S03E15 — Project Hail Mary

SPOILER ALERT: This episode and transcript below contains major spoilers for Project Hail Mary.

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Featuring hosts Timothy Haynes, Donna Haynes, Rebekah Edwards, and T. Josiah Haynes.

Alright baby listeners… we kept waiting for one of us to turn on it, and it just didn’t happen.

We all kind of landed in the same place on this one. The book does what books do best, it slows down, builds things out, and lets you sit in the story a little longer. And then the movie comes in and instead of ruining it… it actually holds up.

Like, it’s not the exact same experience, but it still feels right. The pacing works, the choices mostly make sense, and we weren’t sitting there asking “why would they do that” every five minutes, which already puts it ahead of a lot of adaptations.

We talk through the differences, what each version leans into, and why this ended up being one of those rare times where it doesn’t feel like you have to pick a side.

Final Verdicts

If you haven’t listened to the episode yet, we recommend waiting to read our verdicts. (But you’re probably grown, so do what you want!)

The book really takes its time and lets everything unfold in a way that just works.
And the movie… honestly, it still works. Just in a different way that we actually liked.

Donna: The book was better.
– Book Score: 9.5/10
– Film Score: 9.5/10

Rebekah: The book was better.
– Book Score: 10/10
– Film Score: 9.25/10

Josiah: The book was better.
– Book Score: 9.5/10
– Film Score 9.5/10

Tim: The book was better.
– Book Score: 9.56/10
– Film Score 9.5/10

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Full Episode Transcript

[00:00:00] Rebekah: Just stop you crying. It’s a sign of the tide. Maze. 

[00:00:06] Tim: Maze, 

[00:00:08] Rebekah: we gotta get away from here. 

[00:00:11] Tim: Grumpy, 

[00:00:12] Rebekah: angry, stupid. 

[00:00:13] Tim: How long since last sleep question? 

[00:00:17] Rebekah: Just stop crying. 

[00:00:20] Josiah: Gru

is my place. Monster. You gotta get away from me. 

[00:00:31] Donna: We do win. We do need to get away from you. 

[00:00:38] Josiah: Oh, welcome to the best episode of the podcast, everybody.

I was telling someone yesterday, I don’t know if my sister has, has been as hype for this movie, uh, compared 

[00:01:09] Tim: to 

[00:01:09] Josiah: else any other movie before. Yeah. I don’t remember your Harry Potter movie 

[00:01:13] Tim: Hype. She’d already seen it before we started doing this. 

[00:01:17] Rebekah: Yeah. It wasn’t new, so it wasn’t podcast related, but I don’t know.

This might literally be the movie I’ve been most excited about. Not just adaptation. I don’t think I’ve ever been this excited for a movie. This movie. I would’ve waited outside for six hours and gone to a midnight showing 

[00:01:32] Donna: I was so terrified we would have a Mickey 17. 

[00:01:36] Rebekah: Oh yeah, that would’ve been a nightmare.

[00:01:38] Donna: I was like, oh my God, if this is bad, I don’t know if I’ll survive it. And that’s so silly to say, isn’t it? 

[00:01:44] Tim: I thought it was fun. I enjoyed the lead up to it and all of the trepidation and questions and all of the looking at reviews and checking it out and trying to steal ourselves to what could be. 

[00:01:58] Rebekah: Josh was trying so hard to get me not to watch stuff in advance, and they like released the scene of him meeting Rocky for the first time and I was like, I wanna see it.

And Josh was like, experience it right on the screen. Like. Man, it was, it was hard to, to put all this stuff aside. So obviously, spoiler warning, why are you listening to this or watching this if you haven’t already seen the project Dale Mary Film. And if you haven’t read the book, book y, also confusion.

Confusion. Why are you the confusion, 

[00:02:25] Josiah: the stupidest person we’ve ever met? 

[00:02:27] Rebekah: Ah. Um, also, I don’t really know that there’s a lot of content warnings for this episode. It’s probably good for, uh, parents, but we may talk about a few, like slightly heavier topics. 

[00:02:39] Josiah: It’s an existential story. 

[00:02:42] Rebekah: Yes, it’s very existential.

[00:02:43] Donna: This is one of the first films we’ve covered in a while that I’ve told parents, if your children have a minuscule amount of interest in soft science fiction. Or science or anything. It’s so clean 

[00:02:56] Rebekah: even. I’m glad that they kept that. 

[00:02:57] Josiah: There’s like three big curse words that are kind of used for effect. 

[00:03:01] Rebekah: So today’s fun fact.

Uh, why is Project Hail Mary your favorite book and also your favorite film? And if not, why are you stupid? 

[00:03:08] Josiah: Mm. 

[00:03:09] Rebekah: So, I mean, I can go first, but I wanna give you guys time to think of your answers. 

[00:03:14] Josiah: Yeah, well thank you. That’s kind. 

[00:03:16] Rebekah: Yeah. Yeah. It’s my favorite book because it’s the best. It’s the best one. So I’ve read a lot of them and it’s the best one 

[00:03:22] Josiah: favorite film because 

[00:03:24] Rebekah: it also, yep.

Same reason. It’s the best 

[00:03:26] Josiah: one. Oh, you’ve seen all of them? 

[00:03:28] Rebekah: Yes, correct. I’ve seen all the films and this is the best. 

[00:03:33] Josiah: Are we thinking Oscar, for Best Picture Project Hail Mary? 

[00:03:36] Rebekah: I would love that, but I doubt it. 

[00:03:38] Josiah: I think it’s up for a nomination. 

[00:03:40] Rebekah: I would love to see it up for a nomination, but I don’t trust the academy.

I don’t trust the people in the academy to make a good decision about it. 

[00:03:47] Donna: I would be very interested to see how they treat Rocky’s character Are, did they share the lead? 

[00:03:54] Rebekah: No, he’s considered supporting 

[00:03:56] Josiah: Andy C Ain’t Getting an Oscar for Goum. Rocky ain’t getting nothing. 

[00:04:01] Donna: Yeah. 

[00:04:01] Rebekah: Fair. So I do have a real fun fact question ’cause it’s unfair because some of you guys are weird and have other whatever.

So myself and Josiah and my husband Josh saw it together and then mom and dad saw it together. Same time-ish. Like same day, but not in the same place. You guys had two previews, we had five. So the previews were a major part of the release because this is such a huge like planned release. So what preview is like the movie you’re most anticipating seeing that you saw at Project Tell Mary?

And it could be at the showing we saw later or the first like pre-show that we were at. Um, I’ll go first. I’m so excited about The Odyssey. I’ve never read The Odyssey. I didn’t have to read The Iliad or the Odyssey in school. And I’m getting more into reading the classics now that we’ve done Dracula and Frankenstein.

And I know we’ve read a couple of other classic books and I’m trying to get more into them. I have like Weathering Heights and Pride and Prejudice on my list to read. I would say like, I’m excited that I have to read The Odyssey, but the preview looked. Insane. Like it looked so good. 

[00:05:04] Tim: The only preview I’ve seen of the Odyssey was really just a teaser trailer.

[00:05:10] Rebekah: You should look up the full length trailer. ’cause it is Wow. 

[00:05:12] Josiah: Yeah. It’s hard for me to beat the Odyssey. Chris Nolan used to be my favorite director. He, he would probably still be if I, I would, I wanna say if he made more movies, but he does make a movie every two years or so. Um, but they’re just so great.

They’re just so great and they’re consistent and he plays with time and they’re mind benders, but they’re also audience pleasers. I don’t, I don’t know how he’s gonna make the Odyssey work, but I trust that he probably will make it work, so it’s hard to beat the Odyssey. Least excited Super girl. 

[00:05:44] Rebekah: Yeah, my favorite part of that being mom tweeted about it and then I looked at it like, wow.

A morally gray female character trying to show us that it’s okay to not be okay, and it’s okay if things are messy. And it’s like, what a novel idea. 

[00:06:00] Donna: I’m not a massive fan of animated films. We have seen a few trailers of animated stuff coming out this year that I thought that seemed fun, like The Sheep Detective.

[00:06:11] Rebekah: I’m excited about that. 

[00:06:12] Donna: Uh, I’m also excited about Animal Farm coming out. I’ll be very interested to see what Andy C does With that. 

[00:06:18] Rebekah: I will tell you I’ve seen some like random, like critic reviews of Animal Farm, and it is. Uh, what’s the word I’m looking for? Polarizing. It is very polarizing, so I’m so interested.

[00:06:30] Donna: And he’s not messing around, like he’s not trying to minimize the source material. I, I’ll be very interested to see what he does with it. 

[00:06:38] Tim: I am looking forward to the sheep detective. Less so to Animal Farm. The Odyssey gets my, uh, brain moving and looking through a list of things that are releasing this year, Lee Cronin’s the Mummy is releasing.

That’ll be an interesting thing. Oh yeah, 

[00:06:55] Rebekah: yeah. 

[00:06:55] Tim: I’m also looking forward to seeing how they handle the Michael Jackson movie, which is just titled Michael. 

[00:07:03] Rebekah: Yes. 

[00:07:03] Josiah: I think it was last year when everyone in Middle Tennessee went to see the Michael Jackson. Musical that came through tpac. So for me, I, I’m kinda looking at the movie poster and I’m like, didn’t we kind of already do this?

But I guess that was just a, a touring play. 

[00:07:21] Tim: I don’t even see another, another one that you guys will probably laugh at me. I am looking forward to seeing Masters of the Universe 

[00:07:28] Josiah: that looked kind of cool. 

[00:07:29] Tim: Spider-Man is coming out, but I don’t know if I’m looking forward to it as much as I wish I were. 

[00:07:34] Josiah: Is the animated or the live action?

[00:07:37] Tim: Uh, live action Spider-Man brand new day. Okay. It’s, it’s basically the reboot with the same cast, but nobody knows that he’s Spider-Man. Now 

[00:07:44] Josiah: I, I guess I’ll watch one more Marvel film ’cause it’s Tom Holland. 

[00:07:48] Rebekah: I also haven’t seen the trailer for the new Harry Potter. You guys, it came out yesterday and I haven’t looked at it yet because I’m like scared.

I’ve watched it 

[00:07:55] Josiah: four 

[00:07:56] Donna: times. 

[00:07:56] Rebekah: Okay. Don’t tell me anything. I wanna watch it. I’m not gonna, this gonna tell you 

[00:07:59] Donna: anything. I’ll take you. There’s nudity. Rebecca, I wanted to cry. 

[00:08:03] Rebekah: Did you wanna cry? 

[00:08:03] Donna: I’m so, yeah, I’m, I’m 

[00:08:06] Rebekah: okay. Why do they put Nu nudity in Harry Potter, though? That feels unnecessary. 

[00:08:10] Tim: Dumbledore is gay.

From the first episode, I have a feeling that he’s really trying to wind you up there. 

[00:08:18] Donna: Yeah. I’m cautiously optimistic. And I’ll also say that visually I think it’s beautiful what they’ve put in the trailer. I, I mean, I was really happy with You’ll have to watch it. It’s like two minutes long I posted it.

You’ll, you’ll see it. 

[00:08:32] Josiah: Hey mom, do you wanna hear the plot summary? Did Project Hail Mary? 

[00:08:35] Tim: We might as well, since that’s what we’re covering, huh? 

[00:08:38] Josiah: Well, you know, Ryland Grace played by Ryan Gosling in the movie is a molecular biologist turned a middle school teacher. He is brought on a project, oh, what’s it called?

To save the world from a sun consuming alien presence. A, a microscopic. Alien being called that they call astro phage, which means sun eater star eater, uh, thinking he is just an earthbound scientist on the project. Grace uses all of his knowledge to discover more about astro phage than anyone else. He’s very creative and smart.

Uh, he becomes an expert on the topic of astro phage. And in an unexpected turn events, he becomes the only scientist on a one-way journey to Tao Seti against his will. The book in film begin with grace, waking up with no memory of who he is, how he got there. Uh, he discovers his two crew mates have died on the journey in the weeks and months ahead.

As he slowly regains his memories, Ryland determines to complete the mission. Along with Rocky, a friendly alien. He encounters from the planet arid. Uh, he be the what? The rock spider alien, uh, called Rocky by Ryland. He’s on the same quest to save his planet from Asage Grace. Rocky save stars. 

[00:10:10] Tim: That is kind of the plot summary.

Just that 

[00:10:12] Josiah: line. 

