. It's fine.
• 1:09:12
  Speaker B: So then we get another little flashback of Grace being forced to join Project Hail Mary. And I was wondering how similarly that played out. Like, if he tries to escape when they're encroaching upon him.
• 1:09:29
  Speaker A: So, yeah, Strat does force him to join. Basically says, like, I'm sorry, you. You're gonna do this? Because the other options are not. You're our best option. And he does try to push past a soldier that's like, blocking the door briefly, but he doesn't, like, get outside and try to, like, run, make run for it and like, almost get to the fence and get tackled. Like, that's a little that. None of that happens. He just kind of gets grabbed in the room and they're like, all right, you're doing this. And then he ends up getting locked in a prison cell, essentially like a holding cell until launch. And then they come and then they just put him in the coma. Which is again, similar to what we see in the movie, but ostensibly the same. They just dial it up a little bit in the film.
• 1:10:09
  Speaker B: Does Rocky say to Grace, you are the bravest human I ever met, and then proceed to explain the joke?
• 1:10:18
  Speaker A: No. So he doesn't tell him that. He also doesn't explain the joke. Yeah, that exchange does not happen. There are similar exchanges where he refers to him as being brave and says how we're both brave or whatever for what we're doing. There are similar type of things, but that exact exchange does not happen in the book. And I do think this is somewhere that the movie really excels, is that it does crystallize Grace's kind of arc from coward to hero. It's absolutely there in the book. It is definitely like the core journey that Grace's character goes on in the book. But this moment in particular is a great example of the way the film makes kind of small tweaks to really show how he has changed the juxtaposition of that exchange between them right before or right after the moment where we see that he was a coward and then leading into him going to save himself again. That all plays out very, very similarly in the book. I just think the kind of. Of more economic storytelling in the film and the way they kind of tighten everything up makes that arc hit, like, even harder in the film than it does in the book. It makes it even more clear.
• 1:11:23
  Speaker B: Speaking of Grace's heroism, does he end up turning around to save Rocky because the Talmoeba escaped their containment and he knows that Rocky's basically fucked if he doesn't go save him?
• 1:11:35
  Speaker A: Yep. The exact same thing plays out. He has to choose between going home or going to save Rocky in a standing, sensibly dying because he'll run out of food. This is one place I thought the movie does falter a little bit. Is that in. It's clear in the book that Grace sees saving Rocky as a death sentence because he doesn't have enough food to survive. I don't think the movie really addresses the food.
• 1:11:55
  Speaker B: No, we never talk about food in the movie.
• 1:11:57
  Speaker A: We'll talk more about that later in some other notes. But, yeah, I thought that was interesting that it never really addresses that. And. And so you. You could, in the movie be like, well, it's not necessarily a suicide mission for you because, like, if we don't know he's gonna run out of food necessarily.
• 1:12:09
  Speaker B: Yeah. Then he could get more fuel from Rocky.
• 1:12:12
  Speaker A: You could get more fuel from Rocky because, like, oh, I only have enough fuel to either go save Rocky or go home. But. But we know, like. Well, but if you go save Rocky, he could probably take you.
• 1:12:23
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 1:12:24
  Speaker A: And then give you more fuel or whatever. Yeah. So it's very clear in the book that because of his food situation, going to save Rocky is ostensibly a death sentence because they also go to great lengths in the book to explain that he cannot eat Rocky's food. Rocky has this weird. The food that Iridians eat is full of, like, heavy metals and stuff. That human is, like, poison.
• 1:12:44
  Speaker B: I would assume that was what sentient rocks ate.
• 1:12:47
  Speaker A: Yeah, it is meat. They do actually eat meat, but it's meat that is full of, like, mercury and stuff. So, like, it's just. Yeah.
• 1:12:55
  Speaker B: Yum. Is there a reveal at the end of the book, like, there is in the movie that Earth has gotten considerably colder while waiting for or to hear anything back from the Hail Mary.
• 1:13:10
  Speaker A: So we do not go back to Earth and see that it's, like, in an ice age and we don't see older Strat or anything like that. We Never go back to Earth in the book after Grace leaves other than the flashbacks earlier on. But we do eventually find out that the probes made it back and Earth saved the sun. That is revealed by Rocky when he's on arid Rocky shows up and is like, oh, by the way, our scientists were looking at. At Sol, your son, and it's back to full power. So they, they. It worked.
• 1:13:44
  Speaker B: They did it.
• 1:13:44
  Speaker A: Yeah, but we never see, like, we never go back and actually see an event going on. And I do think this question is related to one of the movie's other shortcomings, which is that the book really reminds you over and over how bad things on Earth are going to be regardless of whether or not Project Hail Mary succeeds. The movie mentions at least twice that Earth is going to get very cold and that people are going to starve. Like, during the scene where Rocky or Grace turns down Strat, she tells him, like, things are going to get bad, food's gonna go to be scarce, people are gonna die, blah, blah, blah. But the book brings this up, like, over and over again and goes into more detail about how bad it's going to be. I feel like if you're not paying super close attention to this in the movie, you could mistakenly believe that as long as Grace succeeds, things will be, like, pretty okay on Earth. Just, like, not great, but, like, pretty okay. That's not the case at all because best case scenario, it's going to take 26 years on Earth time for Grace to go, for the crew to go do whatever they need to do and then send the results back. That's going to take like 30 years. And in that intervening 30 years, they literally suspect that half the world's population will die. Die.
• 1:15:01
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 1:15:01
  Speaker A: Regardless of if they're successful or not, they think, like, half of the world's population is going to die. And I think the movie kind of glosses over that because it's not super fun. Like, it's not like it makes the success a little less triumphant. And again, we do. I think that the allusion to that is we do get some mention of that, of her saying, like, oh, this all could happen and blah, blah, blah. But I don't know how. Again, I think if you're not super, like, keyed in, you might not think that that's necessarily going to happen. When the book, it's like, no, regardless of what you do, we're gonna lose, like, half of Earth's population, even if you do a good job. And again, I think the scene of her on, like, in like the we're on that ship in the ice is kind of alluding to that idea without, like, explicitly drawing attention to it.
• 1:15:48
  Speaker B: All right, my last question. Does Grace get to live out his days in a custom terrarium on Eris?
• 1:15:56
  Speaker A: Yeah. Ending is basically identical, right down to Grace being able to head back to Earth if he wants. They say that in both the book and the movie, but he chooses to stay on arid for, you know, the foreseeable future and. Which makes Rocky very happy.
• 1:16:10
  Speaker B: I mean, it looks like a pretty sweet setup.
• 1:16:12
  Speaker A: It's not a bad setup at all.
• 1:16:13
  Speaker B: All right.
• 1:16:15
  Speaker A: Those were all of Katie's questions for. Was that in the book? But she does have. But she does have a question that we're going to talk about and a few other things in Lost and Adaptation. Just show me the way to get out of here and I'll be on my way. Yes, yes.
• 1:16:31
  Speaker B: And I want to get unlost as soon as possible. Okay. So my question is related to when they go fishing on Adrian, because I didn't feel like this was very clear in the movie. Is there a reason that Grace has to do a spacewalk essentially, and go outside of the ship to reel the collector in while they're still doing this very dangerous orbit maneuver? Is there a reason that they can't back up a little bit first and then he goes and gets it?
• 1:17:10
  Speaker A: Yeah. I couldn't recall if the movie explains this or if there's one line maybe about it, but it is explained in the book. Essentially, they would have destroyed the collector with the engines if they had tried to leave or be orbit or get. Get out of the lower orbit that they were in prior to reeling in the collector, essentially. I think my memory is that the. The. With where they're at in the atmosphere, the engines turning on would have like, superheated the atmosphere there. And with where the collector was or something, it basically would have just like melted it and like, destroyed it. And so they had to get it up and get it before he could do that.
• 1:17:51
  Speaker B: That makes sense.
• 1:17:52
  Speaker A: That makes sense. That's like the rough idea.
• 1:17:54
  Speaker B: Yeah. I don't remember them explaining that in the movie, but there might have been
• 1:17:58
  Speaker A: one line about like, no, we have to. We have to get it in before we. Yeah, yeah, because that's all. That all kind of plays out via montage them like prepping for that. I bet there's one line somewhere. Yeah. All right. I had a couple things that I wanted to talk about, really just like two or three main things. One of the things, one of Them is that I couldn't figure out where I wanted to put this. So I just want to put it here because if this isn't better in the book or better in the movie, I think I would put it in better in the movie. But in the book there's discussion of people being coma resistant. In the book it is revealed that. And I just wanted to bring this up to get your feelings on it. In the book it's revealed that some company has been researching putting cancer patients into coma so that they can do their chemotherapy while like in a coma and not have to like deal with it basically. But the apes or whatever they've been testing this on all kept dying. They then discovered that apparently some humans and apes have a specific genetic trait that makes them survive in comas better than other people.
• 1:19:11
  Speaker B: Okay.
• 1:19:11
  Speaker A: Which to me felt like a weird stretch, like a bit of like a gimme for this story or whatever. But is revealed that one in 7,000 people have this. And this is one of the things that limits their pool of applicants to like a million people of like who can even be an astronaut to go on this mission.
