Due to the state of modern Hollywood, I hadn’t gone to the movie theater since 2023’s disastrous Mission Impossible: Aging Lesbian Tom Cruise Runs and Cries a Lot.
However, I was wrapping up a trip to Vancouver, and we didn’t have that much to do on Friday, so we decided to give the recently released Project Hail Mary a chance. After all, I enjoyed the novel so much that I read it twice, despite the unsatisfying ending and occasional bits of Weir’s annoying eccentricity. I’ll also admit to enjoying Ryan Gosling as an actor, so while the trailer did not inspire confidence, I figured that they couldn’t mess up such good source material. And even if they did, how bad could it be?
I have never liked the phrases “dumbing it down for casuals,” or “lowest common denominator,” but it’s hard to avoid describing the Project Hail Mary movie in other terms. I was skeptical that it was possible to functionally adapt PHM even with a nearly three hour long runtime. The directors “accomplished” this feat by changing the genre entirely from a somewhat dry work of hard science fiction, to a melodramatic bromantic comedy. It’s Air Bud on a spaceship.
Book Rocky is a highly intelligent and competent character. Movie Rocky is a precocious interstellar Golden Retreiver who appears to have access to high tech tools through a bizarre fluke of nature. Perhaps no scene captures this tonal change more clearly than Rocky’s decision to move onto Grace’s spaceship. I could bore you with all the ways this differs from the novel, but just watch it for yourself. It’s only the first minute of the clip below.
In case you missed it, both Rocky and Grace are on long shot missions to save their entire species. The movie takes great pains to remind you that there will be massive food shortages in Earth’s future. Crops will fail, wars will start, people will freeze. Meanwhile, on a spaceship that will undergo explosive decompression should any wall get so much as a pinprick, Rocky’s knocking over previous science equipment like a puppy in a china shop while Grace chases after him like his somewhat embarrassed owner. It’s not just the astonishing inappropriateness of the movie clearly wanting us to cheer for this fucking idiot in a ball destroying precious lab equipment with billions of lives at stake, it’s that the scene also feels weirdly generic. Like the directors pulled from a library of similar scenes and mad-libbed in the correct proper nouns.
TV Tropes describes the term “competency porn” as “the thrill of watching bright, talented people plan, banter, and work together to solve problems.” But that’s reserved for the book characters. Movie!Rocky and Movie!Grace are bumbling dipshits who miraculously fumble their way through extraordinarily difficult problems. Although the audience won’t even know that these are difficult problems, because although the movie’s 2:36 runtime was long enough for a myriad of drawn out melodramatic crying scenes, as well as more than one needless silly scenes – the hardware store side quest comes to mind – the directors decided to blitz through the science-y parts of the novel so fast that they kind of forgot to give the audience the basic information necessary to understand the stakes of any particular action scenes. Even I found myself confused at multiple points, despite them changing almost none of the plot.
Then again, who has time to explain why they’re collecting samples moving in both directions over Tau-Ceti when we’re busy ICONICALLY showing Ryan Gosling swimming in CGI particles. This is Project Hail Mary’s BEST moment, according to one critic, despite non-book readers really having no idea what’s happening.
It’s amazing how proud the directors are of this shot that amounts to empty spectacle, wherein they made the conscious decision to play pretty music instead of giving us a voiceover explaining what in the hell is going on.
How about this ICONIC scene of the two spaceships rotating in sync with a bridge attached, even though this is physically impossible since the tube is not attached to the center of mass of either of these ships. (NOTE: The author was incapable of finding the actual scene on YouTube. He hopes that this guy talking about that scene, and many other bizarre goofs, will satisfy you instead.)
Near the end of the film Rocky and Grace split up to head back to their respective planets with the cure. To make a very long story short, the cure on Grace’s ship out and eats most of his rocket fuel. Grace stabilizes the problem, only to realize that Rocky’s ship will undergo the same problem but worse, as the type of material his ship is made out of can’t properly contain it.
Grace has already sent probes back to Earth, so Earth is saved. He also has enough fuel to get home, but not enough to turn around, potentially save Rocky, and then get home. So he leave Rocky his fate aboard a derelict spaceship, or he can try to save Rocky, dooming himself to death.
He decides to save Rocky, and this decision is made all the more heroic because it is so unsure. He has only a vague idea of where Rocky’s ship is, knowing his starting location and his path of travel. Using the doubling time of the Tau-Ameoba, combined with estimations for Rocky’s original onboard fuel amount and estimated velocity at that time, he figures out roughly where his ship will be.
But it’s not enough, because space is gigantic. So in order to narrow in on Rocky’s position, he figures out a way to use his ship’s engines as a kind of gigantic RADAR. The rear of the ship shoots out infrared light, so he periodically rotates the ship around, blasts the engines on full power before spinning it around again and using the IR-camera on board for a different reason to check for a return blip. Eventually, he finds him.
Or at least, that’s what happens in the book.