[00:10:12] Rebekah: That is a line from the movie. Yeah. Mm-hmm. Grace, rocky, save star. You could have just skipped all of that. It was like grace, Rocky, save stars 

[00:10:18] Donna: a line for my shirt. Hello. Come on. 

[00:10:21] Rebekah: True. Amazing. Rocky’s on my shirt too. I don’t dunno if you can see it. Okay. I have 

[00:10:25] Josiah: a Maza Maza maze on my shirt.

[00:10:26] Rebekah: Oh, Josiah got a pin and Dad is dressed up as Ryland Grace, which I’m sure is mom’s new thing now that she’s excited about. I’m not 

[00:10:34] Josiah: saying anything 

[00:10:35] Donna: about that. 

[00:10:36] Josiah: What about major differences? 

[00:10:40] Rebekah: Um, so we’ll start with characters today. If you watch the movie and have read the book, you would know this film actually did a really good job of including quite a lot from the book, which I was, I honestly was very excited about Andy Weir.

The author had a lot, um, of say on set and was like very involved in the process. I saw him at an interview two years ago, a year ago. I saw a video of him talking about how important for him it was to make sure that it was done faithfully. And I think that that’s part of why The Martian also had worked as a film.

So, uh, we are gonna talk about differences and I just wanna like hear your thoughts now that you’ve seen it twice, had some time to, in like digest it, all that. So first of all, let’s start with Ryland Grace. He is the focus of the film, obviously one of them. What did we think of Ryan Gosling’s portrayal of Ryland Grace.

[00:11:32] Donna: I was very pleased that they. Did everything they could to make Ryan Gosling look like just a guy. And honestly, I think, unless I’m mistaken, I think in real life, Ryan Gosling is a pretty normal guy from everything I’ve seen from him interviews, just see him interact with people in real life, you know?

And obviously I’ve only seen him in interviews and television things, right? But I really thought that they captured a normal guy. 

[00:12:09] Josiah: I heard that Ryan Gosling’s daughter commented that glasses made him look smart, just kind of in passing. And then Ryan was like, all right, well we gotta put glasses on me then.

[00:12:22] Donna: Oh, that’s pretty cool. And I, I did think all the way through when Rowland would take off the glasses, hang them on one ear. And they would just hang under his chin. We found a little trivia that said he found out that people with glasses never do that, never hang their glasses below their chin, but they’d film so many scenes, they didn’t wanna reshoot it, so they kept it.

Honestly, I loved it because it’s not something anybody does. It ramped up the nerdy personality. 

[00:12:54] Rebekah: Yeah, I think, I mean, honestly, it was incredibly adorable and so I am not complaining. 

[00:13:00] Tim: He seemed to pull off a character that. Is unconcerned about relationships and other people and things like that. He seems to be just absorbed with the kids and with science.

And so when he gets to thinking, it just doesn’t matter. So the fact that he’d have to clean his glasses 20 times a day by putting them under his chin doesn’t seem to bother him. He wears that old man cardigan and a shirt, which I believe is from the eighties. 

[00:13:31] Rebekah: Well, uh, I wanted to say, I thought it was cute.

I didn’t think about this until later and somebody, I think somebody brought it up on maybe X that I noticed it, but I had never caught this. But apparently Andy Weir did it on purpose, like his last name is Grace and it’s the ship is the Hail Mary. And a common Catholic blessing or to like, to ask for help is literally Hail Mary full of grace.

And so before Rocky joins the ship, it is literally the Hail Mary full of grace. And so it was a definitely a plea. And in the story it worked out. So 

[00:14:06] Tim: I think it’s fun when writers do that, when, when they have quirky little things that they know and they may reveal to people, or people may say, oh, I recognized that.

I think that’s fine. Yeah, 

[00:14:18] Josiah: it’s about depth. You know, we have Ryland Grace, but the, the secondary character of the movie is our lovable alien, cute little rock spider horror monster with a sense of humor, Rocky. I think his name and his native language is, I think there’s close so long. It’s very long. But, uh, I was wondering how you thought Rocky worked in the film versus the book.

I have my own thoughts. I want to hear what you guys say first though. 

[00:14:55] Tim: I really enjoyed the fact that they, they used a practical puppet the vast majority of the time. I think it comes off as in the environment. Something about CG sometimes just looks fake. Uh, it’s, it’s hard to make it look realistic enough so the puppet was better.

Uh, and I think that was really good. I really appreciated the, um, the voice actor. He did a great job. There was an appropriate amount of humor because. You know, he’s alien. But I also thought it was kind of cute that he was, he was also a 9-year-old human boy is what it seemed like at times. Yes, of course.

He was young. Who had been alive for a hundred years. Yeah. He was young for his people’s. Oh, more 

[00:15:45] Rebekah: than 

[00:15:45] Tim: that. So 

[00:15:46] Rebekah: yeah, I think that Rocky, obviously Rocky is like the part of the book and film that set this so far apart from like The Martian, because in The Martian, you know, it’s a similar story in that you have a man kind of alone in space or on another planet I guess.

But in Project Hail Mary, it’s like you add this adorable relationship, this friendship that is the thing of legend, apparently. Like everybody on X cannot stop talking about how much they love it. And it’s like, I love Rocky. I would die for Rocky. I would die for Rocky. Um, you know, like the Inside Out reference.

I just, I loved him. I thought it was weird getting used to the new voice. I have seen a couple of people say, you know, I wish that they just asked Ray Porter to voice the rocky puppet in the film. And I kind of get that, like, if I’m being honest, like I kind of get it. I don’t hate the idea. Um, but I, I adored him.

I thought the guy that did it in the film was fantastic. The puppet was insanely believable. I thought there were like a couple of lines that I missed. The leaky space Blob line was like my favorite one that they cut, and I thought that was probably the only one that I was like, Ooh, like that was funny.

And he didn’t use it, even though Ryland does have this like crying scene. But he did a, I mean, the actor did a great job. I was obsessed. Um, for sure. 

[00:17:04] Donna: I also. Thought about the fact that with just a different setting, a different visual tone, how rocky in another film could genuinely be a scary space monster.

And if you think about it, just by giving him voice, creating the situation where he’s playful, but also very intelligent in just a few setting changes, he could be in a horror movie. And I thought that was so interesting that they captured that and made you fall in love with this goofy little five armed rock 

[00:17:39] Tim: with no face.

[00:17:40] Donna: And, and I also will say we have friends a well, actually, I mean even Josh was like this too, right? Why did they put rocky in the sport in the trailers? 

[00:17:49] Rebekah: It’s very polarizing, to be honest. The whole conversation is very polarizing. 

[00:17:54] Donna: Wouldn’t it kind of just been Martian all over if you hadn’t put him in the trailer and cast doubt about the movie that it was just a copy?

That, that was my first thought. 

[00:18:06] Rebekah: The argument I saw that in my head made the most sense too was like, it’s like saying that et should have been had trailers that showed it about a movie, about a kid whose parents get divorced. Like it’s, you take out the alien, you take out one of the most amazing, like capturing parts of the entire story.

Now, Josiah, I remember we, I went back and watched the video where we all live reacted to the trailer and you, I spoiled the fact that there was an alien in the trailer. Earlier in the trailer. ’cause I thought you’d read the book already and like how did you feel as the, you saw the trailer and knew about Rocky before you ever read the book.

And I think for the others of us, I’m not positive about Dad, but like for me and mom, the when, when I read it and then when I got her to read it, that was one of the most amazing parts, the most fun parts of the book was experiencing the discovery of Rocky for the first time. How did it feel? Knowing that before ever going in.

[00:19:02] Josiah: Well, I don’t like any spoilers, so, you know, sure. I wanna experience things the first time without thinking about, oh, this is what Rebecca was talking about. Oh, this is what mom really likes. Oh, this is what the trailer was trying to make me think. I, I don’t know. There’s a magic to going in spoiler free completely with no information.

But, um, I completely understand. So my, my thought process is that Rocky in a movie is a hard sell. It’s like, uh, films are very grounded and this is just magical, that there’s this rock spider. So outside the realm of what we know as our reality, that I think it would read as like a musical, how people don’t like musicals.

’cause it’s like people breaking into song. The suspension of disbelief, I think would be broken. So I think that Andy Weir and Lord and Miller, the directors absolutely knew that they were having to fight against this unrealistic suspension of disbelief killer, and they did everything they could to establish expectations.

There is an alien. Do not go into this movie thinking it is just hard. It is all hard sci-fi. But if you surprised a lot of people with the Alien, I think there would be a lot of people who were like, oh, it was just weird, you know? I was going in thinking I was gonna watch this Ryan Gosling Saving the Earth movie, and then it was all about this weird alien thing that looked weird.

So they did everything they could. He was in the trailer, which I think is polarizing, but they made the decision, I guarantee you. To tell everyone, especially people who hadn’t read the book, there is an alien in this movie. Prepare mentally to suspend your disbelief for there being a weird alien in the movie.

Um, you basically only until the very last scene, I think you only ever see Rocky through the clear zite, which distorts the image. I’m like, oh yeah, that’s great ’cause you, ’cause don’t show the audience what Rocky looks like, just like on camera. Don’t show them that ’cause it’s weird. And suspension of disbelief breaking, always show him through the, through the opaque, angular glass of xite or in the ball mm-hmm.

Where it’s angular. So it’s a distorted image. It’s not just a rock puppet, it’s not a Muppet. In this serious movie with Ryan Gosling, it is a, this distorted image of an alien. So I. The filmmakers and Andy Weir knew that it would be a tough sell and they did all they could. And I think that they succeeded in helping audiences to suspend their disbelief for this fun alien.

’cause Rocky’s such an integral part. And I think that they did a, a spectacular job at helping audiences to buy in to Rocky. 

[00:22:18] Donna: I thought it was masterful to use him to help you digest the other story trope, which is dude was forced into space against his will to do something he said he didn’t wanna do.

And to watch him evolve through that and then go, oh yeah, totally worth it. I, I’m gonna do this. So to me, I felt like Rocky was that kind of a softening, almost like a fabric softener, because that’s a heavy story. 

[00:22:47] Josiah: True. 

[00:22:49] Donna: Next character that is kind of in the list as far as importance, I think is Strat In the movie, she is portrayed as a little softer.

She has less power struggles, uh, on the screen than she does in the book. I didn’t see her like that in the book at all, and you guys can tell me if you, you agree, but what I, what I got was I was given this responsibility and I take it seriously and I’ve put aside what it means in the immediate for what I have to do for the future.

A few things they don’t put in the movie that are in the book, she’s taken to court by several countries over all this. Authority she has. Well, 

[00:23:33] Rebekah: she’s not taken to court by country. She’s taken to court by big organizations that own copyrights. Oh, that’s 

[00:23:38] Donna: that’s right. I’m sorry. You’re right. Yeah. But she’s taken to court and basically in a, in a nutshell, she just goes in and goes, I don’t really care.

I came as a formality. Put me in jail later. I, I don’t care. And so she comes, she’s much harder. Shelled in the book. Two questions I would have for you. All opinions, two scenes. What did you think about them creating the scene where she goes in the bar and sings before they go on the mission? And what did you think about the scene where Grace goes in her office and she just says, guess what, you’re it tag?

What do you think about those? 

[00:24:19] Rebekah: So, I have so many thoughts on Strat. I’ve seen a lot of people on the more conservative side say like. Oh, she was just this, again, a girl boss that in real life it would’ve never been able to be like a woman wouldn’t have been able to do that and whatever. Well, it’s one of those times that I would say I have to disagree because it was so funny before I ever saw any of that, I was listening to the book and I looked at Josh and I said, okay, this is gonna sound crazy, but I think I could do that job.

Like I think, I don’t think I could be that mean. Like I don’t know if I could do that job for real. But I read the stuff that Strat has to do and the millions of things she has to like put together and like manage and make sure to like get the right person to do the right thing. And I found myself going, I think that I could actually do the details part of it.

Like no one’s gonna hire me to do it. Right? Like I don’t have any qualifications, but like, I mean, she doesn’t either. But I, I think it’s fascinating because I don’t have a problem seeing the things that she saw and like putting them all together. I disagree that it’s like, just like kind of the tradi the more, uh, modern girl boss thing that kind of annoys me, where it’s like a female being the kind of strong that like doesn’t make as much sense.

I don’t agree with that. To answer the questions though about the other thing, the karaoke scene, so this was not in the movie script, we’re remember, had a lot to do with the script. Uh, Ryan Gosling heard her singing and like encouraged her while they were filming this karaoke scene. Like, just get up and do it, whatever.