• 1:19:31
  Speaker B: Because it's got to be somebody.
• 1:19:32
  Speaker A: Got to be somebody who can survive the coma, okay? Because they have to. They feel like they have to do the comas. Another thing the book touches on that the movie doesn't really go into. The whole reason they're doing the coma is one of it is to save on food because they can. They can just like feed him like slurry basically the whole time. Which is a whole thing in the book is that on his trip back he's going to run out of real food pretty quickly and is going to be have to just eat this weird like protein slurry the whole rest of the way. If he doesn't go back into a coma, which he hadn't decided if he was going to do or not. So there's things I like about this coma resistant thing. And one of them is that because the. It limits the pool of who's available by like a lot, it becomes kind of a clever excuse for why the ship is built the way that it is. Where the ship has all these like touchpad interfaces and like iPads and like when he like goes to do stuff it'll like pop up a screen where it's like eject fuel pot or whatever. That is not how spaceships work. Like that is not how I would assume. No. If you see that like touchpad interface stuff just like isn't a thing necessarily. Like there's Some elements of it where there is stuff like that, but. But for the most part that's not how spaceships works because they're flown by people who are like fighter pilots and stuff like that, but because their pool is so limited. The people that they have available to this because one, they have to volunteer to go on a suicide mission, but two, they also have to be coma resistant. So it's this like very narrow pool of people and a lot of them are not astronauts, have not been pilots or whatever. So they need the spaceship stuff to be kind of usable by like non fire pilot people. So I think that's a fun kind of detail. It's also an excuse for why Grace has to go because we find out that he is coma resistant. And so it's another reason that like he is a prime candidate and like one of the reasons that that strat like forces him to go. I think it's not super necessary. Like it's one of those things where it's like it doesn't. I understand why the movie cuts it because it's not like, like it's an interesting aside, but it doesn't feel, it doesn't feel rooted in super strong science to me. For one, it feels kind of like a, a thing he made up to kind of justify some stuff that I just don't know if it necessarily needed justifying. And so I, that's why I threw it here. I just wanted to include it as.
• 1:21:55
  Speaker B: I mean, I don't, I don't feel like I missed that in the movie.
• 1:22:02
  Speaker A: Yeah, that's my point. It's like it doesn't, I think it, it makes more sense in the book. Book because I think Weir felt like he needed it to justify some of the choices he makes with the spaceship design. And some of the other stuff of these are not like true astronauts. So we can like anyways and like additional justification for why Grace has to be one of the people that goes because we also find out that the other backup option for him if he doesn't go is this woman who's like literally has a bachelor's degree. She was one of the people who volunteered. She has like a bachelor's degree in biology or something like that, but works at like a distillery in like South America and hasn't been training, hasn't been doing any of this stuff and. But she is also coma resistant. And if he doesn't agree to go or if he can't go, they have to have like five days to get this person up to speed. And it's just like not feasible. And she also just did isn't Again, she has a bachelor's degree. She's like he has a Ph.D. the background.
• 1:23:06
  Speaker B: Yeah, yeah.
• 1:23:06
  Speaker A: And so again it's just another detail of like this is why he has to go. I don't know how necessary it was. Anyways.
• 1:23:11
  Speaker B: Well, going off of that. If I can add an additional question.
• 1:23:15
  Speaker A: Yep.
• 1:23:16
  Speaker B: If you can answer it. Do we ever find out like what happened to the other astronauts? Like.
• 1:23:23
  Speaker A: No, they just died.
• 1:23:25
  Speaker B: They just died.
• 1:23:26
  Speaker A: So even though they are coma resistant, they're still. It's still just very dangerous is the. The implications.
• 1:23:31
  Speaker B: Right. And that was kind of how I fel in the gaps in the movie. Obviously being in a coma for that long is dangerous under the best of conditions.
• 1:23:39
  Speaker A: No, we never know. They never explain like why they died. It's just something. Yeah. Something. They had a disease, whatever. Something happened and they just didn't make it. Okay, another hyper specific aside, this is a question I have for other people who have read this book. This is more of me asking a question. In the book, Rocky's speech. Speech initially is written as music notes.
• 1:24:03
  Speaker B: Oh, that's fun.
• 1:24:04
  Speaker A: Yeah. It is written as. Eventually it's just written as words once he starts to learn them. But initially when we he first starts talking, his words are written as little music notes. Oh yeah.
• 1:24:17
  Speaker B: Cute.
• 1:24:17
  Speaker A: Yeah, it's fun. It's a good idea. I think that's cool. I like that. But at one point as they're learning words, Rocky says something that is written. Written in the book as three eighth notes in a row.
• 1:24:29
  Speaker B: Okay.
• 1:24:30
  Speaker A: It is written as two connected eighth notes and then a third separate eighth note. And Grace says cool. The first two syllable word. That does not make sense to me. And I need some. I felt crazy reading in this and I need somebody to see if I'm like overthinking like what's going on here. Does the word syllable not inherently imply like beats to it? Because syllable in our. Like when we talk about syllables, we're words. The number of syllables in a word is the number of like the number of beats. Beats per word.
• 1:25:02
  Speaker B: Right.
• 1:25:02
  Speaker A: So Taco has two syllables. Beginning has three syllable. Or. Yeah. Three syllables. Thus would three eighth notes not just be three syllables? Because here's re. Like I just need you to look at. It's right there where it says I hold up. Do you see that part?
• 1:25:23
  Speaker B: Yeah, I see.
• 1:25:23
  Speaker A: Yeah. It's just read those like couple sentences there. Do you see how those notes are written?
• 1:25:29
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 1:25:29
  Speaker A: Or he says our first two syllable words yeah. My confusion is that is almost definitionally three syllables. No.
• 1:25:37
  Speaker B: Right. You would think.
• 1:25:39
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 1:25:39
  Speaker B: Unless maybe he's referring to the first two connected notes.
• 1:25:44
  Speaker A: So here's the thing. But he does have the things where Rocky speaks basically in chords and he talks about, like, a single note. A single syllable can have multiple different notes stacked on top of each other. So he can basically, like, play a chord where he plays, like, three notes as one note. So a single note, a single syllable can have multiple different notes stacked on top of each other. But that would be written, if you were writing it as music, that would be written as multiple heads on a single stem, not as two eighth notes next to each other. Really, I'm asking this because, Paulie, I hope you read this and can provide some input on that. I'm specifically asking my friend Paulie, who's also a musician, but again, that would be written with multiple heads on a single stem, not as two connected eighth notes and then an individual eighth note. I couldn't decide if I was just missing something here or if this was an instance of Andy Weir and his editor, like, not being music people and like, not running it past a music person or something, because, again, I just feel like the way that is written is definitionally three syllables. But he says it's two syllables. It's on page for. Okay. For people, it's on page 200. I'm just gonna. So if you want to go check your version of the book. And it's. I hold up the. Whatever the symbol is, and before I can even speak, he points to it and says, and it's three eighth notes. Excellent. Our first two syllable word. I think he should say our first three syllable word or the. They should have written that differently. Anyways, let me know your thoughts if you're a music person, if you've read this book, or if you have any insights on that. Am I overthinking it? Is there something I'm missing or is that a mistake in the book? And then my final discussion point here is something I alluded to earlier that I just wanted to bring up, that I've never heard anybody talk about this, but that is the way Rocky talks in both the book and the movie. I find. And I don't really know how to describe this because it makes total sense based on the way Grace translates the vocabulary in a very practical way. Way where he. He doesn't have, like, different versions of. So it. Like when he says, like, you and me, every. There's no my. There's no your right it's all you and me.
• 1:27:47
  Speaker B: And there are not a lot of like different verb conjugations or like. Yeah.
• 1:27:52
  Speaker A: Or other flowery language or connecting whatever or any of that sort of stuff. It's very basic syntax because again, that makes sense. You're learning the very basics so you can.
• 1:28:01
  Speaker B: Well, and I'm. Whatever program this is is probably a pretty like, whatever he is using to translate it in the movie is probably a pretty basic program.
• 1:28:11
  Speaker A: Yeah. Among other things. And so it totally makes sense based on the way he translates a vocabulary in like this practical way. But I also can't help but feel both in the book and the movie that it kind of ends up trading on like a very forced Gump style. Isn't it adorable when people speak in stunted, childlike ways even though they are very much not children? Because Rocky is a full grown own genius scientist adult.
• 1:28:35
  Speaker B: Right.
• 1:28:36
  Speaker A: And it feels kind of patronizing to me.
• 1:28:39
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 1:28:40
  Speaker A: And. Which was just a general overall issue I had with some parts of the movie. And, and again, that 100 comes from the book. I, I felt all of that in the book as well. I will say it bothered me less on this viewing on the second viewing than it did on the first, but the feeling was still there. And it's just this buried down deep feeling that just kind of nags at me that this whole thing feels kind of patronizing and trading on vaguely pro. I know. I hesitate to call it problematic because I, I understand what it's doing and, and it does make sense, but at the same time my brain goes. But we're kind of doing like this kind of infantilizing. Infantilizing thing where it's like, isn't it so adorable?
