Latest / Intentionally Blank / Project: Hail Mary Review — Intentionally Blank Ep. 274

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Project: Hail Mary Review — Intentionally Blank Ep. 274 · Intentionally Blank

0:04
SPEAKER_00: Dan.
0:05
SPEAKER_00: Hi.
0:05
SPEAKER_00: We actually watched a movie that is not really quite still in theaters.
0:10
SPEAKER_01: But it's not fresh or new.
0:13
SPEAKER_01: It came out this year.
0:14
SPEAKER_01: It came out this year, though.
0:15
SPEAKER_01: So.
0:16
SPEAKER_01: And it only is sort of into the second half of the year by a couple of weeks.
0:21
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
0:21
SPEAKER_00: So this feels pretty new.
0:23
SPEAKER_00: We're going to talk about Project Hail Mary.
0:24
SPEAKER_01: Project Hail Mary.
0:26
SPEAKER_00: Project Hail Mary.
0:27
SPEAKER_01: Which I'm going to say right now that you're all going to be surprised at what I thought of it.
0:34
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
0:35
SPEAKER_00: I actually I asked Dan right before as we were sitting down.
0:38
SPEAKER_00: And Dan, what did you tell me?
0:40
SPEAKER_01: I'm making them wait.
0:42
SPEAKER_01: First, I'm going to do a food heist.
0:43
SPEAKER_00: Oh, okay.
0:44
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
0:44
SPEAKER_00: I didn't know if we'd get one today.
0:46
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, we got one.
0:47
SPEAKER_01: It has been a long time since we have done a cooking oil heist.
0:51
SPEAKER_00: Oh, yeah.
0:53
SPEAKER_01: But now we have.
0:55
SPEAKER_01: There's this great one.
0:56
SPEAKER_01: This is very recent.
0:58
SPEAKER_01: This took place in Missouri.
1:00
SPEAKER_01: Also, apparently, there is a town in Missouri called Republic.
1:04
unknown: Okay.
1:05
SPEAKER_01: And so what's great about this story is that the person stealing the cooking oil keeps taking it to Republic, and it makes it sound very dystopian, very SF, you know?
1:19
SPEAKER_00: The oil foilers?
1:22
SPEAKER_01: So this is just a dude.
1:25
SPEAKER_01: Oh.
1:25
SPEAKER_01: A regular old dude, Ronald Braden, who stole thousands of pounds of used cooking oil from a restaurant called John D.
1:35
SPEAKER_01: McGurks.
1:36
SPEAKER_00: John D.
1:37
SPEAKER_00: McGurk's.
1:37
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
1:38
SPEAKER_01: Which is great.
1:39
SPEAKER_01: That doesn't sound quite as dystopian.
1:41
SPEAKER_01: No, it doesn't.
1:43
SPEAKER_01: But then he took it to Republic, transporting the grease back to Republic and selling it.
1:49
SPEAKER_01: It turns out that there's a 72-year-old man named Harry Stevens Steele, who has a company called Steel Excavation and Septic Service.
1:59
SPEAKER_00: Okay, that sounds dystopian.
2:01
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
2:01
SPEAKER_01: He has been paying all these random little like smash and grab burglars to steal cooking oil and bring it to him, and then he sells it into the legitimate like fuel market, renewable energy market, so that he can buy renewable energy credits and sell them to energy companies that don't use renewable energy so that they can get around the renewable energy laws.
2:31
SPEAKER_01: Interesting.
2:32
SPEAKER_01: So it's this giant like million-dollar thing that they uncovered while investigating the theft of some cooking oil.
2:41
SPEAKER_01: Very nice.
2:42
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
2:43
SPEAKER_00: So that's kind of neat.
2:44
SPEAKER_00: Need and A, he doesn't get to go to Food Heist prison because he's an evil corporate businessman ripping off.
2:51
SPEAKER_00: Mr.
2:51
SPEAKER_00: Steele.
2:52
SPEAKER_00: He does not go to food heist.
2:53
SPEAKER_01: He doesn't get to go to food heist prison, but our little flunky might be up there.
2:56
SPEAKER_01: The little guy, his name is Braden.
2:59
SPEAKER_01: That's actually his last name.
3:00
SPEAKER_01: Ronald Braden.
3:01
SPEAKER_00: I heard excavation and septic, and I'm like, is that like a necessary dual career?
3:08
SPEAKER_00: Like you're doing excavation, you hit someone's septic tank, so you have to learn how to do it.
3:11
SPEAKER_00: You've got to learn how to do both.
3:13
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
3:13
SPEAKER_00: Because yeah, the one leads to the other.
3:15
SPEAKER_01: Also, would you buy used cooking oil from a septic company?