Well, it went, it was like so hauntingly beautiful that they decided to film it for like, they filmed it better for like its place in the film. And so she’s the one that chose Sign of the Times by Harry Styles and that ended up being obviously in the trailer and like a huge thing. And it’s like a song that now I think people will associate with the film.

I. Disliked it and I disliked what they did with her and Grace near the end, like to answer those questions like the Strat of the book worked partly because she was so detached from everything and every one, she was the person making the most horrible decisions and she was the only person that could make those decisions.

And so putting her, humanizing her, I think actually weakened the strength of what her character was supposed to be. And then at the end, I thought she, I mean, it was okay. The, her telling Gracie had to go. I loved that. In the book, she talked about how she was a history major. That’s actually what her specialty in college was.

And that she said throughout all of human history until the last 200 years, the thing that pe, that wars were fought over land was taken. Like people literally spent their entire lives thinking about food. And none of us know that life, but it was reality and. Like, I’m gonna do everything possible to make sure that doesn’t happen.

I studied it extensively and like, it, it was implied that like she was gonna send Grace because she knew he was their best hope for the mission. Working that again, it’s like you create a more humanized character and like, that’s fine. But let’s be honest, I, first of all, it weakened that. Second of all, it made people think that she and Grace had like a, a like romantic tension, which even he said they did not intend to do.

And I, somebody that I said that to online was like, yeah, but could Ryan Gosling have no chemistry with literally anyone he is standing next to? Like, that’s impossible for him. But that’s my big thoughts. 

[00:27:48] Josiah: Um, I think it, it worked for me. Uh, it was a little weird, the chemistry between them. I, I got it ’cause I read the book and I was like, I, I think I know what their relationship is.

It’s a complicated. Boss employee, but also Ryland’s trying to be friendly with her. ’cause that’s just his personality. So for me, the sign of the Times scene, to me it serves as Ryan Gosling trying to get her to be more human. And that’s her attempt. And she’s like, if this is what you want me to do, then I will do it.

And I don’t think it’s the best thing, but I will try it your way. That was what the scene was to me, was her trying it ryland’s way. So for, for me, it, it was a purposeful, it creates a character arc for Strat that wasn’t necessarily in the book where she’s open. To Ryland’s way of doing things, uh, that’s more humanizing and more compassion based.

More about like, keep people’s spirits high so that by the end of the movie she rejects that and says, I don’t have that luxury. 

[00:29:03] Donna: Um, uh, I’ve said before, I look for like profound principle things in movies. Um, Strat to me was a decent, not a perfect, there’ll never be a perfect representation, but Strat was a decent representation of the decision that the father made to send the son.

He could not look at what it cost him. He could not look at what it would mean for the son. She had to look at it and completely separate any circumstance, any contingency, because she was looking at a big picture. That most people, and it’s, this was the realistic part of it. Most of us can’t look at a big picture and say, I’ll sacrifice this in, in, in deference to that.

We can’t do that. Just, we don’t, we can’t do that. So that really made this even more compelling to me to see her sing and try to be compassionate to his, maybe this will help him come along or whatever. I agree with you. I felt like it was, I’m, I’m trying. I ultimately, I have, this is what has to happen. 

[00:30:25] Tim: I thought that Strats portrayal with the, with the karaoke was an attempt.

I agree. I agree with a lot of what Josiah said about that. You know, what it was supposed to represent for me, it represented as well. The, uh, time in the book when she said, you have always been the one, you were always the one that was supposed to go. Um, because when that’s, there were two times in the book when I cried.

That’s the first time when I was listening to the book. ’cause when, when she says, you were always the one, you were there with me from the beginning, you’re in all of these meetings and everything. Because she knew from the very beginning that she had to do this. She was getting ready to say goodbye to these people who were important to her, who, who were valuable to her.

But because she had a mission and she had to accomplish the mission, they had to be sacrificed and she would never see them again. And so I, I think it was her trying to be a little more human, trying to take his advice, be a little more human. Um, I think the reason she didn’t finish the song is because.

She saw them. Mm. And when she saw them, it was, it was too hard. So she had to put the shell back on. 

[00:31:50] Donna: Yeah. 

[00:31:50] Tim: This is the mission, 

[00:31:51] Donna: because if she let her guard down Yeah. Think of what I mean, the pain that she was repressing. 

[00:31:57] Tim: Yeah. Which leads to the other question that you had about hit the scene with Gosling when she said, you know, you have to go in the, in the book, it’s a little, it’s a good bit more cut and dried.

He doesn’t want to do it. She ends up having to drug him and all those things. Um, in the film we see more of his, his absolute avoidance of things that are tough. Uh, and I think that’s, that’s a. Through theme for the whole thing. He has avoided things that are difficult constantly, including relationships and all that kind of stuff.

When, when science got tough, he started teaching junior high kids, you know, ’cause he’s big and you know, in their eyes and all those kinds of things. But you saw who he was. But for Strat, that was the moment where she said, it’s just, it has to be. It has to be. 

[00:32:56] Donna: Because she knew who he could be. 

[00:32:57] Tim: Yeah. She, she believed that he would, if he was forced into the situation, he would rise.

Because I think. What she saw in him from the paper that he wrote is his intuition. And he needed intuition. He needed to be able to make jumps, leaps from logic. One plus one is this amazing thing when you add this other big leap. And so I, I think that’s, I think all of those things played together well and I was fine with them though.

They were different than the book. Another character that took a, took a different turn. Um, Carl, officer Carl or Guard Carl, he was in the book, but he only mentioned he’s the one that would talk to Ryland. The other two officers never talked to him and things like that. They took the opportunity in the film to give him a larger role, um, right from the beginning, and I thought that was a good addition.

It gave more humanity to some of the other characters. 

[00:34:02] Rebekah: I actually loved this because. I think a, it set you up to be excited for when he met Rocky, because he clearly was like a fun, goofy guy. Like he was somebody you’d like watching a friendship evolve, you know? But also it humanized other people in a way that, I mean, the book did too, because it has so much more time to do it, but it humanized the other people in the Hail Mary project.

For me, it reminded me that like they were all just humans trying to figure out an impossible situation too. It wasn’t just Ryland. And I think that that was similar to like in his first scene with everybody else, where they are introducing him to Project Hail Mary. They all go, we don’t know. And it’s like all of a sudden they’re not just these like big people, like in tall towers that are unachieveable.

You know what I mean? They’re not like mysterious people. They’re the people. They’re just human beings. 

[00:34:53] Josiah: They’re the people who Ryland is trying to save. 

[00:34:56] Donna: Yeah. 

[00:34:56] Rebekah: Yes. 

[00:34:57] Donna: Also it exposes ryland’s creativity when he’s trying to figure out, okay, I can’t make it dark enough in the box. What do we do? And Carl’s like, put it in another box.

He just like, I don’t know. He wasn’t even trying to be scientific, but I thought that was a very clever addition for the film. But some of the great moments there with him that, and then when he was like, Carl, we, we made a baby. I thought that was very clever. 

[00:35:26] Tim: It’s also, um, foreshadowing of how he would work with Rocky together.

They could make leaps of logic and things like that. 

[00:35:35] Rebekah: I, like I said, I did love how he met the crew. It felt way more human and way less weird, I guess, or like formal than in the book. I think the book used the crew to, or not the crew, but like the entire team to kind of be a contrast between how easy it was to work with Rocky in some ways.

But in the movie, he has way fewer interactions with everybody else in the crew. And so you see a lot of them on screen. The ones that suck out to me, Martin Dubois and Annie Shapiro. Okay. They were the science officers. They’re the ones that were killed in the explosion. They were kind of cutesy like next to each other in the karaoke scene, but that’s the only time that it suggests that they have any sort of relationship.

I thought that was really good show, not tell. That was something that didn’t need to be discussed on screen. And Yao, it’s interesting, like I thought that they, they felt honored in the film, but you don’t have all of these things where like he eventually starts remembering things about Ilena and like her penance for vodka or like how serious Yao was and all that other stuff.

I will say the Yao is the one. They added characterization too of those people. He was the one that gave Ryland the idea for one of what I think ended up being the theme of the film, like one of the most important quotes was you just have to find who you like someone to be brave for whatever that quote was.

And I thought that was good that they put that on screen. ’cause it, it said something that the book didn’t have to say You got it, but it’s a lot harder on screen to do that. And so, yeah. What did we think about having fewer of those? 

[00:37:13] Josiah: I think it was fine. The movie was so long, it didn’t feel long, but it was so long you had to cut so much of it.

It’s, it’s crazy how much they cut from the book while keeping the spirit of the book alive. I found in the book it was a little more of a minor twist for me, and they didn’t get to do this in the movie. He barely did it in the book, but I thought it was kind of a minor twist, a, a knife in the gut for me that by the time he figures out Ryland, figures out how he got on the project, hail Mary.

And you kind of realize, oh, he literally didn’t spend any time with Ill Una and Yao knowing that they were gonna be his shipmates. And so from the beginning of the, from the beginning of the book, he’s kind of assumed, I bet that I was best friends with you guys. And then you figure out by the end it’s like.

You basically didn’t know them, they were people that were in a room with you. You didn’t have a, a crew relationship with them. And for me, that was a, a minor twist in the larger twist of him being forced against his will on the project. Hail Mary. Uh, and it, it was barely in the book. It was kind of a me thing more than an Andy Weer thing that I liked.

One of my complaints about the film, and it’s a minor argument, is that he basically didn’t react to the memory of how he got on the project Hail Mary. And so if he’s not gonna react to that, he’s definitely not gonna react any to Yao and Una. The realization of how much he actually knows them, which is not a lot, 

[00:38:50] Donna: their presence.

I actually had issue the, a few things I had issue with the movie, one involved them. I felt like their choice of how they would want to die if the mission. Failed and they just needed to go. 

[00:39:07] Josiah: Or if the mission succeeded at the end, 

[00:39:09] Donna: they couldn’t go back. Yeah. Or if the mission succeeded how they wanted to die, that was such, uh, not long, but such an interesting discussion in the book and just how Grace took that.

Wow. They thought about this and that’s what they do. I’m glad they included it in the movie. So you saw that they had to make the decision where they didn’t include in the Martian, where they would have to pick one of them that would survive even if it meant through cannibalism. I thought that was one of the most gripping parts of the book, and I get, they didn’t put it in the film, so they, they added this into, into Hail Mary where they make the statement, oh, well, I’d want to die this way, but you only get hers.

That was kind of glossed over for me. The other thing was I didn’t like that they used her vodka and he got so drunk at the beginning of waking up on the ship. 

[00:40:05] Josiah: Mm-hmm. 

[00:40:06] Donna: So I was like, mm, that’s kinda not who he is. I understood where they were going with it. They were trying to show you. He was completely overwhelmed by this and didn’t know what to do and he found vodka so he just got drunk.

But that is disingenuous with grace to me. So yeah, that would be my thoughts. 

[00:40:29] Rebekah: It’s something that I think is a hot take or maybe like not something that people agree on as much. ’cause I don’t remember if it was Josh or someone else had commented about how, like in the film, the way that things start out that was so different from the book actually made you feel like this is a person responding like a normal person would respond in this situation, however.

The book. I think one of the most interesting parts about his responses was very similar to the lead character in The Martian in the book. He’s like, all right, one problem at a time. And the way he solves being, wanting to freak out is solving a scientific problem. One thing at a time, it did change who he seemed like he was a little bit, which is a little interesting.

[00:41:13] Josiah: Ryland’s fall from Grace. Near the end, uh, we’ve talked a little bit about the scene where Strat makes him go on the mission after the explosion kills Dubon Shapiro. Uh, and we talked a little bit about how it landed with the audience a bit, audiences a bit funnily, uh, there were giggles at all of the showings that we saw.

It started out as less poignant, and it, it got more and more hard to watch. But I missed that from the book Ryland. Ryland did not say in the movie, I’m going to sabotage the mission. I’m gonna make sure earth dies if you send me on the suicide mission because you know he’s lying and you know, strats, right?

But like that is something that you would do in your human imperfection. I thought that that was such a gut punch, and it was in some ways more toothless in the movie where it starts out as kind of quirky and it ends up as kind of Oh wow, that’s crazy. It’s, it’s almost touching instead of, instead of gut wrenching.

[00:42:27] Donna: Yeah, yeah, yeah. 