And actually, that’s what happens in the movie as well, right down to the ship spinning around in place. Only, instead of explaining any of this, joyful music plays over a montage of space shots. I might not have commented, but my friend turned to me and asked if the ship was rotating because of the damage earlier. Before I could respond and explain any of this Ryan Gosling was banging on the outside of Rocky’s spaceship. Once again, they had all the time in the world to play a voice, but went with happy music and pretty pictures instead. I understand condensing events, but it’s such a weird decision to skip over Grace finding Rocky while also showing a tiny part without explanation.
You could blame the movie from being disfigured in the editing room, except that there’s no way the editor is responsible for every normal scene getting turned into a quasi-action scene, and every action scene getting turned into this.
SCENE: They’re in space. Things are happening.
*Loud Noise*
Grace: Looks like we’re not in Kansas anymore.
Rocky: What Kansas?
Grace: It’s a saying.
Rocky: In Kansas? Like, inside of Kansas? Is Kansas a girl? Are you mating with Kansas?
Grace: Not like that. *Audience groans*
*More loud noises, flashing lights. Unexplained, but vaguely science-y things are done by Grace and Rocky.*
Rocky: Amaze amaze amaze. Grace so smart. Me be a cute piece of merchandise for your nephew. Human amaze.
*Loud noises. Rocky injured*
Grace: Omg. Rocky. ROCCKYYYYYYYYYYYY!
*Rocky is fine after a five minute long crying scene followed up by a five minute long hugging scene*
The author of PHM, Stuart Weir, for all his Reddit-themed faults, seems like the kind of guy who actually likes science. The two directors seem like the kind of guys who once liked the “I Fucking LOVE Science” Facebook page ten years ago and shelved their DudeWeedBro 6: Weeed Broooo passion project to crap out an adaptation of Weir’s work. Or maybe management tapped them on the shoulder, and insisted that this cerebral, hard science IP needed to be mutilated into emotionally manipulative slop for children. I guess I could be happy for the kids, but considering the muted vibes of the half-empty opening Friday night theater I’m not sure they got much out of it either.
Having said that, this slop may still might be the best Hollywood has produced recently. It was certainly better than whatever the hell this was.
I don’t have much experience with streaming services, so I can’t remember which one we were on. I do remember that it showed Sinners, which I vetoed, and One Battle After Another, which my sister vetoed. I didn’t, and which I didn’t want to watch anyway, other than to write about.
The trailer did not look good, but we hoped and prayed that it would be stupid fun as opposed to just plain stupid. Like maybe we’d be getting the original Die Hard, instead of the sequels. Also, it was directed by Edgar Wright, who made a few good movies twenty years ago, so we thought that put a floor on just how bad it could be.
This was the worst movie I have ever sat through in my adult life.
Running Man is such a spectacular failure that it’s difficult to pick a place to begin. How about the leading man, Glenn Powell, who plays a starving blue collar man fighting for his mulatto child’s healthcare (yes, really) who’s too angry to die. Yet he looks like a metrosexual Hollywood bodybuilder. There is zero hair on his body. None. Guy probably bleaches his asshole.
I never thought I’d be wishing Jason Statham was the male lead, but Powell made me appreciate him to a degree not seen since pre-pubescence.
Powell was horribly miscast, and given a terrible script. Regardless, whenever the Generic Hollywood Protagonist Replete With A Waxed Chest did one of his “I’m so angry” bits I was reminded of a toddler throwing a tantrum, and I can’t help but think some of that’s on him.
It’s insane that this movie cost $110 million to make, because everything in it feels totally incoherence. For example, Powell’s family is destitute. He can’t even afford to send his kid to a real doctor. We learn this in a scene where he rants to said wife, who is wearing fancy earrings and looks extremely well put together. It’s like the different departments in the studio weren’t talking to each other, and no one cared. Like an AI was told to create the look for a generic protagonist wife character in a vacuum and came up with this.
Sorry if it’s a bit dark.
The script is so astonishingly generic yet terrible that I began to suspect I’d been hoodwinked into watching an AI produced script. Apparently the movie cost $100 million, but Hollywood is so incompetently run that means nothing. There have been plenty of blockbusters that have gone into production without a finished script, so it wouldn’t surprise me if some coke addicted Jew at production company Kinberg Genre greenlit the project without any script at all, before setting the Electronic Idiot to work churning out this bilge.
There would explain why the movie feels so insane yet also so generic. It might also explain the total incongruity of the movie from one scene to another, and other bizarre inconsistencies such as Powell’s character getting $5k per day he stays alive, but then a bonus of $1 billion per week. Or all of the satire going over like a wet-balloon. Like a machine tuned to be inoffensive was making fun of American culture.
I can’t tell if the movie is trying to satirize America, or building its own universe, and I’m not sure if the filmmakers knew either. They also never decided if they wanted the movie to be silly fun or be taken extremely seriously. It’s just a mess.
AI-generated script or otherwise, there are writers credited on this project. Which puts the screenwriter’s strike into perspective when, years after they’ve come back, the best line they can come up with for protagonist Ben Richards to triumphantly deliver after killing a bunch of hunters and surviving another day is “I’m still alive shitheads,” followed by him fingering the camera and sticking his tongue out.
Truly inspiring. Viva la revolution. This was a $110 million production.
Hollywood still sucks.
