Project Hail Mary

Name: Project Hail Mary
Director: Phil Lord, Christopher Miller

Bandwagon · Jun 11, 2023

0.00 star(s) Rating: 0.00/5 0 Votes

Title: Project Hail Mary

Genre: Adventure, Drama, Science Fiction

Director: Phil Lord, Christopher Miller

Cast: Ryan Gosling

Plot: In the near future, astronaut Ryland Grace wakes from a coma afflicted with amnesia. He gradually remembers that he was sent to the Tau Ceti solar system, 12 light-years from Earth, to find a means of reversing a solar dimming event that could cause the extinction of humanity.

Intrinsic · Jun 11, 2023

Will be interesting to see how they pull this off. Baby Goose is good though.

I didn’t find the book near as good or interesting as The Martian.

faille · Jun 12, 2023

Hope they can raise it up a notch, since I agree that it pales in comparison to The Martian.

Tuco · Jun 13, 2023

Loved the book. Didn't read the martian. I think creating a great movie from the book is a pretty easy alley oop, will probably watch it.

Goatface · Oct 8, 2023

just finished the book. think it would make a much better series than a movie.

Goatface · Apr 2, 2024

kroenen · 2025-06-30T08:46:20-0400

sliverstorm · 2025-06-30T10:25:20-0400

If you didn't read the book (like me), I'd probably stop watching that trailer at about 2 minutes. Feels like major spoilers. What the fuck Amazon.

Hateyou · 2025-06-30T10:54:00-0400

Yeah wtf at that trailer, what a failure. That point in the book was a major WHAT THE FUCK.

Also concerned they’re spending way too much time on earth and building up to leaving. The book started with him waking up and slowly remembering shit. Unless I’m thinking of another book, idk been a few years since I read it. I do remember barely any time was spent on the earth portion.

Wombat · 2025-06-30T11:11:21-0400

It's a tough call - you both need to include the alien stuff as a powerful hook to the audience (and also to narratively separate it from The Martian), but you also need to not scare off the potential audience that will immediately assume this is an Aliens situation, by establishing off the bat that he and the alien(s) are working together, which requires a significant chunk of the trailer.

Nearly all the Earth stuff was in the book, but mostly in the second half, after he regains his memories. (I don't remember Huller doing karaoke, but someone decided this needed more romantic material for the general audience, given the state of how Milana Vayntrub is probably introduced.)

But like Goatface also alluded to, it seems like it'll be tough to condense this into the runtime of a single movie. Again, it seems like everything on Earth is getting included - that icebreaker shot suggests even the Antarctica stuff is included, which is prime material to cut for runtime. (Unless they are establishing Huller's ruthlessness, but movie Huller's more overt romantic interest in Ryland with the same outcome already does that.)

Warrik · 2025-06-30T11:42:06-0400

Well.

This trailer gave WAY too much away.

First, him not being in our solar system was a reveal in the book.
Who he actually was being also a reveal.
Him not originally planned to go, and not volunteering but being forced was a reveal
Rocky and the Ship was a reveal
I mean, Im shocked they didn't show the end twist at this point.

Still looking forward to it, but sad for people who didnt get to experience the book.

Hateyou · 2025-06-30T12:01:30-0400

Warrik said:
Well.

This trailer gave WAY too much away.

First, him not being in our solar system was a reveal in the book.
Who he actually was being also a reveal.
Him not originally planned to go, and not volunteering but being forced was a reveal
Rocky and the Ship was a reveal
I mean, Im shocked they didn't show the end twist at this point.

Still looking forward to it, but sad for people who didnt get to experience the book.

Agree.

Anyone interested in this should just read the book, or listen to it. The audiobook was fantastic.

Falstaff · 2025-06-30T12:10:36-0400

The book was so good. I will see this just to see it but yeah, amazing book. Agree they gave away so much in the trailer but Wombat makes some good points.

Wombat · 2025-06-30T13:30:41-0400

To be clear, if this seems interesting to you, just read / listen to the book. Much like The Martian or the original script of Interstellar, it'll be better than the movie.