[00:42:28] Tim: I was fine with the adjustment they made in the movie though, uh, as he’s doing the videos that he’s gonna send back and he says, I really don’t want to Strat to know that she was right after all. 

[00:42:41] Rebekah: But he like, I don’t know. I agree so much with Josiah’s. In the book, he like does not forgive her, makes a comment about sabotaging things and then like he literally never gets over it.

He doesn’t completely develop into his most mature version of his himself, but when he’s on arid 15 years later, although in the movie they don’t age him, he even makes a comment like, I’d like to go back to Strat and give her a piece of my mind. And I’m like, it actually is one of the things that Josiah has helped me see a little bit more that like, it’s okay to not see the onscreen character develop into completely perfect by the end.

But I do think it’s a, an audience pleaser that he just looks into the camera and he’s like, you were right. Like, it’s just so, like, it, it’s so inspiring, but it, it does take the teeth out of it quite a lot. Interestingly though, my first experience with watching the scene, I thought it was actually more visceral because his reaction forced him to have to get.

Like, uh, straddled on the ground to like arrest him. Embarrassing. And more people were involved and it was more embarrassing for him. So I thought that in some ways it was more visceral. But I think Josiah, you said that stuff and then I really started thinking about it more. 

[00:43:55] Josiah: I think you could go either way.

Well, do you wanna, there’s some things we haven’t touched on with the setting. Um, you know, the Hail Mary ship is much larger and redesigned than it is in the book. Uh, I thought it’s, I, I’m six one way half dozen the other on the mental health bay in the project Hail Mary on in the movie where it’s basically a hollow deck, you can have shots of Earth.

I feel like Strat would not have allowed that to be a thing. ’cause the plan is for them to be in a coma until they come alive around Tao Seti. So I feel like the te, the mental health Bay was basically a waste of space and a waste of fuel. It made for good, good movie scenes and good shots of him showing Rocky what Earth looked like and stuff like that.

But I do think it worked against what Strat would’ve allowed on the ship. 

[00:44:56] Tim: I thought it was similar to, uh, the fact that the part of the court case was she had, she was including all the things that had been copyrighted or whatever, video games, every kind of thing. I thought she had included everything she could because there’s no telling what would be required for them to, to come up with a solution when they get there.

So I kind of saw the Health Bay as, as that, you know, they’re going in and they’re sitting by the ocean thinking and suddenly, oh yeah, that’s it. You know, I, I felt like it fit. But that’s a little different. 

[00:45:34] Rebekah: It worked for the movie. It was beautiful. Like it, it made so many good visual shots 

[00:45:39] Donna: for the non-book reading audience especially.

It softened up the hard science part. I think. Even I’ve read the book and I love it. I’m a sucker for the emotional pull. Right. If it hadn’t been in there, would it have ruined it? No. But the visual, using those visuals, I thought was pretty cool. And showing rocky. But then what were you showing him? He doesn’t see.

[00:46:04] Josiah: He has that special screen that shows him texture. But just to be clear in the book, and I think in the movie, can we confirm that Rocky does not see color differences? 

[00:46:14] Rebekah: Yeah. They showed it, that he was seeing in monochrome, like, ’cause they showed a few times where he, you see what he sees. 

[00:46:20] Josiah: And is there anything in the book saying like, there are different textures for different colors?

[00:46:25] Rebekah: No, you just see it work where it’s like things look textured on the little snatches you get of his screen. 

[00:46:32] Tim: One of the things that I did not notice, but apparently, uh, the original ship design is shown on screen during Grace’s first introduction to the Hail Mary project, 

[00:46:44] Josiah: like the original ship design from the book.

[00:46:45] Rebekah: So the design from the book they designed by the way 

they 

[00:46:48] Tim: designed for the movie. 

[00:46:49] Rebekah: Yes. I don’t know how I feel about the, the redesign for the movie still. I’m still, eh, it was huge. And I think that the ship being small was like. Interesting in the book, but the ship design in the book is one of the least scientifically accurate parts that people have had consistent problems with since the book came out.

[00:47:07] Tim: Well, maybe they fixed that. 

[00:47:08] Rebekah: They did. It seems like it’s actually, apparently the way that it was designed in this would be much more sensible for the centrifuge to like design, even though they had it where it like released the cables and turned the piece. Like all that they kept. But the way that the movie ship is designed supposedly is more scientifically accurate to how that would’ve worked.

Did you guys notice the original ship design? I saw a tweet about it before I saw the movie. That’s why I was looking for it. It is very brief. It’s in that first meeting where he’s introduced to Project Hail Mary Strat showing him those slides and it’s on one of the slides as one of the graphics on the slides, 

[00:47:43] Donna: the short scene where Grace was trying to get away from Rocky when he first sees the ship and then they go, I thought that was great, A great addition.

It was short, it was funny to watch Grace Pull forward and then Rocky go. Pull his ship forward and Grace would go, he would jump a couple times and Rocky ship would jump. Yeah, I, I did think that was a short insertion, not like the big sweeping visuals you get in some of the Star Trek movies of the outer Hall outer ship.

You know, they use that concept in a funny way to. Kind of explain even more of what Rocky was doing and what they were capable of. 

[00:48:26] Josiah: I think that was paramount, the comedy of that scene to establish for an audience, especially who had not read the book, what to Expect. ’cause they were about to see alien encounter is this scary?

And so it was important and I think the directors, I think the directors succeeded at establishing before you see Rocky. This is funny. This is cute. Do not think this is scary. Rocky is cute and funny. 

[00:48:56] Rebekah: I also noticed the second time I saw it, speaking of that mental Health Bay thing. So you know there’s a part where Grace is sitting on the beach and it looks like his hair’s moving in the wind and he actually is like seeing this person walk toward him and then they zoom out and it’s the mental health bay and he’s on that beach.

That ocean and beach is the exact same beach that the Irid Indian rebuilt for him at the end. And I thought that was a cool thing because you don’t really notice it the first time. 

[00:49:24] Josiah: It’s appropriate. 

[00:49:25] Tim: Yeah. I thought that it probably was because that was the model that they took it from. 

[00:49:30] Josiah: I was sitting next to Rebecca during the screening, so she knows, um, I try not to be cliche about these sort of things, but whenever they went to Planet Adrian, that Rocky named after his mate and Ryland gave it the nickname of Adrian, which is Rocky Balboa’s Mate.

Uh, they go to Planet Adrian and it is this psychedelic visual feast for the eyes completely in keeping with the spectacular retro futuristic color grading of the entire film. Uh, it is a, it’s a great continuation of that. Color scheme and funky kind of vibe. You know, dad’s wearing a shirt right now that Ryland would’ve been wearing.

That’s very seventies, eighties. It’s like this takes place, you know, in the 2010s, 2020s. Uh, but it, but a lot of the colors and the design feels retro, futuristic planet Adrian continues that aesthetic. But in a, in a completely alien sort of way, as if to say this is how aliens would view the seventies and eighties, I thought it was a beautiful rendition of Planet Adrian.

[00:50:40] Rebekah: That’s clever. You responded verbally. 

[00:50:43] Josiah: Yes. 

[00:50:43] Rebekah: When it came on the screen, you like gasped. And I loved that. Like, I, I love when movies make people respond. ’cause I’m like, oh, if I was the person that made that movie. I probably would’ve agreed like that, that would’ve been a moment I would’ve been excited about.

Like if that was, if I had designed the way Adrian looked and I heard you respond, like that’s exactly how I imagine I would want someone to respond. 

[00:51:05] Tim: Well, just, just doing the kind of design I do for PowerPoints and things like that, I work way too long to find exactly the right picture, exactly the right thing.

’cause I want it to convey something. I want people to feel something or get an impression, even if, if it’s not overt. And so yeah, that would be, that would be awesome to think, yes, I did that. That’s exactly what I was hoping for. Um, this seems like an impossible thing. But there were supposedly no green screens used in the entire movie.

[00:51:43] Rebekah: My favorite response to them talking about this is people that were like, oh my gosh, I didn’t know that they actually went to Plan Adrian and to ett like to film this movie. That’s crazy. Wow. On location. But it was, I, I read a little bit about it and Phil and Chris basically said we, they were like, we just didn’t want that thing where green screen, like there’s no way to make it look for sure real.

And so they did Rocky as a puppet and tons of practical sets and then all of the space stuff was like done with other CGI things. So I don’t know, like I think the point was they obviously use CGI, not just. Yes, they got rid of the green screen, but I just, I thought that was incredible and it just spoke to how important it was to them.

[00:52:29] Tim: I was watching an interview with the guy who voiced, who voiced Rocky, and actually it’s not voicing. He actually did a lot of the movement. Um, obviously he’s only got two hands, so he had some additional people doing other movement, but he said the only time that it’s not practical is when Rocky is, is in the little ball bouncing around places that, that CG inside the ball.

[00:52:54] Donna: Well, the timeline of the film is compressed. It seems compressed at least. Uh, Rocky and Grace were together for multiple months and Grace’s attempted return to Earth was like four months long by the time he got back to Rocky, you know, after he makes the ultimate decision to save Rocky or go home. Um, so I was okay with this.

I don’t really recall them giving time stamps, honestly. Can’t remember if he did a lot of this in the book where it was, I’ve been here so many months and dah dah. This is what’s going on. You know, if you sat back and got really technically picky about it and said, oh, they could do that in just a few days.

Wow, no, there’s no way. I didn’t really get that from it. I felt like they did a great job of showing the progression of one, what they were discovering, two, how they were growing in their relationship as well. One of my favorite little additions to the film, just a very short piece where Grace is like, he has incredible hearing.

[00:54:06] Josiah: Oh, I loved that. 

[00:54:08] Donna: Who Grace talking to. You can’t hear that. I hear that. You said he can’t hear that, and that was great. And then. It was super, I thought it was wise writing, and then when he takes the camera and goes, look how far away he is, and he takes you around the corner. I just felt like I was connecting with Ryland right at that moment.

And they, they accomplished similar things in The Martian. And so I was really glad to see additions like that, that in the book wouldn’t have worked the same, right? Mm-hmm. It, it, it wouldn’t have been visually as easy to to see, but when you, when you saw there, I thought it was a really cute addition that took maybe, what was that scene?

45 seconds or a minute long? 

[00:54:54] Rebekah: It felt like it encapsulated a lot of their relationship in the book, so I appreciated that. ’cause it, you got the vibe of it without having to watch it over and over. 

[00:55:02] Tim: I thought that the video stuff Inc. Including that was actually. The way that they helped you realize that time had passed.

’cause he made videos a number of different times and it’s like, okay, he didn’t make one, you know, a video every hour. So we know here’s a way to show, not tell time is passing. So they may have compressed the timeline, but it seems like they gave us clues as to, yeah, this is taking a while, we’re silencing, and then we’re doing a video and we’re silencing, and then we’re doing video.

We see little snippets of that. So I thought that was their way of helping us to know this is stretched out, we’re skipping, we’re jumping. 

[00:55:45] Rebekah: I did not love how they did the music. There were a lot of good scenes that had good music. I liked how they used silence in a few places that I thought was good. The second time I noticed it the most, and so I’ll probably, now that I’ve seen it a couple times, it’s like I’ve experienced it as fine.

I wanted moments in the movie where I could just cheer and like, yeah, like freak out and be so excited the music was done in a way that doesn’t allow for that. Because it was either a silent moment where it felt like you’d be disrupting the crowd or the music ended up feeling like cheerful and almost like animation music rather than like epic, like thematic, like this is a huge moment kind of music.

And so that bothered me. I, ’cause I wanted to like be more active in the theater, but the film almost felt like they intentionally had moments where it was so like sweet and inspirational and touching at times where I was like, oh, I wanted this to be like, not that I wanted it to feel like epic moment.

So what did you guys think of the music? Am I in the minority here? 

[00:56:50] Tim: For me, the music in general in films, if I don’t notice the music. It’s appropriate for the, for what’s being conveyed. There are times when I listen to the music in a film and it’s like, yeah, that, that just helped build that, and I pay attention to it, but I didn’t notice it as in it, it kind of jumped out or stood out oddly.

So for me, if I don’t notice it’s appropriate, there’s nothing jarring about it. But I do notice sometimes that it adds, in this film, I didn’t pay any attention to the music. I heard some of the people that we watched it with the second time say, oh, the music, you know, some of the music was jarring. It was wrong at particular times and did this, that and the other.

