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"Project Hail Mary" returns to IMAX screens this Friday, April 17 (thelemmy.club)
submitted 4 months ago by [M] to c/movies@piefed.social
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[–] 15 points 4 months ago (3 children)

I don’t want to spoil things here but let’s just say the book balanced tensions a lot more deftly (both tension from danger and tension from emotion). In this movie the journey felt much too effortless to me. I’m hoping a longer version would do better building tension properly.

By comparison, I think The Martian was able to capture more of a sense of urgency even though it had the same Problem?… Solution! format.

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  • [–] 6 points 4 months ago (1 child)

    Just curious, how many times have you seen the movie? I went twice, and the first time I felt pretty much exactly what you described. On my second watching, having lost my expectations from the book, it felt more like they went for the right balance, still flawed, but much less so.

    But yes, director's cut please.

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  • [–] 4 points 4 months ago* (1 child)

    I wish I didn’t know about The Martian connection. I found myself comparing the two movies, expecting too much science and problem solving out of Project Hail Mary lol. Instead the movie wasn’t really about that. The core of it was really the relationship between __ and __.

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  • [–] 4 points 4 months ago (1 child)

    You can understand where I’m coming from then since the book felt just a science-y as The Martian movie/book to me. They didn’t exactly cut the science out in Hail Mary, but instead of making it front and center they alluded to it now and then but didn’t fully explain it to the viewer in some cases (to fit in more scenes, I suspect).

    Certain details of time dilation and the ship’s gravity device for ex. really help build important tension that was mostly missed in the film.

    To me it felt a little rushed though, so I have my fingers double crossed that an extended version would bring it from “good” to “excellent” in my book.

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  • [–] 0 points 4 months ago

    Tap for spoilerI could've used a more thorough explanation that it was intended to be a one-way trip and that anyone going on the trip wasn't going to want to go home anyway, because of the substantial risk that society mostly collapses by the time a human can travel back at an acceleration that their bodies could handle, and the time dilation increasing both the risk and aging off any loved ones they might have. That way it makes it clearer that Grace's strongest emotional connection back home is his students, who will be very different people, if they've even survived, and it makes sense that he wants to go back to teaching.

    Although I'm also wondering about the pedagogy for teaching a species that doesn't forget. The need to work through recall itself is less important, but it could be possible that teaching is more about training the problem solving and analytic skills using that body of knowledge.

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