• 1:29:21
  Speaker B: Right? No, I, I don't know. I see what, Yeah, I see what you're saying and I, I don't, I don't even disagree with you. Yeah, I, I can't speak for the book. Obviously. I did not read it.
• 1:29:32
  Speaker A: He talks the exact same way in both.
• 1:29:34
  Speaker B: Basically. I do feel like the movie. It seems like there were probably producers who were very concerned with making sure that Rocky was perceived as cute.
• 1:29:49
  Speaker A: Yes, 100%. Which again, that comes from the book. I cannot stress enough that all of this issue is also in the book. He talks the same way. Way he, he is dialed up a little bit more in the movie. Like some of the, the more like ADHD parts of which that also adds to it making it feel a little weird to me in the movie, where it even dials up more how much he's like Bouncing off the walls and like, oh, whoa. Bad, bad, bad. Oh, so dirty, so dirty. So like. And just like. And, and it's just. It, it, it. You know what it feels like? It feels like watching, like Big Bang Theory, like, where it's like we're doing this weird, not mocking, but kind of mocking depiction of somebody with autism or something like that in a way that feels. Yeah. Just kind of patronizing and, and, and. But it also makes sense again, based on how they're doing the language translation. I, I don't have a. I just wanted to bring it up because it's just a feeling I have and I don't have super strong feelings about it. And I'm not like saying it's like a cancel the movie or anything by any stretch. I just wanted to see if I was alone in that feeling or if anybody else felt that at all or if I'm crazy. I don't know. I just wanted to bring it up and talk about it and see. So there that is. All right, let's go ahead and talk about all the stuff I thought was better in the book. You like to read?
• 1:31:10
  Speaker B: Oh, yes, I love to read.
• 1:31:12
  Speaker A: What do you like to read?
• 1:31:16
  Speaker B: Everything.
• 1:31:17
  Speaker A: I love a. We love a. An infographic at the front of a book. We get to see what the rocket looks like and you just see how this centrifuge part works, which is pretty different looking to the movie. They. The drawing in the book is very simplistic.
• 1:31:30
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 1:31:31
  Speaker A: And the movie does a much more involved crazy spaceship. But I think it's fun. A little detail that in the book that doesn't make it into the movie. When he flops off his bed at the very beginning. Beginning, he has a catheter and a tube up his butt and both of those pull out when he falls off his bed. And he reacts to that. Obviously, I understand why they did not do that in the movie, but that is. That is a thing that happens in the book. That's the, the kind of attention to detail that Weir likes to put in for that kind of stuff. There's a lot more, like, clever, sciencey, problem solving stuff in the book, which is just always the case with Weir's not novels. For instance, early on, he. In the book, he feels like gravity is wrong and an important detail. There are no windows in the spaceship in the book. So in the film, he like pretty quickly sees that he's in space.
• 1:32:23
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 1:32:24
  Speaker A: In the book he has no idea. He's just in. He. He actually can't get into the command module. Initially in the book. So he's just in, like, the. The dormitory and the lab, and he. He thinks he might be on Earth initially. He doesn't know where he is. He doesn't have any memory.
• 1:32:37
  Speaker B: That's kind of interesting.
• 1:32:38
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 1:32:39
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 1:32:39
  Speaker A: And. But he. He. He starts to feel like gravity is, like, weird. It doesn't feel right. And so he starts, like, dropping stuff and doing math and then figures out that gravity is like 15 meters per second per second, which is almost double what Earth's gravity is. And so he's like, something's going on here. This is really weird. And, yeah, he can't get into the command module until he remembers his name. That's like a security feature they have. So initially he's just stuck in this weird dormitory and with no idea what's going on. A similar. Another one later on that I thought was fun is that in the movie he figures out he's not in our solar system by, like. He pulls up the computer and just, like, scrolls and is like, realizes, oh, shit. I'm like, yeah, very far away from Earth. In the movie, he. Or in the book, he sees a star on one of the control panels and is like, oh, it's the sun. And then he sees sunspots on it and sees how fast they're moving and thinks like, well, those are moving a weird speed. And he does some math based on how fast these sunspots are moving and realizes that the surface of the star is the wrong size for our sun. And he's like, that's not our sun. What the hell? And so again, just little moments, like, where he realizes stuff by doing math, basically. It's a lot. Happens a lot in the book that they kind of don't translate as much to the movie. They do a little bit. But yeah, one little detail that I think could have worked in the movie that happens throughout the book, and they don't really do, I think, at all in the movie is that in the book he will see things associated with his dead crew members and he'll just start crying without really remembering or realizing why he's crying because he doesn't remember them. But he, like, knows this thing is connected to them, and it, like, he just starts, like, crying. I thought it was a very touching little detail. Like, there's, like. Happens a handful of times throughout the book. I like that there's a great exchange in the book early on in the classroom where he's talking to the class and they're talking. They're asking him about astrophage. And stuff. Stuff. And he says to them, you guys know about climate change, right? And one of the students says, my dad says that's not real. And he goes, well, it is. And I actually thought this contrasted pretty starkly with a moment in the movie where a student asked about astrophage. And he responds, what does your parents think about that? I'm not sure it should come from me or whatever.
• 1:34:53
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 1:34:53
  Speaker A: And I thought that was like, a pretty stark difference. In, like, in the book, he's like, I'm gonna tell you the real science, and I don't care what your parents think. And in the movie, he's kind of like, playing that, like, well, you know, let's. I don't want to ruffle any feathers kind of thing, which I don't think makes as much sense for his character. Again, I think the book version makes more sense. And when Zero G hits after they've been flying the whole time, which is another little detail that I really like, is that the reason he has gravity the entire. When he wakes up is because the ship is decelerating. I don't even know if the movie really, really. It becomes clear when he starts floating, but the reason he has gravity the whole time when. When he, like, wakes up is because the ship is arriving at Tau Ceti. And so it's breaking, it's slowing down the whole time, which creates the deceleration, creates the gravity. And so when he finally gets to Tau Ceti, it stops decelerating. And that's when he start the gravity. He starts floating. When that happens in the book, he immediately throws up, but he throws up into his jumpsuit and then has to hold it against himself because he doesn't want it to get everywhere. It's. It's a fun little moment. Another little detail, and this happens several times, is that in the book, when he's going out to catch the canister, he's suiting up in the EVA suit for the first time. And he has this thought that putting the EVA suit on in zero gravity is much easier than. Than other times he's done it, but he can't remember ever doing it before. He just has like. Like the sense memory of, like, this is easier than when I put it on when I was doing it on Earth or whatever. And that happens quite a bit throughout the book. And it's always kind of fun that he has these thoughts of, like, how do I know how to do this? Or how do. Why do I remember this? But I don't remember this? This is a sun Fun science factor that I learned in this book that I had no idea about. In this book he can put on the EVA suit and immediately go out into space because the entire ship is kept at 40% pressure, pressure which is different than the ISS. So for instance, on the International Space Station, when the astronauts up there are going to go do like an EVA where they go out and do maintenance or whatever on it, they actually have to go into a decompression chamber and spend like hours adjusting the pressure of their bodies to prepare to go out into space. And so it takes them forever to be able to do that and they don't. And so because they keep the pressure inside the space station at normal, like Earth pressure, and the reason they keep that they do that on the ISS is because in case there's an emergency on the ISS and they need to come back to Earth right away, they don't want to have to have them wait for hours to get back to Earth pressure so that they can come land on Earth. And I didn't realize about this, didn't know that was a thing. And I thought that was really interesting. I had no idea they had to spend hours like, like when divers come up from the ocean or go down like really far in the ocean. Same kind of deal. I didn't, it makes sense, but I didn't realize that. But if you just have the pressure in the space matching what you need, then you can do it like immediately, which is a fun, a fun little thing. After he catches the container from the other spaceship, he at one point goes out and knocks off a hunk of his spaceship and throws it to the ship so that they can see what his spaceship is made out of. It's kind of fun. There's a little aside where Strat, in one of the flashback Strat goes to a court case to basically use her authority to dismiss a bunch of charges of copyright violation that some government is trying to levy against them, essentially because they put all of Earth's media ever, of all time, ever, and all software ever made onto the computer on the Hail Mary so that they had literally every book, every everything, every piece of software ever, so that if they needed it, they could just pull it up and access it. And they're like, well, you can't do that. You're violating all these copyrights by doing that. And she basically shows up and gives them a preemptive pardon that the President or whatever UN gave her or something like that. It's kind of a weird scene. I'm not saying it I don't think it should be in the movie because the whole thing kind of feels like Weir had a weird ax to grind with copyright law or something in some way. It's an interesting scene, though. The scene where Grace learns what happened to Rocky's crew is. It's a great scene in the movie and maybe like it more, but it's slightly different in the book and also really good in a way that I like and I just wanted to read a section of of it. I just really like their exchange here and it is different than what happens in the film. The crew. The computer immediately translates the result. Original crew is 23. Now is only me. That octave drop. I think it's an emotion they. Did they die? Yes. I rubbed my eyes. Wow. The Blip a had a crew of 23. Rocky is the sole survivor and he's understandably upset about it. What? I stammer. Bad. Bad, bad, bad, bad. I sigh. My original crew was three. Now it's just me. I put my hand up against the divider. Rocky puts a claw on the divider opposite my hand. Bad, bad, bad, bad. I say we stay like that for a moment. I'll watch you sleep good. Me sleep? He says. His arms relax and he looks for all the world like a dead bug. He floats free in his side of the tunnel, no longer hanging on to any support bars. Well, you're not alone anymore, Buck. Neither of us are. It's just a nice little scene.