3:21
SPEAKER_00: Well, if it's for uh if it's just gonna be used for energy, I guess that's okay, right?
3:27
SPEAKER_00: Which is, you know, the septic sorts of things have been used in a similar way for many, many, many eons.
3:34
SPEAKER_00: So yeah.
3:35
SPEAKER_01: My favorite part of this article is when they have an entire paragraph pointing out that grease, also known as used cooking oil.
3:44
SPEAKER_01: Just that.
3:45
SPEAKER_01: Like we didn't know what grease was, or we were wondering why he called it grease instead of cooking oil.
3:51
SPEAKER_01: Anyway, that's our delightful little heist for the day.
3:55
SPEAKER_00: I'm gonna put my phone in airplane mode because my agents are trying to call me.
3:58
SPEAKER_00: Man, freaking agents.
4:01
SPEAKER_00: The funny thing about the agents is they have no respect at all for schedule.
4:06
SPEAKER_00: They are these Hollywood agents?
4:08
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, the Hollywood agents.
4:09
SPEAKER_00: The New York agents.
4:09
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, they'll make an appointment, they'll be like, oh, Brandon on Thursdays, he's doing his podcast, they'll remember and things like that.
4:15
SPEAKER_00: The Hollywood agents, they'll just be like, ah, give me Sanderson on the phone.
4:19
SPEAKER_01: At any moment, even if they know that I've told them I'm doing something that is every person I've ever met who works in Hollywood thinks that they are the most important person you're gonna talk to today.
4:33
SPEAKER_00: I wouldn't put that on them.
4:34
SPEAKER_00: I actually really like Paul and Hillary.
4:36
SPEAKER_00: They're my Hollywood agents.
4:38
SPEAKER_00: I wouldn't say it's like that.
4:39
SPEAKER_00: It's more like they live in this business that is kind of weird and frantic.
4:44
SPEAKER_00: And you do the call now.
4:45
SPEAKER_00: When you have the moment, you do the call.
4:47
SPEAKER_00: I don't think it's necessarily a, you know, I'm more important than whatever you got going on.
4:52
SPEAKER_00: It's more a they're just used to, hey, get Brandon on the phone.
4:55
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I definitely should backtrack a little bit.
4:58
SPEAKER_01: My own Hollywood agent is great.
5:00
SPEAKER_01: I love working with her.
5:01
SPEAKER_01: It's everybody that she works with that just becomes so onerous.
5:06
SPEAKER_00: It's a different world.
5:07
SPEAKER_00: They move calls like 30 times when they do schedule one.
5:11
SPEAKER_00: And when they don't, they just call no matter what you happen to be doing.
5:16
SPEAKER_00: Regardless.
5:16
SPEAKER_00: You don't watch a lot of TV.
5:18
SPEAKER_01: There's a show called The Studio.
5:20
SPEAKER_01: I've heard of this one.
5:21
SPEAKER_01: People really watched it.
5:22
SPEAKER_01: I haven't.
5:23
SPEAKER_01: They've said that it's great.
5:24
SPEAKER_01: It's insufferable unless you work inside of Hollywood because it's very accurate.
5:31
SPEAKER_00: I think my agents were the ones telling me about it.
5:34
SPEAKER_00: So speaking of Hollywood, see that segue.
5:39
SPEAKER_00: Check it out.
5:40
SPEAKER_00: Speaking of Hollywood, so I was really excited for Project Hail Mary.
5:45
SPEAKER_00: There's no surprise to my fans here or to listeners if they've seen any of my other media.
5:49
SPEAKER_00: I really liked the film.
5:51
SPEAKER_00: He got a copy of the book maybe a year early, and he sent me one, and it was just spectacular.
5:57
SPEAKER_00: Like this is good.
5:58
SPEAKER_00: And we're seeing that on our on our desk, you saw the side next to the door.
6:05
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
6:06
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, my little table there, my copy, my arc, advanced reader copy.
6:10
SPEAKER_00: So I was really excited for the movie, and I thought they did a great job.
6:13
SPEAKER_01: That's awesome.
6:14
SPEAKER_01: See, I have not read the book.
6:17
SPEAKER_01: Uh-huh.
6:17
SPEAKER_01: Still, even.
6:18
SPEAKER_01: I love the Martian.
6:20
SPEAKER_01: I think it's one of the great science fiction novels of the century.
6:23
SPEAKER_01: So why didn't you read the book?
6:25
SPEAKER_01: Because I didn't like Artemis very much.
6:28
SPEAKER_01: Okay.
6:29
SPEAKER_01: I enjoyed Artemis, but it was several steps down in overall quality.
