By Brooke Kohl
Editor’s Note: This article contains minor spoilers for Project Hail Mary.
Although my favorite movie is Interstellar, I usually claim that I don’t like science fiction. However, I’ve been proven wrong time and again, most recently over Pesach break when I read Project Hail Mary. My parents, fans of Andy Weir’s The Martian, had recently seen the Project Hail Mary movie and urged me to watch it as well. I didn’t especially want to — but with days of break ahead of me, I decided to give the book a shot.
Project Hail Mary begins with a man waking up in space with no memory of how he gets there. Through a series of flashbacks, readers learn that an alien organism, known as astrophage, is slowly draining the sun and other stars of their energy. Dr. Ryland Grace, a middle school science teacher, is on a mission to figure out why there is a singular distant star not being dimmed by the astrophage. Alternating between the present time in space and flashbacks to Grace’s time on Earth, Project Hail Mary tells the story of Grace’s journey to try to save Earth.
Despite my initial reluctance, I was not disappointed by this science fiction novel. Sure, Dr. Grace’s inner monologue was kind of annoying at times, and sure, some of the scientific parts went over my head. Despite that, Project Hail Mary is a beautiful and engaging book, one in which the conflict is intellectual and its resolution is marked by scientific breakthroughs. There’s something refreshing about the lack of intense action. Weir’s story carries itself; he doesn’t need action-packed moments to create tension or keep readers engaged. The book was driven by thought rather than action, and it was perfect.
And of course, Grace’s friendship with Rocky cannot be overstated. This is not merely a story of scientific discovery; it is a story of the power of camaraderie. It is a story of people of different countries working together and species of different worlds working together. Even with no romantic plotline, Project Hail Mary features so much love: love for the world, a love of life, Grace’s love for his students, and the love between two beings who discover each other at a time when they are most alone.
With all of that background, I expected the movie to enhance the book’s emotional scope. I’d be able to actually see the complicated descriptions of Grace’s ship; I’d heard Rocky is even more endearing when portrayed on screen; the soundtrack would heighten the emotion. I thought the movie would take all of the feelings from the book and bring them into sharper focus.
With these expectations, I remarked to a friend before seeing the movie that “I hope it’s not better than Interstellar.” I had no desire to replace my favorite movie, but I liked the Project Hail Mary book enough that I was afraid the movie might win. However, after watching the movie, I can confidently say that Interstellar retains its top spot.
I went into Project Hail Mary thinking I was predisposed to love it because I enjoyed the book and because I love Interstellar. However, I didn’t account for the fact that while Interstellar is not based on a book, this is.
Project Hail Mary is not a bad movie. In fact, as a stand-alone movie, it’s quite good. However, the problem with seeing a movie after reading its book is that there will always be comparisons to make. As I watched Project Hail Mary, I couldn’t get the book out of my head. With it in mind, I found each scene of slow, methodical scientific discovery from the book to be rushed over in the movie, taking away major moments that characterized the genius of the book. So many of my favorite aspects of the book were missing from the movie. And instead of leaving the theater with a stronger emotional appreciation for the book because of the beauty of the movie, I left with a stronger appreciation for the book because of where the movie fell short.
Yes, there were some wonderful aspects of the movie. Getting to see what I had only previously been imagining was one of them; the descriptions of Grace’s ship are complex, and it was a lot easier and more gratifying to get to see them on a screen. Getting to see Grace and Rocky’s relationship was beautiful. The humor also felt more natural in the movie, rather than just a byproduct of Grace’s narration.
But in all other aspects, I felt that the movie fell short of the book. Every plot point from the book was less developed in the movie. Every scientific discovery was shortened and felt less monumental. The main goal of the mission — Earth needs to be saved — felt underdeveloped, thereby robbing it of its importance and emotional gravity. Grace’s intelligence was stripped away as his calculations and experiments were given so much less time than they deserved. A fascinating vignette about global warming is not included in the movie, along with several other moments in flashbacks that feel important in the book. The movie skips over one of the key details as to why Grace is chosen to go on this mission (there’s even a throwaway line that contradicts a point from the book regarding this — tell me if you noticed it!). Grace’s food supply is not an issue in the movie.
One of my biggest issues with the movie was the pacing. As a movie in and of itself, the pacing worked. When compared with the book, however, the movie placed what felt like undue emphasis on the beginning, to the detriment of the end. The last ten chapters of the thirty-chapter book felt completely rushed over and almost disregarded in the movie. The movie was almost over by the time a key part of the last ten chapters was even introduced, and the questions, scientific discoveries and new conflicts in it felt very rushed. What felt like the major conflict of the last ten chapters was almost an afterthought.
I don’t think that the Project Hail Mary movie is bad. But when compared with the book, I think there is so much that it is lacking.
When I contrasted this to Interstellar, I realized that everything that the screenwriter of Interstellar wanted to get across to audience members needed to be in the movie. Any explanation of tension, any scientific breakthrough, any character development, anything, had to be perfect in the movie or it would not be perfect anywhere. Project Hail Mary, in contrast, had to take a 500 page novel and boil it down to be on screen. Of course, not everything was going to be covered or given the attention that it should have been given. I don’t think this was a failing of the scriptwriter; this is merely a failing of movie adaptations of books. And I think that for this book specifically, one that relies so much on scientific discoveries and math computations to keep readers engaged, the movie was unable to live up to the grandeur and complexity of the book.
Project Hail Mary is a good movie and a great book. I urge you to immerse yourself in the world of Dr. Grace, Rocky and astrophage; you might just find that you love science fiction.
Photo Credit: Aliza Billet