• 1:40:02
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 1:40:03
  Speaker A: There's a flashback in the book that mentions that global warming actually bought Earth like an extra month worth of time because we had heated up the Earth enough that the cooling is going to take a little bit longer. I think that's a good cut from the movie just for obvious reasons of people pulling it out of context or whatever. We also see them in the book in a flashback in order to heap the Earth up even more to buy us more time so that fewer people hopefully die. They nuke Antarctica. They. They blow up. They don't. They. They plant a bunch of bombs in the ice shelf and knock huge portion of the ice in Antarctica into the ocean so that it will melt and release because there's a bunch of methane trapped in the ice in Antarctica and that release. Methane will get released basically greenhouse gas into the atmosphere and will help keep Earth warmer longer. And there's. There's a pretty good scene where they're watching this all happen and the guy who's. Whose plan it was is this guy who is a climate scientist who's been spending his Whole life fighting against climate change. And he's like a super hippie guy and is like, you know, like all of his research and stuff has been about how climate change is destroying the Earth. And now he comes up with this plan where, like, they can blow up Antarctica to increase the heat on Earth. And he's like this, it's like this, you know, this big, like, kind of moral dilemma for him. It's kind of interesting the movie alludes to this, but I thought the book made it way more clear, is that Rocky was his crew's engineer, like, specifically. I don't know if they ever. I think they say that.
• 1:41:36
  Speaker B: I think they say it. Yeah.
• 1:41:37
  Speaker A: But the reason he's so good at making stuff is because that explicitly was like, his job. Similar to how Grace is like the biologist, he was the engineer. He, he, he fixed this. He fixed everything. I really like that. And like, because one of the things I liked about is that similar to Grace, he's not really like an astronaut. And so it's like these two kind of like, worst options from their crew, like being stuck being the ones to kind of fix this. And another thing I thought was fun is that Grace says that working with Rocky is like having the world's best engineer from 1950, because they don't have computers or any of that kind of technology. Like, humans actually have really, like, advanced technology in a lot of ways compared to the Iridium. They have their own different advanced technology, but they're super good at, like, making stuff. He's. He's like a super genius at like, creating stuff and building stuff and fixing stuff. And like, he can manufacture, like, perfectly perfect, like, replacement parts for the ship and stuff like that. That, that would be impossible for Grace to do, but he doesn't understand what computers are and stuff. It is interesting. I thought that was fun. There's a very cool description of how Iridian biology works in the book. They're essentially. Essentially steam powered.
• 1:42:53
  Speaker B: Steampunk?
• 1:42:53
  Speaker A: Yeah. Kind of gears. Yeah. No gears, but pistons and stuff like that. Iridian physiology is frankly amazing. Eret is so close to its star, the sheer amount of energy entering the biosphere is ridiculous. And Iridians, being at the top of the food change, have a heck of a lot more energy to work with than human bodies do. We're talking absurd amounts of energy here. They pull oxygen off minerals to get metals. Iridians are, in effect, biological smelters. Humans have hair, fingernails, tooth enamel, and other dead stuff on our bodies that serve critical purposes. Eridians take that Concept to the ultimate extreme. Rocky's carapace is made of oxidized minerals. His bones are honeycombed metallic alloys. His blood is mostly liquid mercury. Even his nerves are inorganic silicates transmitting, transmitting light based impulses. Iridian's muscles are inorganic. They're made of poor sponge like material sealed in flexible sacks. The majority of the body's water is tied up in those sacks. And the atmospheric pressure is so high that 210 degrees Celsius water is still a liquid. They have two separate circulatory systems, the ambient system and the hot system. The ambient blood is 210 degrees Celsius, but the hot blood is kept at 305 degrees, which is hot enough to boil water even at arid's air pressure. Both circulatory systems have blood vessels that expand or contract around the muscles as needed to set their temperature. Want to expand, make it hot. Want to contract, make it cold. In short, Iridians are steam powered. This is interesting, the kind of stuff that I like. I don't know if the movie makes mentions this or not, but Rocky has been at tau Ceti for 46 years. When Grace gets there. Eridians live like into their six or seven hundreds. They have a much longer lifespan. And Rocky in The book is 291.
• 1:44:28
  Speaker B: So he's kind of, he says his age in the movie, but I don't remember exactly what he said.
• 1:44:32
  Speaker A: He's like roughly the same equivalent age as like Grace's for human years, basically. A little detail in the book that is very different than the movie is that in the book Grace wants to watch Rocky eat, but Rocky, Rocky is embarrassed about it and says it's like gross. It's a whole cultural thing where Iridians don't watch or engage with each other while they eat. It's like kind of taboo or whatever.
• 1:44:54
  Speaker B: Yeah, like the kind of. Really the opposite of humans.
• 1:44:57
  Speaker A: Yeah. And basically what happens in the book is described as we see it in the movie, where he eats and he just kind of like shovels stuff into whatever. In the book, like a hole in his stomach opens up and it poops out the previous meal because they don't have. They just have one orifice, basically it like poops out the previous meal and then he shovels a bunch of weird meat into himself and then seals it back up and then immediately falls asleep. In the movie version. In the movie Rocky is like proud. He's like, no, like, because he says like Grace, like humans eat gross or something like that. And he goes, well, how do you eat? He's like, it's beautiful or something like that. It's kind of the opposite of how he actually acts in the. In the book. A line in the book which they're actually a complaint about the book is Weir's not. His prose is not the best. He's a good storyteller and like the. The nuts and bolts of what happens are interesting, but like the moment to moment writing is not particularly compelling. Like the actual. Again, the prose, like I was comparing it to something like. Like when we read Contact. I read Contact recently. Like some of the passages in that are some of the more beautiful lines I've ever seen written about love. I had an issue with this when I was trying to find an opening quote of finding anything I thought was like super interesting or compelling.
• 1:46:09
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 1:46:10
  Speaker A: Out of context. You know what I mean? This line's pretty good though, where Rocky is talking to. To Gray and he says, discrepancy is science. You think about discrepancy, make theory, you as science human. And it's like kind of a fun little breakdown of what science is. Discrepancy is science. You think about discrepancy, you make a theory, a little detail during the whole Adrian catastrophe where after they get back from the fishing expedition and they're spinning out of control. Rocky's like fine in that scene in the book because the gravity on Arid is. Is crazy high compared to Earth. So he's actually not like in the movie. He's like getting thrown around and seems to be struggling. The whole point in the book is that he's fine, except he can't help because he's in his container, he can't do anything and that Grace is going to pass out and is pinned against the wall. And so yeah, he's fine with the extra GS in the book. The movie makes it seem like he's also having issues with that, which he wouldn't because again, the whole point is that their planet, they have a. They're used to like 29 GS or something. Like, it's like a lot. There's a little something where after Rocky is injured and seems to be maybe dying, Grace wants to help in some way in the book. And he sees all this weird soot stuff in like Rocky's vents that he uses to like pull like air through or whatever. And he sees all this soot and he thinks like, oh, that soot's probably like blocking the airflow. And. And like, if I could get that out of there, it might help him Heal faster. And so he builds this whole contraption where he builds a box that he attaches to the outside of Rocky's enclosure that then drills a hole in Rocky's enclosure so that he can put an air. That then has a remote control air hose so he can blow high pressured air at Rocky while he's laying there asleep or whatever, to blow all the crud out of his vents. And he succeeds at this, and it takes forever, Blows all the crude out and you're. And he's like, oh, maybe that'll help him heal faster. And then later, once Rocky comes back and is like, back up, he goes, by the way, you almost killed me. That stuff you blew out of me was like, scabs, essentially. And you basically, like, blew all my scabs off while I was healing. And luckily I had healed enough that, like, it was fine. Like, I still was able to heal. But if you had done that, like, a day earlier, earlier, I would have died. I thought that was interesting while it was happening. And I was like, oh, this is kind of cool. And, like, I like him, like, being inventive to, like, try to help Rocky. But then the reveal that he almost killed him makes it. I'm like, okay, I get why they cut that, because it's just like, it doesn't. Yeah, I'm fine with the movie calling all of that, because it was kind of. Yeah, just whatever. The movie does have him make a heat lamp, which I thought was kind of a good substitute for him trying to help in some way. Way. There's a fun little moment in the book where Grace is after he gets the chemical burn from getting Rocky into his enclosure. He's. He's getting painkillers from the computer, but it's on a specific schedule. And he's in an immense amount of pain. And he's like, painkillers. And the computer's like, sorry, you can't have your campaign painkillers for three hours. So he says, computer, change time to, like, three hours forward. And then he says, painkillers, and the computer gives them the painkiller killers, which is a fun little moment where he tricks the computer into giving him more painkillers. I talked about it earlier, but the scene where Strat calls him out for being a coward, I think is a little bit better in the book. She just really goes in on him about, like, why he left academia and. And kind of like, like, chastises him as, like, that's why you're a teacher, too, because those kids, like, adore you. Like, it's easy for you to go, like, be an element or middle school teacher because everybody there thinks you're amazing and, like, looks up to you and you, you, you. You know, you were. You. You couldn't deal with the criticism you got in academia. And then talks about how he. He's not in relationship because his fear of rejection and all of that. Like I said, movie captures at least some of that. But I thought it worked really well. In the book. There's a moment where Grace tells Rocky he looks like a spider. And Rocky says, good, proud. I am a scary space monster. You are leaky space blob. Which is fun. When he goes to save Rocky at the end and he jumps onto his spaceship in the boat book, he's banging on the ship and he tells them. He's yelling like, hey, I'm out here. I'm here. I have my radio on to the same frequency. If you're in there, like, say something. And after some silence and him not knowing if Rocky is alive still, it crackles through his radio. Grace, question. You are here. Question. In the movie, he just kind of runs down the tunnel. They're both fine in different ways. I can't decide which I prefer, but I do like the radio mode moment. At the end, Grace explains to him that he's gonna die because he doesn't have enough food. Like, he came to save Rocky, but he. He doesn't have enough food to eat. And Rocky's like, can't you eat tba? And he's like, wait a second. And he starts, like, thinking about it and he's, like, going through, like, all the stuff in, like, talmoeba. He's like, maybe I could eat talmoeba. And it has the exact line he thinks himself. It does have mitochondria, the powerhouse of the cell, which. All right, kudos. I enjoyed that little. That little reference. But, yeah, he ends up. He does end up eating talmoeba to survive for a while, which I thought was funny because he has a whole bunch of it. And then a little detail. The final chapter of the book, when he ends up on Arid. All of the chapters are numbered normally, but the final chapter is numbered in Iridian numbers because he's on Arid. As you mentioned in your question, the movie overall nails this. But there are a few details in this final, like, epilogue chapter that I like in the book. In the book, Grace has been there for four years at this point. I don't know how long he's implied to have been there in the movie
• 1:51:52
  Speaker B: I don't think it says.