6:34
SPEAKER_00: I really like Artemis, but I'm in the minority of really liking Artemis as well.
6:38
SPEAKER_01: So anyway, yeah, when Project Hail Mary came out, I just thought, oh, okay, he had one good book.
6:43
SPEAKER_01: And for some reason I had decided in my head that Martian was the one-hit wonder.
6:49
SPEAKER_01: Okay.
6:50
SPEAKER_01: And that everything else he did would feel more like Artemis.
6:53
SPEAKER_01: Clearly, I was wrong.
6:55
SPEAKER_01: And then when the movie came out, because I hadn't read the book, this you know, inner contrarian was like, everyone wants me to see this movie, so I am not interested in seeing this movie.
7:06
SPEAKER_01: Like you haven't seen Oppenheimer, even still.
7:08
SPEAKER_01: I haven't seen Oppenheimer.
7:09
SPEAKER_00: That I probably still won't see.
7:11
SPEAKER_00: Uh-huh.
7:11
SPEAKER_00: Because it doesn't feel like your kind of movie we were talking about.
7:14
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
7:14
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
7:15
SPEAKER_00: Whereas this does feel like your kind of movie.
7:17
SPEAKER_01: Nothing about Oppenheimer appeals to me.
7:19
SPEAKER_01: I like Nolan as a director, but he's not one that I have to see everything he does.
7:23
SPEAKER_01: I still haven't seen Interstellar, things like that.
7:26
SPEAKER_00: Oh, that's interesting.
7:27
SPEAKER_00: Because Interstellar is more of a Dan movie.
7:29
SPEAKER_00: Is it?
7:30
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
7:30
SPEAKER_00: People keep saying it's awesome.
7:32
SPEAKER_00: It is.
7:33
SPEAKER_00: It's awesome in that it's a weird movie.
7:35
SPEAKER_00: It's strangely paced.
7:36
SPEAKER_00: I do like weird movies.
7:37
SPEAKER_00: It's if anything more like 2001 than anything else I've seen, but with some modern pacing, it's good performances, but it's not your traditional Hollywood film.
7:48
SPEAKER_00: And that's what I love about it.
7:49
SPEAKER_00: And so it is more of a Dan film, I would say.
7:52
SPEAKER_00: Much more so than Tenet or Oppenheimer or Tenet was a big miss for me.
7:58
SPEAKER_01: Oppenheimer.
7:59
SPEAKER_01: Not gonna see.
8:00
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
8:01
SPEAKER_01: I'm not opposed to it.
8:02
SPEAKER_01: It just doesn't interest me.
8:04
SPEAKER_01: Anyway, yesterday my daughter said that it was out on Prime and maybe it's been there for a while.
8:12
SPEAKER_01: But yesterday is when I I was finally like, I should watch this movie.
8:18
SPEAKER_01: So I called my daughter in and we watched it together and I loved it.
8:23
SPEAKER_01: It was great.
8:24
SPEAKER_01: That's the surprise.
8:25
SPEAKER_01: That's the surprise.
8:26
SPEAKER_01: Everyone was expecting me to be this big hater who hates it because it's good.
8:30
SPEAKER_01: Uh-huh.
8:31
SPEAKER_01: No, it was very good.
8:33
SPEAKER_01: There was a lot I liked about it.
8:35
SPEAKER_01: Clearly, there was a lot of stuff left out.
8:39
SPEAKER_01: Yes.
8:39
SPEAKER_01: Even having not read the book and not having researched any of this, I can guarantee that the book has a lot more linguistics in it.
8:48
SPEAKER_01: Whereas the movie kind of elides the whole subject in five minutes and then they can talk to each other.
8:54
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
8:54
SPEAKER_00: Most of what they left out of the book from the book to make the movie they had to leave out, you will like a lot if you ever do read the book.
9:01
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
9:01
SPEAKER_00: It is the stuff that made The Martian really great.
9:04
SPEAKER_00: It's kind of interesting.
9:06
SPEAKER_00: All the stuff that made The Martian really great is in the book, but they didn't have time for that in the movie because this is more of a character study than The Martian was.
9:15
SPEAKER_00: And so they left out a lot of the science, the tri-fails, the figuring out how everything works.
9:22
SPEAKER_00: Like the book, he wakes up and finds out he's on a spaceship, takes, I remember, a while.
9:29
SPEAKER_00: Like not a super while, but you're figuring out with him, like, what is this?
9:32
SPEAKER_00: What's going on?
9:33
SPEAKER_00: And the movie just like climbs up, he's in space.
9:35
SPEAKER_00: You need to do that in the movie.
9:37
SPEAKER_00: So but it's a really hard adaptation.