And that was second time I’d seen it. So I haven’t seen it again with that in mind. But for me, it, it just didn’t, it didn’t stick out, so I didn’t. I didn’t think it was inappropriate. 

[00:57:59] Donna: I live for a good soundtrack. I’ve read a lot of disparaging thoughts about the music. I agree with you, Rebecca, about a few times when I was thinking this is massive.

And I think around the time that he climbed the wall, uh, I think that might have played some into that scene. But at the same time, I liked the music they used, like I enjoyed the music. Did I think everyone fit in with every scene? Maybe not, but I, I did like the variety. I, I love the fact that it was varied across all kinds of genres of music.

And so I almost have a love hate relationship with it because. I felt like there were some times where the music did distract from the seriousness of what was going on, but at the same time, I liked the pieces of music. 

[00:58:57] Josiah: For me, it was like hopeful Han Zimmer to me. Uh, it was too loud at times. Chris Nolan, he, whether he works with Han Zimmer or a Han Zimmer lookalike that he’s trained up to be like Han Zimmer.

There are just so many moments in Chris Nolan films that are too loud and they’re very overwhelming. 

[00:59:19] Rebekah: Those are my favorite moments. That’s the ones I wanted. That huge crescendo when they realize they’ve gotten the freaking. Chba off of Adrie, and I’m like, I want that to be like a like, and I wanted to cheer and then I, that is the part that bugged me.

It was like two or three moments like that. And maybe I did want more of that Han Zimmer thing. 

[00:59:42] Josiah: I thought there were moments that were a little too overwhelming, but maybe, maybe we could use more of it. And I thought that there were several moments where the music was a little too funny. 

[00:59:52] Donna: Alright, we move on to plot timeline.

The first sections regarding his adjustment to the ship are truncated. If I had to pick one massive complaint, I had the first part of the book, what drew me to listen to the rest of the book and not be able to put it down was the whole struggle that Ryland had waking up. I loved the comedy in it, where the computer kept going, what’s your name?

Nope, wrong sorry. Put him back down. Wouldn’t let him move. I thought what they did in the film was funny, but knowing how pivotal that setup was for me in the book, I was like, oh, it’s so short. And she told him his name. That was like, oh no, you’re not supposed to tell him his name. He gets his, you know, so that would be, you know, if I, if I have to rank complaints, that’s the biggest one.

And I don’t have too many, but 

[01:00:50] Josiah: I didn’t love, I guess the movie was already so long and they cut so much. I guess they felt like they had to, I don’t think they needed to cut the fact that Ryland was remembering these memories in real time. Uh, ’cause like that’s kind of, there 

[01:01:06] Rebekah: were people that didn’t understand that we went to see the movie with that hadn’t read it.

[01:01:10] Josiah: It was mentioned maybe once at the beginning, like it was shown maybe once near the beginning. But his other memories, I wish that when it cut back to him on the ship, you just saw a brief reaction. Have the scene, whatever the scene is, have it be the same. Add a second where the scene begins with him reacting to what he just remembered.

It was, it was sickening to me when it cut back to him after the climactic scene at the end where he’s forced to go on Project Henry. And when you cut back to him on the spaceship, it doesn’t show a reaction from him. It doesn’t seem like he actually remembers what happened. 

[01:01:47] Donna: They connected it in their di uh, in the dialogue with what he and Rocky were talking about it.

But you’re right, he should have been visibly devastated to remember what an utter coward. He was 

[01:02:03] Rebekah: Yes. Atabsolutely 

[01:02:03] Donna: the time. Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah, 

[01:02:05] Josiah: for sure. And, and you know, we’re still at the beginning of the plot timeline. There were opportunities for him to remember, oh, I’m a teacher. Oh, I was helping save the world.

Oh, I’m a really smart scientist. Like there were opportunities for Ryan Gosling to react comically to those realizations, but I don’t think they were really capitalized on like they could have been. 

[01:02:25] Tim: Well, there were other, other things that they adjusted for the film. Uh, there was more asage to start with.

’cause remember it was, uh, it was very, very rare. Uh, they only had a tiny little bit 

[01:02:39] Rebekah: like on the little probe that went up. Didn’t bring that much. 

[01:02:41] Tim: Exactly. Um, it was much more visible for the onscreen medium, which I understand. You know, it’s super microscopic. Um, okay. Show us what the microscope sees as if you know.

It’s massive. That’s good. We need to be able to see that, uh, to see those kinds of things. And each time we saw the, the Astro phage or later the Tal MEbA and the Astrophe, uh, it was large enough to, for people to see and know what’s going on. So, uh, I think it was okay. We understood we were looking through a microscope.

[01:03:16] Rebekah: Yeah, I think the doing the black like sludgy stuff worked, but it made me realize, like, oh, in the book, I guess it’s true. You don’t really see it hardly ever unless you’re looking through the microscope. 

[01:03:27] Tim: The one place where it was much more visible in the film than it could have been in the book, was when they escaped, when he lost them.

Um, it took a lot longer to find them in the book, 

[01:03:41] Rebekah: but that was the Al MEbA, 

[01:03:43] Josiah: the 

[01:03:43] Tim: Astro. 

[01:03:43] Rebekah: Oh, you’re 

[01:03:44] Tim: talking about the 

[01:03:44] Rebekah: astro pieces that got 

[01:03:45] Tim: found? Yeah. When it was the box. I, I, 

[01:03:46] Rebekah: nevermind. 

[01:03:46] Tim: You’re right. They end up with the box in a box concept, so they, uh. To be able to find them. But yeah, I thought, wow, they’re very, very visible with the right kind of glasses.

[01:03:58] Josiah: Another thing from the flashbacks is, uh, that the film kind of skips any major discussion of climate change, uh, in the book, it’s, it is, it’s talked about once, it’s, it’s not like they dwell on it, but there’s a whole scene that’s kind of dedicated to Strat basically saying. We have warmed the Earth’s atmosphere and because of all of the CO2 emissions that we’ve released, uh, because this with the sun dimming, it might’ve bought us a extra six months of warmth.

Uh, but in order to release even more CO2 in the atmosphere just to show the lengths that Strat is willing to go to, she’s like, I have decided with a few other people we’re gonna nuke Antarctica to force more CO2 into the atmosphere and to melt the glaciers and stuff like that. 

[01:04:48] Tim: In the book, it’s clear that they’re trying to extend the time.

Mm-hmm. It will take a certain amount of time to get there. It will take a certain amount of time to get the things back, and then they have to, to begin to, to utilize them. 

[01:05:04] Josiah: It has to take 23 years. We need for humanity to survive. And so I think the. Strats goal is let’s do 30 years ’cause it’ll take us a while to implement the solutions.

Even once we get the Beatles back, there 

[01:05:17] Tim: are millions of ways that everything can fall apart. 

[01:05:20] Josiah: Yeah. 

[01:05:21] Rebekah: That particular topic was something that I thought they did a good job of making this a movie that was like a crowd pleaser and was like not trying to put off its audience because you could have taken that and tried to make it a commentary on climate change in a way that would have been offputting to certain audience members, probably myself included, mostly just ’cause climate change stuff in movies tends to be kind of preachy and so I kind of appreciated that they cut it.

But I thought it was interesting that they did 

[01:05:48] Donna: climate change and evolution were a big part of the book. I mean, it wasn’t the whole book obviously, but he is very much in in favor of those things and. Stinks in those terms and all that, and they, they did not get into that in the film. 

[01:06:06] Josiah: One of my issues with the book and movie, I, I, it’s not really a book to movie change.

I, so I hesitate to mention it, but I was thinking in the book and in the, and in the movie plot, but I, I guess it’s more of a book complaint that, uh, with the talk of climate change and everything like that, you know, people agree that the climate is changing. People don’t agree with what to do about it.

And I think that’s similar to my thoughts on Astro phage, the fact that they’re able to create a near light speed engine because of astro phage. That makes me think, okay, well I’m not saying it’s a permanent solution, but can we not absolutely jump 300 years into the future of technology on earth with Asage?

Can we not revolutionize the growth of food? Using astro phage as fuel for, I mean, you completely, do you need gas? Do you need gasoline anymore? Do you need to drill for oil anymore with astro phage as a thing? Uh, do you need, like, you know, we’re gonna, we’re gonna all starve. ’cause at our current capacity, we’re not gonna be able to make as much food.

But like, are we sure With Astro phage, we can’t figure out, let’s say the efficiency of food collection might increase by a thousand percent using Astro phage, uh, we might be able to create special greenhouses that cover many acres at a time with Astro phage, my main complaint with the book, it doesn’t ruin the book for me, but for me, I’m like, I get that at our current trajectory.

Sure it would, we would be able to last 30 years before 80% of the world’s population dies out. But we have asage, can we really not create technology to last like 300 years at least. I feel like there’s technological advancements you can make with Asage. If we can make a near Lightspeed engine, can we not revolutionize the growth collection and distribution of food?

[01:08:22] Tim: I thought that, that the book did give hints to that, that it was, they could do this, they could do that, and so of course we’re trying to destroy it at the sun, but it has lots of other uses. I hadn’t really made the leap to, so in the time while we’re trying to find out an answer to this, we’re utilizing it.

And discover more things that can be utilized. Support that makes sense. 

[01:08:49] Rebekah: It’s kind of related to a lot of these things they do. One thing that was actually like a pretty long thing in the book that got cut that I didn’t remember until someone else brought it up was in the book they pave the Sahara Desert in order to create as much astro phage as they need.

Like they put solar panels on it or whatever, and so they like have to destroy a big part of the Sahara, which is where there were like conversations with one of the climate scientists on the project in the book and like all this stuff. Anyway, they literally had to pave the whole thing and it came up with this super random like interesting thing with a guy in the plot named Robert Riddel.

They had to get this guy outta prison who had committed crimes that he got sent to prison for and it was kind of unfair. He wasn’t really responsible for the deaths of the people he was accused of. Being responsible for like, it was an interesting, like he was sketchy. There’s a lot of interesting, he was super sketch.

Yes. Um, but Robert Riddell wasn’t in the film at all. You don’t hear anything about paving the Sahara. It’s never brought up. Um, and mentioned, uh, and that’s one of the things where they don’t show you on screen where Strat like could just flex her control muscles and she’s the one that got him out of prison for life in like Australia or New Zealand.

It was in New Zealand. 

[01:10:08] Tim: That kinda leads to the fact that a lot of the science. Was shortened or left out. There’s a lot of science in the book. There’s the stuff, you know, they, they pave this Sahara to get enough energy to make more astro phage. They have to destroy parts of Antarctica to get CO2 to release into the atmosphere.

He goes through lots of different scientific things and they shorten all of that. There were the alba escaped, you know, and there’s, he was learning things about them and you know, there’s lots of science that’s left out. It is science fiction that is based heavily in science fact. Some extrapolation for an audience of the book that works.

It’s easier for the audience of a film that would bog it down terribly. So I think that’s kind of a necessary cutting out things and kind of making it seem like they got from A to Z more quickly than they did. 

[01:11:10] Josiah: There were a lot of things they cut that. There was one that stuck with me from the book is when he figures out that on the ship at the beginning, is it 1.5 Gs?

And he is like the gravity’s wrong. And it’s a great mystery that he solves through science. It shows his character and it’s fun. I can imagine Ryan Gosling figuring this out in a 60 minute scene and it being a fun little thing. Sets up the science, sets up his character, sets up the funny, sets up the mystery.

[01:11:42] Tim: The grace of the film doesn’t seem as intuitive. As the grace of the book, 

[01:11:49] Rebekah: he’s not as smart. Like I think that that was a problem like they tried, but putting in some of the personality, as much as I love Ryan Gosling and obviously this is a minor complaint, they did definitely remove some of the personality from it in a way that I didn’t love.

Or they added personality and took out away some of his intelligence. I will say huge, massive pro miss. This is the worst thing they did in the whole movie. His muscle control was still coming back. He sees the science machines and starts calling them out. They’re things that the average person would never have heard of.

They’re like super complex things, right? And he goes, and that’s not, and he’s supposed to be saying, am I smart? And it’s like the first time, because he, in the book, he does realize like he knows what things are called and then he is like, I feel like that’s interesting that I know that that’s called that.

And because he said it, the rest of his body was working. It was like just his lips. And I was like, couldn’t you show this where he’s like stumbling a lot. And he says, am I smart? Like you should be able to hear that line. It literally was so confusing. And then I just think that it, like, I agree with Josiah.