• 1:51:53
  Speaker A: Yeah, but he's been there for four years. He actually has a cane because the gravity is so intense that it's kind of hard for him to. To survive there. He also mentions that the first few years were rough because while he was eating the tamoeba, it basically he suffered from malnutrition and got like scurvy and stuff because it didn't have everything he needed.
• 1:52:11
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 1:52:12
  Speaker A: Eventually the. The Iridian scientists were able to kind of manufacture the vitamins and minerals and stuff that he needed, but it just took a while, including the fact that eventually they end up cloning his muscle from Grace and turning it into food. So he literally eats meat made from human meat, but it's his meat and he calls them me burgers. He eats me burgers every day. And then a little detail, like a cultural thing that I thought was kind of neat world building is that the Aridians do these things called thrums, where they all get together and like a meeting and they. They become like a. Like a hive mind where they like. They sing together and they like, make decisions as like a single, like, entity kind of thing. Kind of like bees or something. In a way that I thought was kind of interesting. They have the. The biggest. The second biggest thrum they've ever had was figuring out how to like, sleep save Grace because. Or how to keep him alive. And the first biggest thrum was when they were coming up with a plan for saving the astrophage or stopping the astrophage or whatever. And then the final detail that I really like that doesn't make it into the movie is that when he goes to teach his class at the end, because that is how it ends. Instead of just talking to the class like he does in the movie, he has an organ that he plays, so he plays the notes of their language to them.
• 1:53:35
  Speaker B: That's cool.
• 1:53:36
  Speaker A: I thought was fun. I think that's awesome. All right, let's go ahead and talk about the stuff I thought was better in the movie. My life has taught me one lesson, Hugo, and not the one I thought it would. Happy endings only happen in the movies. The movie does excise some of Weir's more obnoxious opinions that sneak in occasionally. There's not a lot of it. It's not really bad, but there are a few moments here and there early on. Grace has a line. He lives in San Francisco and. And he has a line about how the people of San Francisco could be trying at times. And he's imagining an imagined San Francisco Person asking for vegan gluten free grass clippings at a diner or something. Basically just trading on all those dumb weird hippies with their vegan. It's just kind of boomer humor stuff that I'm just like, eh. And it's like the only moment where Grace. Cause it's Grace thinking that it's like the only moment he really has an opinion on like that. But it's like right at the beginning of the book and I was like, please, Andy Weir, don't make me dislike your protagonist from moment one. It gets better from there. But a detail in the movie that I really like is that when Grace wakes up initially he's, he's. He. He kind of crashes out and has like, just lives in like sweatpants and stuff for the beginning. And then once he ultimately decides to do something and like he's going to do the mission, that's when he changes into the mission jumpsuit. I think that's a clever little kind of visual representation of what he's going through in the book. He just immediately finds a jumpsuit and puts it on and he doesn't even have that kind of crash out phase. I think the movie generally nails Grace's sense of humor, but I, I think it also overall improves it in a way that I enjoyed or at least it mostly cuts a few moments that I was kind of having a hard time engaging with. And I'm going to do my best to explain this, but there's some moments where. So for instance, there's this moment in the book where Grace thinks to himself, I called it the Bruce Banner Banner test. He does some tests with. He shoots gamma rays at the, the astrophage to see if gamma rays will go through or something like that. And he says, I called it the Bruce Banner Test. Felt good about that name. And I know part of the joke is that he's like a dork, but it is also hard to tell how clever I'm supposed to think Grace's humor is. Because calling it the Bruce Banner Test is literally just like. It's not clever in any way. Yeah, that, yeah, I shot it with gamma rays. That's what happened. It's like, again, it's like Big Bang Theory humor.
• 1:56:03
  Speaker B: Like, it's just a very obvious.
• 1:56:05
  Speaker A: It's just a very obvious reference. And he's like, felt good about that name. And I'm like, okay, am I supposed to think he's clever or is. Am I supposed to think he's kind of a dork who doesn't realize that he's not as clever as he. I don't know, I had. I had a hard time with that. And then later on there's a similar moment where he sees the four Beatles. Like he pulls up a display and there are these things called the Beatles. And he doesn't know what they are at this point, but he sees their label, John, Paul, George and Ringo and he thinks to himself, I get it. I'm not laughing, but I get it. And I'm like, but that joke is no less clever than your joke about the Bruce Banner test. And then later we see him name the astrophage that he has Larry, Moe and Curly. And so I was like, I guess the joke is that he can't appreciate his exact sense of humor coming from someone else because he doesn't name the Beatles, that some other scientist guy names, names them that. But when he sees them named that, he's like, that's not that funny. And I'm like, is the joke that he doesn't get that it's exactly as funny as the stuff he says or. I just couldn't tell how self aware the book is about this. It's not a major issue. It was just something. And it mostly fades away once Rocky shows up. And it's fine. It was just early on I was struggling with trying to. To. To figure out Grace's sense of humor and how much of it was supposed to be clever versus not whatever. Doesn't matter. There's a moment in the film that I think is a lot of fun where Grace and Rocky do the Close Encounters theme together. It's fan service, but it's fun. I enjoyed it. The thumbs up, thumbs down thing does not actually come from the book. In the book, Grace gives him a thumbs up and he just returns a similar thumbs up looking thing with his claw. I like that for whatever reason in the movie, he can only seem to do thumbs down. Kind of implied to be because of his biology.
• 1:57:52
  Speaker B: He just can't do.
• 1:57:53
  Speaker A: Yeah, he can't do a thumbs up or whatever. And so I. Maybe he's just doing a bit, I don't know. Either way, I think it's fun and I like that it becomes a thing where they give thumbs down to each other as a thumbs up. I mentioned this earlier. I think this is a good cut from the movie. But in the book they go to a prison in New Zealand to recruit a solar power engineer who has a plan to essentially turn a huge chunk of the Sahara into an astrophage breeder farm. They have to Make a buttload of astrophage. And the fastest way they can think of to do this is to basically use the desert in the Sahara and cover it with these, like, panels that they can use to breed astrophage on. There's a bunch of science nonsense that goes into it. I think it's a good cut for the film. I honestly think it would have been a fine cut for the book. I, I know what Weir's doing with this part is that he's kind of showing the lengths they're willing to go to, to. To like make this happen. Because one, they're recruiting this guy who's in prison in the book, he's in prison for. He was running this specific solar farm in Africa as like part of like a startup thing. And there's so much detail. This I'm going to try to streamline as much as possible. And it ended up blowing up while he wasn't there and killing a bunch of people. And then he got thrown in jail for manslaughter. But he argues to Strat and Grace that that's not actually why he's in prison, that he's actually in prison, prison for essentially embezzling a bunch of money. And then that that's actually why they threw him in prison and that the, the manslaughter thing was just like a, like a, A convenient excuse for throwing him in prison. But they're like, but you. Why weren't. If. Would the. Would that solar farm have blown up if you had been there? Because they're like, oh, we actually found out that when that solar farm blew up, you were like in South America at some casino because you're a gambling at addict. And he's like, yeah, I am. And that's blah. It's this whole thing, it's very complicated. And again, the whole point is like, we're setting up the idea that in this we have to do this to save the world. We have no other choice. We have to work with weird, unsavory people. That's what we're doing. But I just, I think it's a good cut from the movie. It didn't do a lot for me. There's also a whole thing that they cut from the movie where Strat wants entirely straight men on the crew to avoid any remote romantic entanglement issues. And Grace asks why not straight women? And Strat is like, well, most scientists are men, deal with it or something like that. And it's, it's an interesting passage. Grace does mock Strat for kind of this implied bigotry. Like he does kind of make fun of her for it. But I also feel like a little bit what's going on here is that Weir wrote her choices as kind of like the true rational best choice.