9:42
SPEAKER_00: And they did a really good job.
9:44
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, they did a fantastic job.
9:47
SPEAKER_01: I loved the characters, I loved the jumping back and forth in time, which I assume the book also does.
9:53
SPEAKER_01: Yes.
9:54
SPEAKER_01: Because I don't think you could structure that story properly without it.
9:58
SPEAKER_01: One of the things that I really loved about it and about The Martian that I think Andy Ware is good at is hopeful stories about people who are good working together to solve problems with science.
10:13
SPEAKER_01: Yep.
10:13
SPEAKER_01: Like it's the same reason I love Star Trek.
10:15
SPEAKER_01: And it is the same reason why some of the recent Star Trek stuff has been really flat for me because it's not about good people working together to solve problems with science.
10:25
SPEAKER_01: And I think that we as a people are hungry for that.
10:30
SPEAKER_01: There's been so much, you know, science fiction that is just dystopian and terrible and awful.
10:36
SPEAKER_01: And this certainly presents a world that is crumbling.
10:40
SPEAKER_00: Yes.
10:40
SPEAKER_00: But it's the most hopeful story about the end of the world that is out there.
10:46
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
10:47
SPEAKER_00: So we will do a separate spoiler section.
10:50
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
10:51
SPEAKER_00: But let's talk some non-spoiler things.
10:55
SPEAKER_00: Oh, there's Ollie with.
10:57
SPEAKER_01: Doing a little Rocky dance in the background.
11:00
SPEAKER_01: Man, even Ollie is surprised that I like things.
11:02
SPEAKER_01: Wow.
11:03
SPEAKER_00: You've built a reputation, Dan.
11:05
SPEAKER_00: So now you can surprise them by liking things.
11:09
SPEAKER_00: Rocky being a puppet was such a good choice.
11:13
SPEAKER_00: Fully acted by the voice actor.
11:16
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, which I thought was wonderful.
11:17
SPEAKER_00: It just it's so nice to not see a CGI thing, to see a puppeted thing.
11:22
SPEAKER_00: It feels more real.
11:24
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
11:24
SPEAKER_00: Particularly in a creature that doesn't have a face and whatnot.
11:27
SPEAKER_00: So it made it.
11:28
SPEAKER_00: But it was it was amazing.
11:31
SPEAKER_00: That's another thing Interstellar does.
11:32
SPEAKER_00: All of his robots are puppeted.
11:35
SPEAKER_00: All practical effects.
11:36
SPEAKER_00: All practical effects for the robots.
11:37
SPEAKER_00: That's cool.
11:38
SPEAKER_00: And they look really cool.
11:39
SPEAKER_00: They're very alien and feeling robot AI things, and they're puppeted.
11:44
SPEAKER_00: But yeah, really good puppetry.
11:47
SPEAKER_00: Like the movie had color.
11:49
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
11:50
SPEAKER_00: Right?
11:50
SPEAKER_01: Like it was bright.
11:52
SPEAKER_01: Everything was well lit.
11:53
SPEAKER_01: You could see what was going on.
11:55
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
11:55
SPEAKER_00: Like, why is that a threshold that we have so much trouble hitting?
11:59
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
12:00
SPEAKER_00: Like I was really interested in the Supergirl movie till I saw some of the trailers and read some of the reviews that say, yeah, it's it's all brown.
12:08
SPEAKER_00: It's one of these movies, it's just everything is brown again.
12:11
SPEAKER_00: That's only one of the few.
12:12
SPEAKER_00: I went and saw it.
12:13
SPEAKER_00: It's not worth anyone's time.
12:14
SPEAKER_01: I sounds really mean, but it's not good.
12:17
SPEAKER_01: That's what I've also heard.
12:18
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
12:19
SPEAKER_00: That it's based off a spectacular comic run that they did not manage to capture and translate.
12:24
SPEAKER_00: No, not at all, sadly.
12:26
SPEAKER_00: So but I haven't seen it, so we shouldn't talk about that movie.
12:29
SPEAKER_00: We should talk about Project Hill Mary.
12:30
SPEAKER_00: The one that we like, it was well lit.
12:33
SPEAKER_01: And it was a science fiction movie, and like you say, it was about character.
12:38
SPEAKER_01: Yes.
12:39
SPEAKER_01: But it took so much time to stop and just revel in beautiful things.
12:48
SPEAKER_01: Yep.
12:49
SPEAKER_01: Whether they were images, like when they are I suppose I'll save that for the spoiler section, but even like Sandra Huller's karaoke song.
13:01
SPEAKER_01: Yep.
13:02
SPEAKER_01: Which is like the best scene in the movie almost.