The gravity thing being missing drove me nuts. Like I thought that was such an interesting little thing. Mom said this I think already, I didn’t like that they like added him getting drunk on vodka and they could’ve, honestly, he didn’t do that in the book and I think it was better. I think it was better that he just started working and I think you could have made some of those.

Interesting. 

[01:13:15] Josiah: His, his coping is science and figuring out puzzles. Yeah. Not drinking. 

[01:13:20] Rebekah: Yeah. 

[01:13:20] Donna: Another plot timeline change that I go back and forth on whether I like or don’t like it. Grace’s attempts to save Rocky while he’s out, like they have the accident toward the end and. Rocky Grace is, grace has is passed out for a time.

He comes to Rocky’s there, he realizes Rocky’s left his ball and he, in the book, he goes through this trial and error where, okay, this is what this is. Okay, I’ll do this. There’s all this black stuff in him and he’s, he’s all this and he tries to expel it from him. And then later Rocky comes too. And it’s kind of a comical thing in the book where Rocky’s like, you nearly killed me.

Grace. Grace nearly killed Rocky. Whatever he says, they shorten that in the book. He does put heat lights on him, you know, to try to warm him up because he knows that his, he’s used to a very high temperature. I liked what they did in the film, in the fact that Grace goes and looks for him and he sees all that black material on the floor.

I was okay with it. They got you to the point and then he sees that Rocky’s there and he is not contained and all that. 

[01:14:26] Tim: They chose to. Say that with, with one of the sentences that he says, while he is waiting for Rocky to wake up, if he’s gonna wake up and he’s doing a video thing, he says, I’ve done everything I can think to do.

None of which we saw in the book, we got each of those attempts in the film. They depended on that one sentence really to say, I’ve, I was, I’ve done everything I can think to do, which tells us, you know, we didn’t see it all, but he did all sorts of things 

[01:15:02] Josiah: in the movie. While Rocky is passed out and recovering from being outside of his ball, that’s when Ryland is figuring out what town MEbA is and what, how the town MEbA eat the.

Astro and everything like that, which I think is another chapter in the book, like it is after Rocky has recovered that they figure out kind of together what this is all about. But in the movie it was like, well, while Rocky’s recovering, let’s give Grace something to do so that we get the time passing of It does take time for Rocket to cover, to show the sacrifice he made to save Grace’s life.

But let’s also use that time to solve the problem of what is Tell MEbA and how does it affect Asage. Um, this is probably one of the better script changes from the book if you’re trying to condense it all into a two and a half hour movie. 

[01:15:58] Rebekah: Another little thing, tiny note, but I thought this was interesting and honestly a good change for the film, Rocky offering to re-up Grace’s fuel.

In the film was a sacrifice because he would have to go home six years slower. And it happens, um, after he saved Rocky’s life. Ryland has already saved Rocky’s life and it feels like Rocky’s like, you did this for me. Of course I would make a sacrifice because you’re a friend. You are friend. It made more sense in the, in the book to have it the way that it was.

I don’t think it was bad in the book at all, but I think bringing it to the film as him sacrificing and saying, I’m willing to spend extra years away from my mate and like my planet because I want you to get to go home like that. Oh, that was one of my favorite changes that they did make 

[01:16:49] Donna: the change on.

Grace’s face, and he turns around and he’s got tears. He’s crying. Oh. 

[01:16:55] Tim: Mm-hmm. 

[01:16:56] Donna: And Rocky said, but you said you were at peace with it. And he goes, I totally, I made that up. Let’s 

[01:17:00] Tim: that up. Everything I said was, that’s what people say. Everything I said was a lie. 

[01:17:03] Donna: Yeah. That’s just what people would say. Yeah.

That’s great. 

[01:17:06] Tim: I, I liked the addition of Grace visiting Rocky’s ship in the film. 

[01:17:12] Rebekah: Oh. That was the thing. I was mad that wasn’t in the book, 

[01:17:15] Tim: so I loved it too. Yeah, we missed that. I agree. We missed it in the book and I appreciated that they brought that in. So some of the additions were necessary. Some apparently were, eh, I wish you’d chosen something else.

[01:17:26] Donna: That was the kind of the ultimate show. Not tell. 

[01:17:29] Josiah: I liked that. Rocky, I think they kept this in the movie. They didn’t really talk as they, they touch on the fact that the meridians don’t understand relativity or radiation and there’s, there’s an element, like they just have a bunch of astro phage ’cause they thought it would take longer to get to TACE and everything.

And there’s just a, an overall feeling that meridians are less efficient. So although they seem to be better engineers than human beings and they’re much better at math, they are less efficient than human beings. And I, I, I like that. Uh, I. Rocky’s ship is huge and there’s so many things. It’s like they did not have a Strat on arid to make things as efficient as possible.

That’s just not the Meridian way. It’s like, well, let’s make it big. We gotta, we gotta get really big and have too much of everything. Uh, we have to have too much zite 

[01:18:27] Tim: in the book. Doesn’t Grace discover that Rocky has already been there? Yeah. At EDI for a long time, for years, right? I think so. 

[01:18:37] Donna: 48 years.

[01:18:38] Tim: Yeah. 

[01:18:39] Donna: Wow. 

[01:18:40] Tim: He’s 

[01:18:41] Donna: crazy. 

[01:18:41] Tim: So he’s been alone a long time. So that’s kind of left out of the film too. 

[01:18:46] Rebekah: I’ve seen a lot of people incorrectly online say that Rocky hasn’t slept in 40 whatever years, which is not accurate. The whole point that he establishes in the book is just that rocky. It’s not that he can’t sleep when people are around.

It’s that it’s terrifying and it’s against his nature. And so the idea that he would have to sleep alone once there’s an option not to, you know, it’s not that he can’t, he just doesn’t want to. 

[01:19:10] Tim: If there’s some kind of an attack or some kind of a predator of any type, he wouldn’t be able to wake himself up.

Like human beings annoy, startles us, wakes us up. Correct. That’s not 

[01:19:21] Rebekah: the same. Correct. And he is literally paralyzed, right? Yeah. 

[01:19:23] Josiah: I mean, he can’t choose when to go to sleep. So yeah, he’s gone to sleep. It’s just been a night terror after night terror for him. The end of the flashbacks. We’ve talked about grace’s like quote unquote arrest at the end of the film where he is forced to go on the project.

Hail marrow, we’ve talked a lot about that. It’s a little more public in the film. There’s more people involved. It’s not just him and Strat. He escapes the room that he and Strat are in with the guards. Chasing him. Officer Carl isn’t one of the ones that arrests him, is he? I hope he, he, 

[01:19:53] Rebekah: because he goes there because he looked like the sideways shot.

That’s sad. Him watching on like, sadly, and you could tell he like, hated that grace. Let it get there. And it feels like someone that actually knows him is having to participate in this, not just 

[01:20:06] Josiah: that 

[01:20:07] Rebekah: Strat. 

[01:20:07] Josiah: So that’s very sad. There was no mention of a memory altering drug that she was administering. Uh, when that happened in the film, I was like, oh, okay.

So I guess that. Amnesia is just a coma thing. And it’s, ’cause that was a twist in the book that you figure out his memories. It 

[01:20:27] Tim: wasn’t a coma thing, it 

[01:20:28] Josiah: was on purpose. Yeah, it was a coma thing. I thought that was a really great twist in the book. It was a huge part of the format of the novel that he remembers things in this order at periodic times and you just think, oh, okay, that’s a convenient, uh, symptom of the coma.

But no, it is literally something that was administered to him, uh, coldly and cruelly so that he would do the mission long enough. And then when he remembers, he’s literally experimenting on the Tal MEbA and he’s like, yeah, Strat was right. I’m not, I’m not going to give up on the mission. Now that I’ve remembered her drugging me has worked.

I thought that was an amazing twist, an amazing development in the book that they cut from the film. When I, I just feel like. It wouldn’t have taken any longer to portray that 

[01:21:21] Donna: in the office. There’s one, a section of a couple of lines. She says, it’s always been you, you’re, you’re it, you are the one. It took me directly back to Mocking Jay, where one of my least favorite scenes, ’cause I didn’t think they handled it well, where Blue Tar says, it’s always been you, it’s been our plan the whole time to get you out.

You are the mocking Jay. This is the mission we’re going. I thought that in that movie, it, it didn’t work for me. And in this movie, when she said it, I had such a weird reaction to it. Like, did Philip Seymour Hoffman come back from the dead and tell them to write it like that? It’s, it’s just, it’s you Grace.

And because of them shortening the part of all this from the book, maybe that’s why it hit me that way, but I was just like, Ugh. I get it didn’t ruin the movie for me, obviously, you know, but all of that part of the story, I’m not an editor or a screenplay writer or a director, so I, I’ve not lived in that world.

And so to make those decisions, I can’t say they were bad for my, you know, it was a bad decision or good. It’s just how it affected me through this whole part of the story of, of his arrest and her talking to him. And, uh, but on the same token, I loved the part that they left the part in where he said, I’m a, I’m a teacher.

I need to be with the kids. I need, and she, and that is pretty close to the book where she said, quit pretending. It’s like, it’s about the kids Grace, it’s about you. Mm-hmm. 

[01:23:04] Rebekah: Yeah. 

[01:23:04] Donna: It’s selfish and, and I’m sorry you’re it. We also see Strat at the end when they receive some of what Grace sent sends back in the Beatles.

She’s on a ship, they’re sailing through ice. I thought this was a big win. They aged her appropriately. She wasn’t ancient, but you could tell there was, you know, years had passed. 

[01:23:25] Tim: But that’s not in the book, right? 

[01:23:27] Donna: No, you don’t get that. You don’t see her perspective. You all you get is rocky telling grace that their scientists see that his son is back to its full heat.

For me, I like the fact that they gave you that few seconds going back. You see, okay, earth Earth’s gonna make it. 

[01:23:46] Josiah: I missed it in the book. I was, I was sad. I, I had a desire for a shot of Earth to see that they were gonna make it. And you know, Rocky mentions it and I was like, okay. I guess that’s all I get.

But, uh, it was nice to check back in with Strat in the movie for me. 

[01:24:09] Rebekah: I think you were in the majority. I, I’ve heard that from a lot of people who were like, that was one thing in the book that was hard. And it makes sense. First person I like, I understand that the only thing he gets is that like the sun is no longer dim and it looks like activity on Earth has picked back up in as much as I could tell.

Um, but yeah, I agree with you. Also, uh, little, uh, Easter egg for people who would know this somehow, uh, Strat, old Strat, when you go back to her, has a tattoo that she did not have earlier in the movie on, in that last scene of a v with a line through it. And it means I’ve been in French prison for life.

It’s like a tattoo that means something. I don’t know where that reference comes from, but it suggests that she was potentially in prison. 

[01:24:58] Josiah: Yeah, I think the V stands for vie VIE, uh, as in life in French. And the, the line through it means without parole. I’m not clear if that’s a tattoo that you get in French prison or that maybe she, um, got when she broke out.

She wears out that she’s 

[01:25:16] Tim: out. 

[01:25:17] Josiah: Yes. One of the directors explained, uh, Chris Miller was like, uh, Andy Weir thought that Strat had gone to prison without parole, which is set up in the book, uh, but then had broken out of prison from her connections and then was sort of on the lamb, still trying to save the world.

Uh, which for me, that helps explain why she was in the icy Antarctic ’cause. For me, I’m thinking, what, where is she supposed to be? Are we supposed to believe like this icy glacier is off the coast of Florida? Like it’s, it’s not gonna be a glacier in Florida. It’s just gonna be harder to grow food. It’s gonna be much harder to grow food than we, uh, compared to how we do it now.

It’s not that the entire ice is going to be overlaid with a glacier, so it makes a little more sense to me that she was on the lamb, she was hiding from the authorities in remote parts of the world. 

[01:26:15] Rebekah: It was Andy Weir’s idea. It is not a tattoo that is like a traditional, this means life without parole.

But he basically developed a, like an off page subplot that she ended up being sentenced to prison in France for life. And he was the one that came up with the idea of the v with the line through it. 

[01:26:36] Josiah: Okay. 

[01:26:37] Rebekah: But it was all supposed to be, it was like something he wanted to be as like a little Easter egg, but it wasn’t necessarily grabbed from like real life things that people already do.

Um, I will just say about the end of the book, it’s very similar to the end of the film. Um, I just wanna say that I really appreciated that a, I love that they kept the students’ thing at the end of the film. Um, I really liked the addition of the thing with Strat. I did think it was weird that, uh, he didn’t age at all because the Ryland of the book did age like 15 years by that point.