• 2:00:34
  Speaker B: Right?
• 2:00:34
  Speaker A: That if you were thinking truly as rationally as you could, this is what you would do. But we will admit it's a little bigoted. But also it's bigoted for a good cause. Like, it's just weird. I want to. I'm just going to read a passage here because I feel like people who haven't read the book need to hear. It's one of the cringier parts of the book. Strat stayed firm and insisted on only the best candidates. But some concessions had to be made. Women, I said. Yes, Strat, grant grumbled. Despite your guidelines. Yes. Good. No, it isn't. She frowned. I got overruled by the Americans and Russians on it. I folded my arm. Arms. I never would have thought a woman would be so sexist against women. It's not sexism. It's realism. She writeed a strand of her hair that had blown into her face. My guidelines were that all candidates must be heterosexual men. Why not all heterosexual women? The vast majority of scientists and trained astronaut candidates are men. It's the world we live in. Don't like it? Encourage your female students to go into stem. I'm not here to enact social equality. I'm here to do whatever's necessary to save humanity. Still seems sexist. Call it what you like. There's no room on this mission for sexual tension. What happens if there's some kind of romantic entanglement or dispute? People kill for less. I looked across the deck to the candidates. Captain Yang welcomed them aboard. He took special interest in his countrymen. The two were all smiles and handshakes. You didn't want a Chinese guy either. You thought their space program was still too young. But I hear you picked him to be the prime crew commander. Commander? He's the most qualified. So he's the commander. Maybe the Russians and Americans over there are qualified too. Maybe the people literally saving the world will keep it professional. Maybe cutting off literally half of the talent pool because you're afraid astronauts can't keep it in their pants isn't a good idea. We'll have to hope so. The Russian woman, Ilyukina, is on the prime crew as well. She's a materials expert and by far the best candidate for the task. The science expert is Martin Dubois, the American man. Two men and one woman. Recipe for for disaster I put my hands on my chest in mock surprise. Goodness me. Dubois appears to be black. I'm surprised you allowed it. Aren't you afraid he'll ruin the mission with talk of rap music and basketball? Oh, shut up. She said. So that's a whole exchange. It's just like. It's playing both sides in a way that, like, Grace is obviously also. You're supposed to agree with Grace mostly, I think, in this.
• 2:02:39
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 2:02:40
  Speaker A: But there's some part of me that thinks that maybe deep down, Weir is like. But actually, Strat has a point.
• 2:02:46
  Speaker B: Oh, definitely.
• 2:02:47
  Speaker A: That's the vibe I get.
• 2:02:48
  Speaker B: Yes. That is also the vibe I get.
• 2:02:50
  Speaker A: Yeah. Yeah. Another thing that the movie has but is not as bad is that the Russian caricature of Ilukina in this book feels about 20 years out of date to me. It's not absurdly bad. It's just kind of cringy. And I have a very brief passage I wanted to share from that. One of the moments that just made me go. And again, we get this in the movie. She's doing, like, kind of a Russian character in that. Nice to meet you. She said. She said you were the most qualified. No thanks required. Hello, Illikina, Lukina. Lunch. Ford and Hubstrat. I'm here to die for Earth. Pretty awesome. Yes. Eileen to Dimitri. Are all Russians crazy? Yes, he said with a smile. It is the only way to be Russian and happy at the same time. That's dark. That's Russian. It's just. It's like a. Again, it's like a caricature of, like, Russians that it's actually not, like, super dissimilar from some of the characters of Russian in. Of Russian characters in comics Contact. But that book was written in 1985 or whatever, and it just. It just feels out of date and kind of, again, caricature y in a way that was not great. There's a scene in the. In the book where dubois tells Grace that he and Shapiro have entered into a sexual relationship. It's very clear that Dupois Dubois is, like, autistic, and he talks about sex in a very, like, matter of fact way. And I was, like, reading this whole scene. I was like, boy, I do not think Strat would have allowed that to happen. Now dubois is the prime candidate, and Shapiro is the backup for him. So they're not on the same crew. But still, it feels. I don't think she would have allowed, considering her whole thing was like, I don't want romantic entanglements. She's gonna Let these two have sex. And they just. They're not quiet about it. They're, like, open about it. And he also, in this conversation, specifically mentions that they don't wear condoms because she's on birth control control. And I don't really have an issue with this scene, apart from feeling like I said Strat wouldn't allowed it. And thus it feels kind of forced into the story because it kind of feels like Weir thinks it's, like, cool to have a cavalier attitude about sex. It feels like a very, like, Gene Roddenberry Star Trek y. Like, it's the future. Like, ideally, sex is super demystified, and it's just like normal. We just talk, like, and. Which is. I agree with all of that. It is true. But I just don't feel like it needed to be in the movie and.
• 2:05:06
  Speaker B: And.
• 2:05:07
  Speaker A: And. Or in the book because it just feels like it's there for him to, again, kind of show off his. His, like, progressive attitudes on sex in a way that's not really relevant. I don't know. The movie does reference this where at the karaoke party, we see dubois and Shapiro kind of, like, canoodling together. Yeah.
• 2:05:26
  Speaker B: They're getting cozy at their little table.
• 2:05:27
  Speaker A: That is really referencing that in the book. The dude explaining what the Beatles are to Grace in a flashback. That's an easy cut. This is the one I talked about with the scene where he talks to Grace about how he believes in God and stuff.
• 2:05:38
  Speaker B: It's.
• 2:05:38
  Speaker A: It's a fine scene, but it didn't need to be in the movie. A scene I mentioned this earlier, a scene that I really like, and it's a line in the movie that I really like. That was not in the book. Is that when they're talking about his mate, Rocky's mate. Rocky says he has been with his mate for 186 years. And Grace makes a joke about it being the honeymoon phase. And. And Rocky's like, what you mean and? Or what do you mean? And he clarifies and says, a long time. You guys have been together a long time. And Rocky responds, is not enough. It got me good. It's a great. I love that G. It's a good line. The first astrophase sampler scene where he goes up and pulls open the thing and it all turns red and sparkly and very, very cool. Very pretty. Just stunning. Especially when we saw it in theaters. Just a visually stunning moment. And I also like the line, which is not in the book, where he's just standing there and Rocky says, what is Grace Doing. And he says, I'm having a moment, which I thought was great. When they're doing the fishing scene where they have the fishing sampler scene, there's a whole bunch of drama with Grace getting back into the airlock in time. In the book, he just kind of gets in and then all of the drama happens inside the ship. Like we see there isn't like a big whole thing outside, but I think adding a set piece outside where he
• 2:06:49
  Speaker B: has to like, it's a lot of fun.
• 2:06:51
  Speaker A: Fun and makes sense. Adds a lot of.
• 2:06:52
  Speaker B: Especially after setting up how dangerous it is for him to go out there
• 2:06:56
  Speaker A: makes perfect sense, adds a lot of tension and is really good. There's a whole diversion in the book after they get the Taliba on board where it gets loose and eats all of Grace's fuel. And then they have to use the Beatles as rockets to fly back to Rocky's ship. Like they're orbiting Adrian and they. He the Taliba, like eats all of their fuel and he's like, well, we're stuck here. Then he remembers the Beatles have their own like, fuel source. So that he goes out and he attaches the Beatles to the sides of the spaceship to use his thrusters to fly back to Rocky ship. It's all fine, but it's. It's unnecessary. Cutting all of that streamlining it makes and having the only Talmoeba emergency be the one at the end. Yeah, works better for pacing. That was my big issue and we'll talk about that more. But they get rid of this whole subplot in the flashbacks where Strat has Grace given a special amnesia drug so that he won't remember that he was forced to go on the mission until hopefully after he has maybe already helped complete the. The mission. In the movie, it is just implied that the memory loss is a side effect of the coma.
• 2:07:58
  Speaker B: Yeah, that was what I thought.