13:04
SPEAKER_01: It just the movie takes time to slow down and let you appreciate life, which I think is a really smart move for a story that is about saving the universe, you know?
13:19
SPEAKER_01: Is let's show you why this is so important.
13:23
SPEAKER_00: I mean, I am really impressed with both the screenwriter, who's the same screenwriter as The Martian.
13:29
SPEAKER_00: Andy delayed the film to get that screenwriter.
13:32
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
13:33
SPEAKER_00: I'm smart.
13:34
SPEAKER_00: Impressed with Gosling's performance.
13:35
SPEAKER_00: Again, Andy, as I understand, you can correct me, but I believe Andy said he wrote it for Gosling and then sent it to him and said, I've got a film for you.
13:43
SPEAKER_00: And then Lord and Miller, right?
13:46
SPEAKER_00: Like Lord and Miller, they've always had heart to their comedies, but now this is a drama.
13:53
SPEAKER_00: These are the directors.
13:54
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
13:54
SPEAKER_00: So they started with the Jump Street movies.
13:56
SPEAKER_00: Which I love.
13:57
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
13:58
SPEAKER_00: Both of them.
13:58
SPEAKER_00: They also made the Cloudy with a Chance and Meatball movies, which is which are so much better than they.
14:04
SPEAKER_00: And then the Spider-Verse movies as well as the Lego movie.
14:08
SPEAKER_00: Yep.
14:08
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
14:09
SPEAKER_00: They've got a string of hits.
14:10
SPEAKER_00: They got a string of hits, but up until this point, it's all been comedy with some touching moments.
14:15
SPEAKER_00: And this is flipping the script.
14:17
SPEAKER_00: This is a drama with some comedy.
14:19
SPEAKER_00: And so them being able to prove that they can do a dramatic story.
14:23
SPEAKER_00: You know, I would say that a into the Spider-Verse was primarily drama.
14:28
SPEAKER_00: It's not a comedy.
14:28
SPEAKER_00: You're right.
14:29
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
14:29
SPEAKER_00: So they've already kind of done that.
14:30
SPEAKER_00: But showing they can go both ways, right?
14:32
SPEAKER_00: You're right.
14:32
SPEAKER_00: Spider-Verse absolutely is drama with some comedic proportions.
14:36
SPEAKER_00: Just being able to play both sides of the field like that is really impressive to me.
14:42
SPEAKER_00: They're just really impressive directors.
14:44
SPEAKER_00: They can do live action and they can do animated.
14:47
SPEAKER_00: Like these guys are the real deals.
14:50
SPEAKER_01: Well, and so much of this feels like it would be difficult to direct.
14:56
SPEAKER_01: And a lot of that comes down to having a good script.
14:59
SPEAKER_01: But the story takes place on so many different scales.
15:03
SPEAKER_01: Sometimes we're watching a tiny spaceship on a screen.
15:07
SPEAKER_01: Sometimes we're watching, you know, giant face close-up.
15:11
SPEAKER_01: And you know, the action can take place on a planet, in a building, or in a room, or in all of outer space.
15:18
SPEAKER_01: And I know this sounds like I'm just saying, you know, every movie has, you know, different focus lengths, but to be able to, you know, show character via the movement of spaceships as well as the movement of the characters, I think says a lot about their skill.
15:36
SPEAKER_00: So really impressive movie all around.
15:39
SPEAKER_00: Let's go to spoilers.
15:40
SPEAKER_00: If you haven't seen the movie or read the book, you may want to skip the rest of this until you see it.
15:44
SPEAKER_00: It is worth your time.
15:46
SPEAKER_00: It is a contender for best film of the year for me.
15:49
SPEAKER_00: Oh, absolutely.
15:50
SPEAKER_00: So Wake Up Dead Man is up there.
15:52
SPEAKER_00: What do you give this out of 10?
15:54
SPEAKER_00: This one out of 10?
15:56
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
15:57
SPEAKER_01: I'm gonna give it a nine.
15:58
SPEAKER_01: Okay.
15:59
SPEAKER_01: I do wish that had been a little shorter.
16:02
SPEAKER_01: Okay.
16:02
SPEAKER_01: That is kind of my constant thing, is I always wish things were just a little tighter, just a little shorter.
16:09
SPEAKER_01: This one, while I was watching it, I thought this is great.
16:13
SPEAKER_01: But there were two or three times when I was like, oh, again, you just did this moment.
16:18
SPEAKER_01: You don't need two of these moments stacked on top of each other.
16:20
SPEAKER_00: So I'm gonna go 9.5.
16:23
SPEAKER_00: And that's bumping it up 0.5 after my second viewing.
16:26
SPEAKER_00: The only reason it's not a 10 is because I've read the book.