So it was weird. I think they did it to differentiate that more time had passed on earth than he had experienced. And I think it was just easier. But two things. Uh, I had a friend that said she and her husband went to see the movie. She’s a big reader, but has not read this book yet. And she said, I wonder how the book ends, because it felt a little silly of an ending.

Like it didn’t feel like it had the gravitas that she expected with the rest of what was going on in the film. So I’m just like, I just thought that was an interesting comment. You don’t even have to tell me what you think. I just think it was interesting because it’s pretty close. Um, but 

[01:27:47] Tim: yeah, I wonder which part she felt like made it that way.

The part that was like the book or the part that was a, I know. I’m like, 

[01:27:54] Rebekah: I’m not, 

[01:27:55] Donna: I’m not, honestly. I think if I had to guess the intention is, was they wanted to stay away from the heaviest emotional things that were going on. So they chose the sweet memory of Rocky and Grace walking down the beach and sitting there.

And then when they panned back and Rocky scoots closer to him, my heart just exploded. I was just like, oh. 

[01:28:20] Josiah: Yeah, I think the, the silliness of seeing all of the Meridian children is exactly what the filmmakers were trying to avoid with the rest of the film with Rocky. ’cause the image of these. Rock spiders is silly.

You have to prepare the audience to suspend their disbelief, uh, to accept that this is, uh, not silly in the world of the film. I also wanted to say in my head at the end of the book, I was imagining the rock spiders all at desks in a wooden room with a chalkboard. And I was like, I guess that doesn’t make any sense.

It made more sense how it was in the movie. 

[01:29:05] Rebekah: I will say the only thing I was sad about in the ending, ’cause I actually, I thought the movie ending was like chef’s kiss. Like other than him being not old enough, which was kinda weird. The rest of it, like Rocky, creating the same kind of suit he made for Grace so that he could sit on the beach with grace and not just talk to him through a window I thought was superb.

Loved the students, loved what they did with the idea of him having his own area, but it was larger than what I imagined it would be in the book. So I appreciated it. Like the beach thing was so cool. Loved the comments about the water. I mean, again, loved it. But the ending part of the book that I think is the funniest and also weirdly like difficult is like that quick little epilogue thing where he talks about not being able to eat for years and like, you know, all of these things.

And then he has to eat me burgers. And I understand why they didn’t put that in the film, but I thought it was hilarious in the book. I thought it was such a hilariously like lighthearted. It’s like it takes this thing that’s like really heavy and it would’ve been. Harrowing and you would’ve almost died.

But somehow it’s still funny. And I, I did miss that. Like I wish there was a way to do it, but I don’t think there would’ve been a good way to do it. 

[01:30:15] Donna: The book released on May 4th, 2021, like right in the middle of COVID. He put the book out, kind of a perfect time for a read. 

[01:30:25] Rebekah: I didn’t realize that. I read it so early when it got released.

[01:30:28] Donna: Mm-hmm. 

[01:30:28] Rebekah: I didn’t realize it was so early. ’cause I read it that summer we were in at the beach with Josh’s family and I think I clicked on it because of something random, like someone recommended it or whatever. I didn’t realize I read it right after it got released. That’s so cool. 

[01:30:44] Donna: Yeah. Um, movie released on March 9th at.

In 2026 at the Empire Chester Square, and then on March 20th, 2026 in the US there were preview screenings the weekend before in the US and probably globally book ratings on good reads, it gets a 4.5, one out of five, that’s 1.3 million ratings. Uh, on story graph, the book gets a 4.5 out of five as well.

That’s 215,000 reviews. Um, rotten Tomatoes, it is holding at 94% IMDV. It has an 8.5 out of 10. The Flixter audience score is 96%. Uh, production cost 200 million. The opening weekend was 80.5 million, which was, I mean, huge for the last few years. Obviously, having had a lot of movies like this, 

[01:31:37] Josiah: it is the second highest ever opening weekend for a non franchise film.

Nice. 

[01:31:43] Josiah: Second highest ever 

[01:31:45] Donna: in the preview sales. Were, uh, inched out. I think it went just over or just under Interstellar for highest preview sales also. 

[01:31:55] Josiah: Oh, interesting. 

[01:31:56] Donna: Um, 

[01:31:57] Josiah: it’s funny, that’s Nolan on Interstellar. The, uh, the highest opening for a non franchise was Oppenheimer. 

[01:32:04] Donna: Yeah, yeah. USA Canada Gross is, uh, as of this morning is at 96.9 million internationals just under, uh, between 59 and 60 million.

But they, on day six, they passed a hundred million box office, 

[01:32:20] Rebekah: which was officially Wednesday, March 25th. So it, like, it released the 20th and 19th or, uh, the 20th. The 19th was Thursday night. There were a few showings, but yeah, on its official sixth day. And that’s including, what was it like only like 11?

It wasn’t a lot, but there were a few million or whatever from just pre-show, right? Or was that, 

[01:32:40] Donna: uh, almost 12. Almost 12 million. 

[01:32:42] Rebekah: Oh, cool. Okay, so that a hundred million, does that include that? Do we know? I assume that includes that. 

[01:32:48] Donna: You know, I don’t 

[01:32:48] Rebekah: know number. 

[01:32:49] Donna: I I did not look at that. 

[01:32:51] Rebekah: Which means a little over 10% of the first week number.

I mean, even if you take out 12 million though, it’s still doing pretty well. 

[01:32:59] Donna: So think about that. The total, as of this morning, worldwide, 156 million, they’re almost to their spend. 

[01:33:10] Josiah: And you, you have to account for marketing is usually gonna be about 

[01:33:13] Donna: equal. Of course. Yes. 

[01:33:14] Josiah: Yeah. So they gotta get over 400 million.

I’ve heard that. 

[01:33:16] Rebekah: They, 

[01:33:16] Josiah: but they, they should. 

[01:33:17] Rebekah: I heard they have to make close to 500. Yeah, I think it’ll happen. But, 

[01:33:21] Donna: and if I’m wrong, hey, I’ll go back and apologize afterward, but I think it’s gonna be one of those long running crazy things this weekend will tell us. So we’re at, we’re recording this on March 26th, so we’re headed into the second weekend of the film.

Um, I think it’ll, it’ll tell the story. This week, it’ll help us know, you know, how long lasting it’s gonna be. Rated PG 13. It was so close to a PG rating. 

[01:33:47] Rebekah: Yeah. Why was a PG 13? 

[01:33:48] Josiah: It was intense. 

[01:33:50] Rebekah: The alcohol. 

[01:33:51] Tim: Yeah, 

[01:33:52] Rebekah: the alcohol. And 

[01:33:53] Tim: they, I just thought of that and they didn’t make as big a deal as the book did about the fact that all of his swearing was the clean swearing, you know, you use heck and things like that.

And, and they make such a big deal about that in the, in the, uh, book. Um, they didn’t really say much about it. It di didn’t utilize that very much in the film though, 

[01:34:16] Donna: so, oh gosh. When he’s on the ship in the book and he goes, something happens and it startles him and he goes, fudge. And he goes. Is that how I talk?

What I thought it was a great, that was a great line. And I was, I was glad for that because they didn’t go to the nth degree with the, with the language. Uh, last thing, uh, for the stats and things like that, this was filmed in the UK at Shearon Studios. There were location shots at, uh, the South Parade Pier in Portsmouth and the Mueller Radio Astronomy Observatory in Cambridge.

And the other thing I would note is the end, uh, credits were actual space images. 

[01:35:01] Rebekah: So there was a photographer, his name is Rod Preis Preis, I’m not sure. Um, he, he said in an article, he got an unexpected Instagram message from a production company in la. They asked if he would license some of his work for a sequence, and I don’t think they told him right away what it was.

Um, but he started shooting pictures of the stars in July of 2023 using, um, I don’t even know how he does this, like using like huge high powered te telescopes. There’s a picture of him with one. So, um, and so the pictures of space at the end of the film are captured from his backyard in Brisbane. Like he delivered Starless versions of the pictures because in the originals, the bright stars compete for attention.

And so the underlying structures and color are built from his real captured data. They’re all long exposure things like five to 10 minutes, um, that he captures 

[01:35:56] Tim: A couple of trivia pieces here. For those of you that have been living under a rock, uh, for the last several decades, might not realize that Adrian.

Is Rocky Balboa’s partner in the Rocky Movie series. Yo, Adrian is an iconic catch phrase because he’s named the alien, Rocky, uh, when he says, you know, what is, what is your mate’s name? And it is an absolutely long and completely un uh, translatable. He says, I’ll say Adrian. ’cause that’s Rocky’s mate. And then they use, uh, because Rocky was the first one there, he gets the privilege of naming the planet.

And so that’s why, that’s where Adrian comes from. So, 

[01:36:47] Rebekah: I, 

[01:36:47] Tim: sorry, Rebecca, there are lots of things you haven’t seen. 

[01:36:50] Rebekah: I know that I must be stupid. I’ve seen, I think I’ve seen Rocky, but it’s been a long time. But I. I cannot stress, even though they watched the film in the movie, the two of them were watching the film Rocky together.

Once Rocky made his little camera thing, I literally have never understood why he chose the name Adrian. In my head. I was listening to the book and I thought, oh, he’s probably picking like an agender name because he doesn’t know about like Rocky’s home planet and like he guesses that Rocky’s a male.

But like, it’s not this, I just assumed it was like him trying to be polite and it’s so funny. It’s actually a call out to something more, much more interesting. 

[01:37:26] Tim: Um, if it had only been one movie or two movies, that might’ve been understandable, but I think there are four or five 

[01:37:35] Josiah: who’ve never 

[01:37:35] Rebekah: seen Rocky.

I’ve seen several 

[01:37:37] Tim: of them. It’s a long franchise. Don’t running franchise. You don’t. 

[01:37:40] Rebekah: So who is it that’s living under a rock then? 

[01:37:41] Tim: I knew 

[01:37:41] Rebekah: who Adrian was, 

[01:37:42] Donna: but you don’t have to, you don’t have to have seen him. ’cause it’s, it’s such a little Mimi thing. But, 

[01:37:47] Tim: but let me, let me be clear and and transparent here.

I’ve seen one of the Rocky films, only one, is 

[01:37:56] Donna: it the first one? 

[01:37:58] Tim: I believe it is the first one 

[01:37:59] Donna: where he runs up the steps. 

[01:38:01] Josiah: This is Sandra Heller’s First American film. She was Strat, which is crazy to me ’cause she to, to me in the preview, in the, the, the trailers. I kind of thought it was Michelle Williams.

No, it’s Sandra Hiller. She has been nominated for an Academy Award. She was in a foreign film Anatomy of a Fall back in 23 that got nominated for an Academy Award. So she’s had a little bit of American exposure. I did not know who she was. I didn’t watch Amer Anatomy of a Fall. I wasn’t following the Oscars that year.

It was the next year that I got back into it. But yeah, Sandra ER’s First American film. I really enjoyed her. She was different than the book. I really liked the Strat of the book and I liked the Strat of the movie even though it was a different character. I, I like both of them. 

[01:38:51] Tim: Can I answer a question that you posed?

[01:38:55] Josiah: Yeah. 

[01:38:55] Tim: Yes. Rocky was the first sports film to win an Oscar, but it was not the last one. The next one was Chariots a Fire, and then 

[01:39:06] Josiah: a Million Dollar Baby Count. 

[01:39:08] Tim: Million Dollar Baby. 

[01:39:09] Josiah: Gosh. 

[01:39:10] Tim: Yep. 

[01:39:10] Josiah: Rebecca, you’re so impressed by, by Me. You got it. 

[01:39:15] Rebekah: So impressed. 

[01:39:16] Josiah: Well, um, as far as final verdicts go, I can, uh, I can start us off so Rebecca can go last.

I enjoyed the book, I enjoyed the film. I mean, book and film for different reasons. I guess I gotta go like 9.5 outta 10 on both of them. Great stuff. I change a couple things about both, but, um, I mean, we’ve talked ad nauseum. I think that the book and the movie both have. Deep philosophical symbolisms that makes you think that.

I don’t want to over exaggerate, but I think that this book is kind of a life changer for some people. Makes you think about things in different ways. The book does maybe do a better job at that. I think the movie visually really lives up to its potential. The, the color, the colors, the, I don’t wanna say lens flares incredible, but the, the visual effects are incredible.