• 2:08:00
  Speaker A: That's all you need the book at the last. Sounds like the book over explains 100% over explains that. Where it's like she's like, well, I'm worried that if you remember that you're going to. That you were forced on this mission that you won't help or whatever. So we're going to give you this special amnesia drug that was invented for interrogations or something. It's. It's words, hat on a hat. It's like just say that the coma gives you memory loss. Who cares? Like, fine. That's a perfectly un. Like believable thing. Like you were in a coma for four years. You don't remember a lot of what happened. It takes a while for your memory.
• 2:08:34
  Speaker B: I can believe that.
• 2:08:35
  Speaker A: I can believe that. We don't need this weird memory drug thing. Unnecessary. And then similarly, we shortcut the entire nitrogen resistance breeding via a montage in the movie. That whole sequence where they realize that nitrogen kill kills talmoeba and then they have to breed a whole strain of nitrogen resistant tiba so that it plays out over like a lot of pages in the book and it just really, really drags down the end of this novel. So I thought the pacing again, just really helped there in the film. The only note I had here is that in the movie at one point Grace says, hey, I bred a nitrogen resistant talmoeba in those breeder tanks you made Rocky.
• 2:09:17
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 2:09:18
  Speaker A: And I was like, did they set that up in the movie at all that he made those tanks? Is that.
• 2:09:23
  Speaker B: I don't think so.
• 2:09:23
  Speaker A: I don't think so.
• 2:09:24
  Speaker B: I didn't recall, but I filled in the gaps.
• 2:09:26
  Speaker A: That's fine because they do set that up in the book earlier. But yeah, anyways. And again, this whole section in the end of the book is a lot of hard to parse lab experience experiments that are not particularly thrilling or interesting. And the movie just montages all of that in a way that like, it montages him solving the talma problem and breeding the nitrous and resistant ones and then getting to Rocky. And it all just really, really helps the pacing. I will say, I don't know if I would have felt that way about the end of the book if I had read the book first and then watched the movie. Yeah, but the way the movie plays out, the big moment where Rocky almost dies is like the big end of the second act low point. And then we kind of resolve. There's like a whole nother section after Rocky almost dies where they do a bunch more science forever. And it's just kind of like, okay, we already did the big emotional cathartic moment where Rocky lived. And so just continuing to get more catastrophes after that just doesn't. I just think the movie streamlines things in a way that really works. It really helps. And then a final detail that shows up in the movie that isn't in the book is that when he at his home on arid Armando, the arm robot he brings into his home, which is fun that is not mentioned in the book. I like that. All right, let's go ahead and talk about the stuff the movie nailed. As I expected, practically perfect in every way. I'm going to really fly through this? Because the answer is everything. It's. It's one of the most accurate, like, faithful adaptations we've ever done. In the. In the. He figures out he's a scientist. Part of the reason he figures out a scientist because he knows the name of all the random lab equipment that he sees in the.
• 2:11:04
  Speaker B: In the.
• 2:11:04
  Speaker A: In the spaceship. He does stab an astrophed with a needle and it dies and is like. Oh. Because, like, they're trying to, like, penetrate. Penetrate it with light and infrared and gamma rays and all that sort of stuff, and none of that works, but the needle kills it. My only issue with this in both the book and the movie, is that because they know that they can just, like, stab them and kill them. Would it. Would it not be an easier plan to construct some sort of giant contraption that you could put, like, in orbit around the sun or around Venus that basically, like, gobbled up all of the astrophysia and just, like, shredded it or something? Because, you know, it's not, like, physically. Yeah. You know what I mean, right? I don't know. I was like, that's like a giant paper shredder up. Right. That seems a lot easier to me than, like, going to a star 14 light years away to hopefully find something that maybe there can help you. I don't know. It's the. It's the conceit for the movie, so it's fine. But I did.
• 2:12:01
  Speaker B: I mean, it at least seems like something you should probably do in the meantime.
• 2:12:04
  Speaker A: Yeah. Like, couldn't you. Yeah. I don't know. And maybe there's a reason it wouldn't work. I don't know. I just thought that, like, maybe you could do. If you can just stab it with a needle and it dies, I feel like you could use some sort of something to kill them. Whatever. He does decide he wants to keep working on the dots and begs Strat to leave him some. And she leaves him three of them that he names Larry, Moe, and Curly. He loses the dots, and then they have to black out the whole lab, and that includes him taping the IR monitor to his head so he can find them. Then when he finds them, there are four of them, and he's like, oh, we bred them, Bubba. Blah. He does take a fighter jet to a carrier that all plays out the same. And he gets sick on the fighter jet, and then he has to live on a carrier for, like, the rest of while he's on Earth because if they. While they're messing with the astrophage, if it blows up. They don't want to, like, destroy a nation that is out in the middle of the ocean. He does drink Ilina's vodka, but like I said earlier, I kind of like the moment of him drinking it at the beginning when he's, like, crashing out. He finds it in the book. He drinks it later as, like, a celebratory. Once they find they breed the astrophage or whatever, and they're, like, celebrating, he has it as a celebratory drink or whatever. He does confirm that there's a Petrova line with the scope, but then sees part of it missing and is like, what's going on there? And then flips to the normal scope and is like, holy shit, it's a spaceship. And that's how he sees the ship for the first time. Blip A is what the radar labels the other ship and what he calls Rocky's ship. The whole time, he does do the little thruster dance with it, where he tries to move and it keeps up with them or whatever. I do wonder how true this is. There's a flashback in both where we see a scientist, conflicting, convincing Strat and Grace that the ship needs to split apart and turn into a centrifuge to ensure that the lab equipment works, because they argue that it's less risky to use lab gear that has to work in, like, normal Earth gravity. It's easier to make a spaceship that turns into a centrifuge to simulate Earth gravity than it would be to create new lab equipment that could work in zero g. That seems like a stretch to me. I found that hard to believe just based on how elaborate and dangerous the whole centrifuge process looks like. That just looks crazy to me for a spaceship. And so I'm open to being told otherwise, but I was like, I feel like making lab gear work in zero G would be easier. Maybe it wouldn't. I don't know. The spectrometer thing he has does tell him that the canister is made of xenon, which he's like, that's impossible, because that's a gas. Like, he's like, this thing doesn't work. Inside the canister is a star map showing that where Rocky is from. The little map showing 40 eridani, the whole explanation and testing of the spin drive and how that works, and they melt that whole block of metals. In the book, he does give him the present with the bands of beads on a wire that he thinks might be. He's worried might be handcuffs, but they're not. They're representing oxygen molecules. Jazz hands is the sign for yes.
• 2:14:43
  Speaker B: Nice.
• 2:14:43
  Speaker A: He does give him a tape measure that Rocky plays with, and he's like, no, no. Look at the numbers on it. Those are. Those are, like, our measurements. And Rocky, he realizes. Rocky just, like, keeps pulling it and, like, playing with it, and he realizes that, oh, he can't see the number numbers because he sees via sound. So he can't see, like, ink. It has to be, like, texture that you can see raised stuff. Similarly, Iridians are unaware of radiation, and that is what killed all of Rocky's crew. And Rocky survived because he was surrounded by astrophage, which blocks the radiation. And the reason they don't know about radiation is their planet has too thick of a magnetosphere, and it literally blocks all radiation from getting into their planet. I was also like, but couldn't you not have radioactive materials on the. I don't know enough about that to know. I think there could be radioactive rocks still on the planet. Maybe not. Maybe not. I don't know. Also, it blocks all light, and their planet is literally pitch black, which is part of the reason they've evolved not to see.
• 2:15:35
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 2:15:35
  Speaker A: Or the reason they've evolved not to see. They're also unaware of relativity, which is why in the book they have so much fuel and why Rocky can give him a bunch is because they thought the trip was going to take a lot longer because they don't understand the compression of time from moving at, like, close to light speed. They didn't realize that time would. So their math calculations were incorrect because they don't know about relativity. He explains all this to him eventually. Rocky is wearing, like, overalls and has his little tool bandolier. That was. I didn't remember that in the movie, but he does have that, and that does come up in the book. Rocky doesn't like the planet name. He's. It's just called Tau Ceti E. That's just the name of the star. And so he does name it after his mate, which then Grace translates to Adrian. Rocky builds a little camera that lets him see by turning light into texture on a little thing that he can look at, which we see in the movie. Grace does describe Adrian's atmosphere as being, like, having all these bands of green and stuff in it, which is like what we see in the film when he's outside on the. Adrian is absolutely gorgeous in person. I stay out on the hole staring at the huge world for several minutes. Bands of dark and light green cover the orb, and the reflected glow from Tau Ceti is simply breathtaking. I could stare at it for hours. And that's the scene where he's like, I'm having a moment.