But to address Warrik's points (spoilered, but still going to keep it vague):

That Ryland is on a ship and where that ship is are _surprises_, but given that they happen in the first, what, 10% of the book, can't really count as spoiler - it's just setting the environment.
This trailer doesn't give away how he joins the crew (if it in fact is the same in the movie). Hell, given the more overt romantic relationship between movie Grace and Huller (they're at least flirting when movie Balkinour has the accident), the movie may actually make this more of a dickpunch - we could see a still partially amnesiac Grace find out he has a fuel source to get back and romantically reunite with Huller, only to then get all his memories back.
Again, I think you need to reveal Rocky from the beginning to not have this seem like more of a Martian rehash than it already is.
In general, I think you are overstating how much someone who hasn't read the book can deduce from this footage. E.g. The trailer shows the movie sample collection goes badly as well, but no one that hasn't read the book is going to have the context to understand that.

INTHEMIDSTOFLIONS · 2025-06-30T13:45:08-0400

Falstaff said:
The book was so good. I will see this just to see it but yeah, amazing book. Agree they gave away so much in the trailer but Wombat makes some good points.

I loved the book when I read it back in 2021. I read Andy Weir's the Martian back in 2014 before the movie's release, as well.

Making a book to movie adaptation in 2025 is mostly miss. I loved Dune Part 1 adaptation, but every other scifi adaptation has been a huge miss for me: Dune Part 2, Murderbot, Foundation, etc. It's really hard to transfer classic scifi to "modern audience" because class scifi is inherently merit-based, cruel, and not worried about inclusivity or SJW nonsense. Yet, the movies/tv adaptations always have cringey/edgy girlbosses added and terrible dialogue. Example would be how they turned Chani into a feminine matriarch figure into a a #girlboss skeptic, or how they turned the entire cast of Murderbot into blue-haired hippie freaks.

Pretty much why I stick to books over tv and movie. I can only imagine they're going to turn Grace into a wet noodle. I'm skeptical.

Intrinsic · 2025-06-30T14:41:12-0400

I need to redo this as an audiobook because my head just isn't creative enough to imbue characters with near as much personality that VAs can. I read The Martian and listened to the audiobook and while the book was enjoyable, the audiobook really made it great for me, much more than the film (that was enjoyable though). Went back and saw my earlier post because I had the same thought seeing this bumped, "Book was meh, movie will probably be better."

Curious King just recently announced a small press version of The Martian. They'll eventually do Project Hail Mary too.

Hateyou · 2025-06-30T15:04:17-0400

Intrinsic said:
I need to redo this as an audiobook because my head just isn't creative enough to imbue characters with near as much personality that VAs can. I read The Martian and listened to the audiobook and while the book was enjoyable, the audiobook really made it great for me, much more than the film (that was enjoyable though). Went back and saw my earlier post because I had the same thought seeing this bumped, "Book was meh, movie will probably be better."

Curious King just recently announced a small press version of The Martian. They'll eventually do Project Hail Mary too.

View attachment 592429

What was so impressive about the audiobook was how endearing they made Rocky. Was such a good listen.

meStevo · 2025-06-30T15:04:20-0400

I've listened to the audio book a dozen times while doing other things since first listening to it a few months ago, it's so good. 2nd only to RC Bray's The Martian narration for me.

Disappointing they gave away so much, wish it would have ended at 'object approaching' at about 2:13 and not gone beyond that in any subsequent trailers.

Yeah, some of the other reveals I didn't realize too that they could have saved, a lot of that really depends on how they tell the story, because moviegoers will leave with whiplash if you have a dozen flashbacks the way the book does, that'll get real tiring real quick. Probably only get a couple big chunks of it and use other mechanisms to convey anything else.

lol, great YT comment on the trailer:

Intrinsic · 2025-06-30T15:17:18-0400

I've listened to so much crap just because RC Bray narrated it. After Expeditionary Force and The Martian, I just downloaded anything I could find he did.

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