The use of color is incredible. Ryan Gosling, I mean, when has Ryan Gosling been stronger? Is this the best world he’s ever done? Honestly, I don’t 

[01:40:31] Rebekah: know if he has. It might be his best 

[01:40:33] Josiah: performance. He was great in la la land, but, and you know, he was great in crazy stupid love. He’s had some great rules, but we don’t 

[01:40:40] Donna: talk about nominations here.

Thank you. 

[01:40:43] Josiah: But I don’t know. This might be Ryan Gosling’s best film. This, uh, this Rivals the Martian. It’s gonna be The Sinners. Sinners came out in March last year, and then it got so many Academy Award nominations. I think that, uh, project Hail Mary, the film is great. I think it’s gonna be up for nominations.

I think that Ryan Gosling might finally get a nomination. I, I, he might have gotten a nomination for La La Land, but, uh, I think that Strat let’s, let’s, uh, get her on the radar. I wanna see more characters like that, sort of, uh, trying to figure out what does my humanity look like in this extreme situation.

I am, I was excited. The, the book was gripping. It was probably the most gripped I’ve been in years ever since. A pallet of songbirds and snakes. And Project Hail Mary was, was gripping. I, I could pay attention. It kept my attention and more, but I’ll just finish with like, both of ’em are nine and a halfs.

For me, I’d change less about the book, uh, and I think the book, uh, squeaks it out for me as the book is a little bit better. Even with the amazing visuals and the amazing performances. I think the immersive science of the book is more impactful for me as a, as an audience person. 

[01:42:05] Tim: Well, I’ll go next, and the reason is because both Josiah and I read this book because.

Rebecca and Donna had recommended it, wanted us to read it, wanted us to read it, begged us to read it. Told us it was the greatest thing coming and going. We had to read it. So I was scared to read it because I was, I was well, I was afraid. I was afraid. Afraid. If I 

[01:42:30] Josiah: hate it, 

[01:42:31] Tim: if I hate it, it’ll be like that’s their favorite book.

I was very pleasantly surprised that I did not hate it. Not only did I not hate it, I thought it was a really, really well done book. I appreciated the way that it was designed, the book. Um, I, I loved the discovery of who he was. He, he was not telling us who he was by his actions. He was discovering them, uh, moment by moment, and I thought that was a really good thing.

There is probably one thing I would change about the book. I. Appreciated what the film did at the end to give us just a little more taste of the fact that Earth was okay. Uh, earth had gotten the message and they were gonna be able to do something. He kind of weir leaves it with the, the sun is back to its normal luminosity, um, which is supposed to be that, but it wasn’t quite fulfilling enough for me.

I would’ve liked, uh, a little bit more. The film seemed to miss it with the science. I understand the edits. The one thing about the film that I would probably change more than any other thing is the opening part where, where he’s drunk, that doesn’t fit the character. Um, it does fit a human being who is in space, didn’t real, don’t know why they’re there.

They know they’re alone. All that I, I get why that seems human, but it doesn’t quite fit his character. And because so many things. As he’s discovering who he is, he already is this way before he knows who he is and why he’s this way. So the drinking wouldn’t have been part of his normal personality. It wouldn’t have been a fallback, uh, personality.

Just tiny little things. Just like Josiah. I would probably give both of them a 9.5. Um, I would probably, uh, I’d probably give the book, uh, 9.56 just so it edges out the other. Um, but the, the film was great. It was a great adaptation. Dropped a whole lot of things that were necessary, added a few things, many of which were necessary, some of which were superfluous.

Lost a little bit from the book, but you can’t bring all of that in. So, uh, I would say that the book edges it out for me and I’m really glad that it turned out that, um, two things. Turn turns out that I loved the book that my wife and daughter absolutely adore, and I’m really glad that the filmmakers decided to make an adaptation that was true to the character of the novel.

Knowing that you can’t put all the things in, but true to the character and feeling of the novel. So when I left the theater, I’m like, wow, that was a great movie and I really enjoyed it. It was very entertaining for a movie goer and for a book reader. I like things that are entertaining. I don’t necessarily want you to preach at me or tell me messages that you desperately want me to hear.

I want it to be entertained. So the book edges it out, just barely. But I’m a visual person, so I loved the way they took care of the movie. 

[01:46:02] Donna: Uh, I won’t restate some of those things. You guys gave some great points. Things I agree with. I will say if, if this is wrong, correct me. Dad and Josiah, you both were incredibly concerned when you got to the point in the book where you thought Rocky might die, right?

[01:46:21] Josiah: I thought he was dead. 

[01:46:22] Donna: I think both of you. 

[01:46:23] Josiah: Yeah. 

[01:46:24] Donna: Yeah. I think both of you commented that. I asked Dad one morning, how’s it going? You know, where are you in the book? And he said, I’m about an hour from the end. I’m not sure though how I feel. And I said, what’s wrong? And he said, I’m afraid Rocky’s gonna die.

And I was like, oh yeah. Okay. So I knew where you were. And I just kept, I tried to stay deadpan. ’cause I was like, uh, what do I say here? I can’t, I don’t wanna ruin it for you. I want you to experience. His recovery. But I was so glad that it affected you like that. Um, I know that I’m emotionally affected by some things, maybe a little stronger sometimes than you all are, which is perfectly fine.

But I wanted you to enjoy this. Probably. I’m gonna agree that if I have to pick one over the other, just because the book gives me a bigger picture, I would go with it. Um, I was very happy with the representation on the screen. I’ll watch it again. I’ll read this again. No question. I was incredibly like, casting I, I thought was amazing.

Uh, casting, casting, casting. We, we, you can’t underestimate that in the success of a film. I felt like we’re being involved is very important. I think he was wise to. Keep some of the Martian crew in the production staff, but I thought they made great decisions. They didn’t remake a Martian where a guy’s out in space by himself.

Uh, so book is gonna edge it out for me, um, but just by the smallest margin. So I’m so happy that they, that they did it and they did it 

[01:48:10] Rebekah: and it wasn’t bad. Um, yeah, like mom said at the beginning, we were definitely both very concerned that this was gonna be a Mickey 17 kind of situation where we read the book, love it, and then the adaptation makes us wanna throw up.

Um, I have been excited for this ever since they announced the movie I’ve shared before. The first time I read this book, I was on vacation with Josh’s family. I was listening to the audio book. You should listen to this book on audio. Rocky’s voice is Ray Porters second to none. Amazing. Um, yeah, the way they do the musical voice thing is so cool.

Ray Porter’s incredible. And I think that, um, the best part that I remember was I listened to it as we were about to leave for dinner. I heard the part that Rocky is introduced and I was like, I can’t stop. And so I kept an ear bo a earbud in and I listened to this during family dinner ’cause I was like, I can’t, I can’t stop.

And I honestly, I don’t know. I have two other books that I’ve read in the last year, uh, a little over a year now for one of them, uh, that I had that same feeling with which were Dungeon Carl or Carl and the will of the many, both of which very different than this book, um, in a lot of ways. But the will of the money’s like very serious and it’s slower paced, which is for me, like different.

But I think that I like am after that book high of like, I want a book that makes me wanna stay up until three o’clock in the morning and I read a hundred and. 50 something or 60 something books last year that’s higher than normal for me. I read a lot of Animorphs books, which are really, really short ’cause they’re kids’ books.

My normal at this point is probably between 60 and 90 books a year. And I mean, I’m seeking that high all the time. And I’ve read two books for the first time in the last couple of years that have made me feel like that. And this was a third. All that to say, I love this book. I ended up loving the movie.

I was like, this could be my new favorite film. And I think it is, I think it’s the new film that like as soon as I can have it on Apple tv, I don’t even care where it streams. Like I know it’ll be on Prime, but I’m just gonna buy it anyway ’cause I wanna own it and like I will just put it on in the background at any time, like whenever, because.

I love it. It honestly is like unseated, Armageddon and Interstellar, which were kind of neck and neck for my current favorite film, which tells you a lot about what my favorite films are. They’re like, there’s a theme. Um, but I thought the film probably had close to an equal amount of things that they added or changed that I liked, uh, to the things that they added or changed that I didn’t like.

And even those I think, are minor complaints for sure. Genuinely. Like I, I think that it was pretty close to similar, uh, on that front. I thought they did an amazing job adapting it to film. This is the most faithful film adaptation I have ever seen. IJI, I’ve been trying to like rack my brain. I love the Harry Potter films.

We all love hunger Games. Like some of the big ones that had tons of budget behind them, supporting like a great adaptation. Dune is amazing. Like there’s so many good examples. But this is the one that I think is most faithful. It’s most faithful to the tone of the book in a lot of ways, not just the story and the setting and all of that.

And I think that you could, um, see the benefit of having an author who is excited to be part of the film project and whose opinions and thoughts were very clearly used and reflected in the end result of the film. Loved that. This book is a 10 out of 10. I, I know that there’s probably not, it’s not perfect.

Um, but for me it was a 10 out of 10 because I, like, I was so excited about it when I listened to that audiobook on vacation. As soon as I finished it, I started it again and listened a second time in a row, which is like, again, I don’t do that, but this book made me want to do that. And, um, I think that’s what I’m looking for in a book.

As far as the film, I think I’m gonna give it like a 9.25 out of 10. I think the book was better, which I, I mean, I named the podcast that for a reason. Just in that it, like, I enjoy the story more. I’m a big hard sci-fi fan. I, the everything about it is the kind of thing that I’m gonna just love. The film honestly only loses that 0.75 for cutting some of the science and replacing it with a few minor things that I thought took away from the character of Ryland that I loved.

And then number two, the music thing, I just haven’t gotten over. Totally. Like, there were just a couple of things where I’m like, you could have Zimmer it. I like that. Now that I have that reference point from Josiah. Um, you could have Zimmer it and it would’ve been a, like a, just a smidge up there for me.

But again, my complaints are minor. I loved it. I was literally almost in tears. Because I can’t believe that I liked it this much and it, I don’t know that it was like life changing. I, it was very enjoyable. It wasn’t life changing, but it, like, in one way, it’s like a pillar for me in terms of like film. We, we talk about book to film adaptations on this podcast.

That’s like obviously something I care a lot about and that I enjoy discussing. And it just is like a pillar moment for me of like, this is what an adaptation can be. If you care about the story, if you care about like being faithful to a story that people connect with characters that they want world building that matters to them.

Like this is how you can adapt it to film in the right way. So 

[01:53:38] Tim: made by a couple of, couple of people who were dismissed from a major comp, uh, mayor, major movie company during 

[01:53:47] Rebekah: Wow. 

[01:53:48] Tim: A movie. I’m so glad. 

[01:53:50] Rebekah: I know. Oh my gosh. Can you imagine? Did 

[01:53:52] Tim: a great job. 

[01:53:54] Rebekah: They’d actually been able to do what they wanted to do.

[01:53:56] Tim: Yeah. 

[01:53:56] Rebekah: Um, alright, well I am so grateful baby listener, that you have just joined us for this journey. I hope you go back and see Project Tell Mary a bunch. I hope it makes a billion dollars. I wanna show Hollywood that people want more like this. Again, this felt like watching maybe one of the best movies I’ve seen in a long time.

Not just in all of the other aspects, but like in a way that felt like they cared about the story and like not. Not having to superimpose a message that wasn’t universal, and I just loved that. So, uh, if you enjoy this episode, please share it. It means so much, um, to know that, uh, people love to, to share our episodes with one another.

Um, we always appreciate reviews so much. They make a huge difference to it getting surfaced on the feeds of people who’ve never heard of us and may not follow anyone else that’s heard of us. And so means a lot. If you wanna support the show, you can also follow us on Patreon, uh, free followers, uh, still get email updates for new shows so that you never miss anything.

And you can also pay for some really cool subscriber perks, including, um, a Discord, uh, and just some other things going on. And, uh, yeah, I just, I can’t wait to talk to you guys. Uh, on the next episode. If you wanna follow us on social too, that’s a great way to keep up with us. Book is better, pod is our handle.

And, uh, until next time, uh, grace, Rocky, safe stars. Amazed, 

[01:55:21] Josiah: amazed, amazed. You leaking 

[01:55:24] Rebekah: leaky space blob.

[01:55:39] Josiah: Oh, it’s, it’s hard. It’s, I love mom talking so sincerely and seriously. And not under her name. It says, without tampons. 

[01:55:49] Donna: We can’t, we can’t talk about our screen names. I’m sorry.