• 2:16:46
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 2:16:47
  Speaker A: The whole thing with how the sampler plays out and how there's the same number of astrophage on each side. And they realize that there must be a predator that is eating it on the Adrian side or whatever, blah, blah. And then Rocky figures that all out. They make all of the chain to drop the thing down. And I like the moment in the movie where you see it's like, all. All over the place inside the thing. They have to make. They literally, in the book, spend two weeks making chain. Like ten hours a day. To make all the chain, they have to make 10 km of chain. Also, also, I like in the movie, the special winch that we see this in the book. They make a big point of this, is that when it pulls the chain back up, it. It ejects each individual link off and shoots it out. So because if it were to just pull the chain up and then let the chain fall, it could get wrapped around something. So it has to unlink each chain and throw it out so that it doesn't cause any issues. A little detail that the movie put in there. We get a flashback in the book of Grace asking how each crew member wants to die, because they're like, you're going to go and die there. So they get to pick how they want to commit suicide. Dubois does choose nitrogen, Ilia chooses heroin, and Yao chooses a gun. We actually see this in the movie, or at least briefly, where they talk about how one of them's like, I'm going to do heroin, blah, blah, blah. I think it works slightly better in the book because Grace is kind of like the crew correspondent. He's like, working. He's like the number two for strat this point. And so he's going there to get this information from him because they all like him and are comfortable talking to him. In the middle movie, they're like, taking a tour and they just, like, hear
• 2:18:10
  Speaker B: it out of nowhere.
• 2:18:11
  Speaker A: Yeah, it makes a little more sense in the book, but it is from the book. Rocky is wearing a fancy celebratory outfit when at the end, after they succeed, which has all these, like, fancy jewelry that makes noise because that's what they're clothes like. It makes noise and stuff because they see based on texture and all that. It does mention, like I said, that Rocky fixed and replaced his fuel tanks that he had to jettison. Grace does purge all of the Ship all the air out of his ship and then flood it with nitrogen after the talmoeba gets loose at the the end. And there's a little detail in the movie that I really like when he's purging all the air. He's using a panel of Rocky's enclosure to, like, protect himself from all the debris flying because it's like, super strong. I thought that was a fun little detail. That is not in the book, him using that panel. But the rest of that part is he does. When he's trying to find Rocky, he doesn't know exactly where he is. So he does this thing where he uses the thrusters from his ship to shoot out infrared light and then sees a reflection off of Rocky ship because Rocky is out of focus. And so he doesn't know where he is, but he uses the reflection to see him. That comes from the book. Him jumping with a tether onto Rocky's ship and basically knocking on the door. I like the detail in the movie of it being in the tunnel where they first meet. It's a nice little callback to their first meeting and then their final meet. Not final meeting, but, you know, reuniting here. And he does use a wrench to, like, bang on it, which comes from the book. And then my final note, the final line is the exact same in both. Where as he's going to teach the class, he says, who here can tell me the speed of light? And then we see a bunch of the Eridian children raise their claws. All right, we got a handful of odds and ends before the final verdict.
• 2:19:51
  Speaker B: Any shortcomings notwithstanding, I am really glad that we saw this movie in theaters and didn't like. Wait.
• 2:19:59
  Speaker A: Yeah, no, I agree. I agree entirely.
• 2:20:01
  Speaker B: Yeah, it's a very pretty space movie.
• 2:20:03
  Speaker A: Absolutely. Very pretty space movie. And it was definitely worth seeing in theaters. 100%. I really loved. One of the things I loved the first time and this time again is the transitions between space and the flashbacks with the crazy Dutch angles. Specifically the moments where. Because in the spaceship, gravity is not always up, basically. And so we have moments where he's interacting in the environment on the spaceship where a table is on the wall or whatever, whatever. And he's in this weird thing. And then we will cut back to Earth and the camera will be in a similarly weird orientation and then reorient back to normal as, like, we come back to Earth. I thought that's kind of a fun, clever little way to go back and forth.
• 2:20:43
  Speaker B: The little message canister thingy that Rocky Sends made me think of bank tubes.
• 2:20:51
  Speaker A: They are almost exactly like those. Bank tubes.
• 2:20:53
  Speaker B: Yeah. Like where you put. Then it goes through the tube. Yeah.
• 2:20:58
  Speaker A: We. In the prequel, we mentioned this moment. I talked about where there's like a supposedly an improv moment where Grace, like runs, tries to run away from her. And then they're like, well, that wasn't scripted. And then like they left it in the movie. And originally I thought they were talking about the moment where he tries to run away at the end. I was like, that doesn't make any sense.
• 2:21:14
  Speaker B: Like, surely that was not unscripted.
• 2:21:16
  Speaker A: What they're talking about is. And. Which makes sense. Again, want rewatching the movie because the little thing did say, like, there's they. What happened is on set, the actress and Ryan Gosling. I can't remember that actually his name were like. Wanted to have a race to the bike rack. And that's what's happening in that scene when she's talking to him as he's like leaving the school, he's like speed walking to the bike rack and she's kind of like speed walking with him. Yeah, that's the moment they're talking. It's not really anything.
• 2:21:41
  Speaker B: I was like, okay, yeah, that's.
• 2:21:42
  Speaker A: Sure. All right. We get a great Independence Day reference that I thought was fun where he. When he gets the astrophage in the lab and he opens up the container, he's like, welcome to Earth. And I was like, yeah,
• 2:22:00
  Speaker B: this is a science question. What is the spinny thing that scientists put samples of stuff in and what does it do?
• 2:22:08
  Speaker A: That's a centrifuge. Centrifuge. It creates a strong gravitational force on whatever is in it. And you use it to separate things. Insulation. So for instance, medical labs use them to separate blood. So you put blood in there and it will separate, like, the red blood cells from the platelets or the plasma or whatever.
• 2:22:25
  Speaker B: Okay.
• 2:22:26
  Speaker A: I actually use them a bunch in my qualitative analysis class, which was the last chem class I took before I switched to a film major. But you used in that. I used it. You would use it to, like, separate particulate matter out of stuff. So, like, if you're trying to figure out, like, you get a vial full of liquid and you're like, what's in this? You put some chemicals in it. You'd put it in the centrifuge and then you'd spin it. And then when you pull it out, there would be like a bunch of like, brown stuff at the bottom because of like, it pulled it out through like gravity or whatever, but they use it for all kinds of different stuff, but it's just for like separating things, basically.
• 2:22:58
  Speaker B: Gotcha. This movie come with an epilepsy warning?
• 2:23:01
  Speaker A: I don't think it did because it should. It probably should have. Yeah, there's definitely a handful of scenes that are like.
• 2:23:06
  Speaker B: Particularly the part where, where like Rocky has to save them is like, yeah,
• 2:23:14
  Speaker A: the lights are going in and out constantly. Yeah, it is pretty intense.
• 2:23:19
  Speaker B: Also, my last note here cannot tell you how deeply concerned I was when we saw this in theaters that Rocky was going to die. Yeah, I was deeply concerned that that was going to be the case.
• 2:23:32
  Speaker A: I had a feeling that wasn't going to happen. It didn't seem unlikely to me, but the movie does a good job of making it feel like he might die, that's for sure. As always, you could do us a favor by heading over to Facebook, threads, bluesky, Instagram, Goodreads, any of those places. Interact. We'd love to hear what you have to say about Project Hail Mary. Please chime in if you're a music person. On the music note thing I asked about earlier, I need an answer on that. Or if I'm just the answer could be I'm wrong. That's fine. You can also help us out by heading over to Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to our show. Write us a nice little review. Drop us a five star rating. We would really appreciate that. You could Support us@patreon.com ThisFilmIsLit get access to bonus content, prior priority recommendations, all kinds of good stuff. Katie it's time for the final verdict.
• 2:24:16
  Speaker B: Sentence fast.
• 2:24:18
  Speaker A: Verdict after.
• 2:24:20
  Speaker B: That's stupid.
• 2:24:22
  Speaker A: Project Hail Mary is a fun, breezy little sci fi novel that doesn't ask too much of the reader and rewards your time with an emotionally satisfying space adventure. It suffers from many of Andy Weir's hallmarks a sense of humor that doesn't always land for me. It's occasionally bogged down by explaining the science. The pacing drags a bit here and there, and some of the emotional moments feel like they were engineered in a lab to evoke the desire to emotion. But largely, it works. I had a good time reading it. The film is a fastidious translation of the book, which means it shares most of its strengths and its flaws. I didn't love the way they dialed up Rocky's adorkableness, and on my first viewing I felt really pandered to at times in a way that took me out of the experience. But it wasn't enough to ruin the movie on a second viewing. Those moments bothered me even less. There are some great tweaks to the plot that really helped the pacing, particularly in the third third act. And it is just a visually stunning film. I'm a sucker for a good space movie and project Hail Mary delivers so I'm giving this one to the film. Katie, what's next?
• 2:25:21
  Speaker B: Up next, we are getting back into some patron requests, starting with Austinland.
• 2:25:31
  Speaker A: Austin? I don't know what that is.
• 2:25:32
  Speaker B: A 2013 film based on the novel of the Sage. Same name by Shannon Hale.
• 2:25:38
  Speaker A: There you go.
• 2:25:39
  Speaker B: I have seen this. It has been a long time though.
• 2:25:42
  Speaker A: Yeah, all right, cool. I know nothing about it but we'll talk about it on the next episode. Until that time, guys, gals not binary palsy. Everybody else keep reading books, keep watching
• 2:25:54
  Speaker B: movies and keep being awesome.
• 2:26:02
  Speaker A: Sam.