16:30
SPEAKER_00: I think that if I hadn't read the book, this would be a 10.
16:33
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
16:33
SPEAKER_00: We'll talk about that in spoilers.
16:35
SPEAKER_00: Just some of the things.
16:36
SPEAKER_00: We're in spoilers.
16:36
SPEAKER_00: We're in spoilers, but what prevents it from being a 10?
16:40
SPEAKER_00: Nothing really.
16:40
SPEAKER_00: Maybe on a few more watchings, I will put it up to a 10.
16:43
SPEAKER_00: It's entirely possible.
16:45
SPEAKER_00: But I have the book as this like it's so hard to have to compare yourself to the book.
16:50
SPEAKER_00: In the book, the twist where you realize that he was a coward all along lands so hard because you've been reading in his viewpoint and you've been seeing him discover that he's a hero and remember that he's a hero.
17:05
SPEAKER_00: When he discovers he's not a hero, he has become the man that he thinks he is, and then to realize that he did something that despicable.
17:17
SPEAKER_00: The gut punch that that is in the book is something that they couldn't recreate on the film.
17:24
SPEAKER_00: So it's hard to hold it against them because of how in his head you are in the book.
17:29
SPEAKER_01: Because that moment didn't hit very hard for me at all.
17:34
SPEAKER_01: It didn't feel like a huge emotional thing, partly because I saw it coming pretty early.
17:40
SPEAKER_00: And they telegraph it more in the film.
17:42
SPEAKER_00: Do you the book telegraphs it less because you get to see him through his viewpoint, remembering, oh, I'm a hero.
17:49
SPEAKER_00: And he builds that up to you.
17:50
SPEAKER_00: And Andy does it really subtly, and you're in his head as in the flashbacks, and you kind of think he will step up.
18:00
SPEAKER_00: And then when he doesn't, it is just you can watch it crush him.
18:05
SPEAKER_00: And I've gotten your response from multiple other people I've known who've watched it, where that in the book is the single most powerful moment in the entire book.
18:12
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
18:13
SPEAKER_01: And in the film, they do as good a job as they can, but it's not it's there and and it's meaningful, certainly, but it is not the point of the story in the way that you're framing it for the book.
18:26
SPEAKER_00: It is the coolest thing in the book because you know, I've read Andy Weir stories before, like The Martian Things, and the people are pretty heroic.
18:33
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
18:34
SPEAKER_00: And so having one not be and then actually have to confront that, deal with it, and then it would not work at all if he hadn't then gone back for Rocky.
18:44
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
18:44
SPEAKER_00: Adding that part on where he gets to be the person that he's now imagined that he is, it's just such a good character twist done in a way that I've never seen done in a book before.
18:57
SPEAKER_00: That's like it's what the born identity kind of tried to do.
19:01
SPEAKER_00: And the born identity is great, but in the born identity, you have him questioning all along.
19:06
SPEAKER_00: And this, he's pretty sure he's a hero, and then he's not.
19:10
SPEAKER_00: So that's one little one little doc.
19:12
SPEAKER_00: And then the the other thing is some of the science stuff that they had to skip over does make the film just make you cock your head sometimes.
19:22
SPEAKER_00: It'd be like, well, I'm sure that was explained somewhere.
19:24
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, like with the linguistics, learning the language.
19:27
SPEAKER_01: They do show him going through the motions of, oh, this cord that you make is the word me or whatever.
19:34
SPEAKER_01: But like other things, my daughter and I could not figure out why he had to go outside of the ship in order to winch up the chain.
19:46
SPEAKER_01: Just leave atmosphere and then winch up the chain.
19:49
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
19:49
SPEAKER_01: And that was another thing I looked up, and apparently in the book, they make it very clear that that would destroy the sample and the jet wash of the engine.
19:58
SPEAKER_01: And that all makes sense.
20:00
SPEAKER_01: But movie, it doesn't really make sense.
20:02
SPEAKER_01: It just doesn't.
20:03
SPEAKER_00: Why are you out here?
20:04
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
20:04
SPEAKER_00: Like, why couldn't you wait and do this later?
20:06
SPEAKER_00: I don't know if I hold it against them.
20:08
SPEAKER_00: I would probably give it a 10 if there weren't an example of it that I can point to.
20:14
SPEAKER_00: Let's point out some things they did better in the movie, though.
20:17
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
20:18
SPEAKER_00: Because there are a couple, in my opinion.
20:19
SPEAKER_01: Okay, so I want to actually ask, and maybe this will bridge us into that conversation.
20:24
SPEAKER_01: As I said, the karaoke scene is one of the most powerful that's in the thing, and it's not in the book.
20:30
SPEAKER_01: Yep.
20:30
SPEAKER_01: That's the first one I would bring out.
20:32
SPEAKER_01: And that was Gosling's idea like the night before, because he heard Sandra Huller could sing and said, Well, why don't we do this thing?
20:41
SPEAKER_01: And that is the moment that humanizes everybody.
20:44
SPEAKER_01: And like I said, that is one of the moments where you say, Oh, you see all of these people living their lives, you watch their faces as they are enjoying themselves.
20:53
SPEAKER_01: And without that scene, you really don't get that sense of humanity from anyone other than Grace.
21:00
SPEAKER_01: I want to ask, what did the book do to show that sense of this is why we're saving the world?
21:08
SPEAKER_00: No, this is why the movie did better.
21:10
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
21:11
SPEAKER_00: Just flat out.
21:12
SPEAKER_00: The book, like, just has to ride on the fact that you're seeing him at home with all these people, right?
21:19
SPEAKER_00: And you're seeing some of their humor come out, but her character is better in the film.
21:25
SPEAKER_00: The karaoke scene, but her character all around is more nuanced.
21:29
SPEAKER_00: The book, she's great.
21:30
SPEAKER_00: But the book, she's very hardline, and she's a little more exaggerated version than in the film.
21:36
SPEAKER_00: And I think that the film, rightly for its medium, humanized her.
21:40
SPEAKER_00: In the book, remember, you have all these pages.
21:43
SPEAKER_00: You're reading it for, you know, 10, 15 hours.
21:46
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
21:47
SPEAKER_00: And so you don't necessarily need as much of the humanization.
21:50
SPEAKER_00: You're like, That makes sense.
21:52
SPEAKER_00: You've got hours of him with these people, even if they are not as humanized, you've spent three hours reading about them.
22:00
SPEAKER_00: Film needed that moment, and I honestly think that it is a stronger moment than any of the ones in the book.
22:06
SPEAKER_01: So yeah.
22:07
SPEAKER_01: It was great.
22:07
SPEAKER_01: What I really loved about it is that it was a way of you know humanizing everybody, yeah, of making you really feel emotions, but it still managed to keep him separate because key to the movie's structure, and perhaps to the book as well, is this idea, you know, where the original captain of the ship says, you don't have to be brave, you just have to have someone you're willing to be brave for.
22:34
SPEAKER_01: Right.
22:35
SPEAKER_01: And then that comes back because the only person he has to be brave for is Rocky, which is why he sacrifices himself at the end.
22:42
SPEAKER_01: Right.
22:43
SPEAKER_01: And that karaoke scene showed all of that while still keeping him apart from everybody.
22:51
SPEAKER_01: And it was just really cool.
22:53
SPEAKER_00: It's really well done.
22:54
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
22:55
SPEAKER_00: That I would say, like I said, the biggest upgrade.
22:58
SPEAKER_00: Rocky is really great in the book.
23:00
SPEAKER_00: He is fantastic.
23:01
SPEAKER_00: But being able to see him and hear him makes him even cuter.
23:08
SPEAKER_00: Because he's not really cute in the book, he's fun.
23:11
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
23:12
SPEAKER_00: And you bond to Rocky really well.
23:15
SPEAKER_00: Now you bond to him really well in the book because there's way more time of Grace being isolated and feeling that this task is hopeless.
23:23
SPEAKER_00: And then when he finds someone who can help him, it's at the moment where you're starting to feel isolated and hopeless.
23:30
SPEAKER_00: And that doesn't come across the movie because it has to go so fast.
23:33
SPEAKER_00: And so it's a brilliantly paced, you know, the book is a 10 out of 10.
23:37
SPEAKER_00: The fact that the movie could do a few things better because of what it's doing doesn't mean the book isn't a 10 out of 10.
23:42
SPEAKER_00: But Rocky coming to life, just it's funnier to see him and have him say these things.
23:50
SPEAKER_00: His excite, excite, and all of these things.
23:53
SPEAKER_00: The moment where he saves Grace.
23:57
SPEAKER_00: Oh, yeah.
23:58
SPEAKER_00: The one thing breaks out of his shell.
24:00
SPEAKER_00: And my one complaint about the book after I read the book, I'm this is the thing that I would delete.
24:06
SPEAKER_00: Is in the book, Grace is presented as more of a screw-up than he is in the film.
24:14
SPEAKER_00: And it's through a Q key moments, like in that moment when Rocky is there almost dead, Grace tries to help him by like saying there's this like crust around his breathing apparatus, and he like tries to use a blower like a to blow it out.
24:29
SPEAKER_00: And that's actually it's like a scab.
24:31
SPEAKER_00: It's the scab.
24:32
SPEAKER_00: And Rocky's like, you almost killed me by doing that.
24:35
SPEAKER_00: We have already established that Grace is kind of a screw up in certain ways.
24:40
SPEAKER_00: That moment was where it crossed the line to me.
24:43
SPEAKER_00: And I just kind of edited that part out in my head.
24:45
SPEAKER_00: I said, no, Grace didn't do that.
24:47
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
24:47
SPEAKER_00: Even though it was well-meaning, I don't need another scene of showing me that Grace screws up.
24:53
SPEAKER_00: We don't need that.
24:54
SPEAKER_00: And they cut that out of the film, and it turns into a really powerful emotional thing.
24:59
SPEAKER_00: And it's powerful and emotional in the book, but you're also like, Grace, you almost killed your friend.
25:03
SPEAKER_00: It like overshadows even Rocky's sacrifice.
25:07
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
25:08
SPEAKER_01: So the moment where he kind of crawls his way out of the med center and finds him there still feebly moving and says, It's okay, you can sleep now.
25:18
SPEAKER_01: I watch.
25:19
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
25:20
SPEAKER_01: Was so powerful.
25:21
SPEAKER_00: So those are my things the film did better.
25:24
SPEAKER_00: I mean, obviously, being able to visualize some of this stuff is fantastic.
25:29
SPEAKER_00: I do think the ending lands just a slightly better, like the on the planet than it did in the book, but it's a really subtle sort of thing, like a just a slightly different draft on the same idea.
25:39
SPEAKER_01: So yeah, it was good.
25:41
SPEAKER_01: I will say, since I know people are gonna wonder, one of the things that I thought could have been cut is as they are escaping the gravity well of the planet, we have this huge tense, everything is horrible, horrible, everything is moving.
25:55
SPEAKER_01: I have to be able to touch this button.
25:57
SPEAKER_01: And then they get out and they're fine for like 20 seconds, and then it all starts over again.
26:04
SPEAKER_01: And I'm like, we didn't need both of those.
26:06
SPEAKER_01: That's true.
26:07
SPEAKER_00: That's a pretty decent point.
26:08
SPEAKER_01: You know, he could have just He could have just smashed his face against the computer at the end of that first crisis, and it would have been just as fine and four minutes shorter.
26:19
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
26:21
SPEAKER_00: I hadn't noticed that, but you do you do make a decent point.
26:25
SPEAKER_00: I really do wish in the movie that it explained why he has to go out and roll the thing up.
26:29
SPEAKER_00: Both times I watched that, I'm like, this just makes no sense.
26:33
SPEAKER_00: People are gonna be so confused.
26:35
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I genuinely thought that I had just missed a line of dialogue or something.
26:40
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
26:40
SPEAKER_00: But that's the only thing that I would point out and say, this was a mistake.
26:43
SPEAKER_00: You really should have explained this one.
26:45
SPEAKER_00: The rest is just different mediums hit a little differently.
26:48
SPEAKER_00: And I don't think anything could have been done.
26:52
SPEAKER_00: You will, I think, really like the book.
26:54
SPEAKER_00: I need to read it.
26:55
SPEAKER_00: No, I definitely should.
26:56
SPEAKER_00: Because the Martian style science stuff is so good in the book.
27:00
SPEAKER_00: So easy to follow, so interesting, so clever.
27:04
SPEAKER_00: Everything from the linguistics to how they figure out how to, you know, breathe the astro page to all of them.
27:09
SPEAKER_01: Well, and yeah, I was gonna say, I I assume that the book has more try-fail cycles with a lot of that science as well.
27:16
SPEAKER_01: Instead of just him saying, Okay, so I bred a new amoeba, yeah.
27:20
SPEAKER_01: We actually see him try it and screw it up and all of that stuff.
27:25
SPEAKER_00: I mean, what I remember the most is him figuring out how to get the equipment to work and figuring out he's on a ship, how to get the gravity to work, all is just like step-by-step problem-solve Martian style that's really fun in the book.
27:37
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
27:37
SPEAKER_01: Watching someone go through the scientific process is a part of what makes Andy Ware's books really sing.
27:45
SPEAKER_01: And so, yeah, I should definitely read it.
27:47
SPEAKER_00: Well, there you are.
27:48
SPEAKER_00: Go read or watch The Martian The Martian.
27:51
SPEAKER_00: The Martian.
27:52
SPEAKER_01: Go read and watch The Martian.
27:53
SPEAKER_01: And also read and watch Project Hail Mary.
27:56
SPEAKER_01: Project Hail Mary.
27:58
SPEAKER_01: You too, Ben.