I want to preface everything I’m about to say with this: I loved the movie very very much and every element of it was so well done. The crew that worked on producing Project Hail Mary is the best possible crew they could have gotten and I’m sure they know they’ve made a generational hope-infused film.

That being said, the book is still better and I don’t care what anyone else says!!!!!!!!

Okay. Now that we got that out of the way, I have to talk about One Million Different Things. A big reason why people are so resistant to the concept of live action adaptations is because they don’t understand how much of a difference there is between the mediums of books and movies. When you read a book, you get to see the most pure version of the author’s vision for their story. You experience the characters’ inner thoughts and understand the more nuanced bits of the story because the author is able to write exactly how they see it in their mind.

Film is so different. You’re restricted to a purely visual medium. If you want to show a character’s thoughts, you have to: insert a voiceover, convert the thought into a Not Super Corny piece of dialogue, or show it through actions. All options are more clunky than reading a character’s motivations from a page. There’s only so much that you can feasibly translate into a movie format.

Even so, I was going into the theater with extremely high expectations (regardless of how much I tried to mitigate them..) It’s the biggest sci-fi book in the last 10 years, if not more AND it’s my favorite book of all time. I HAVE A TATTOO!!! I WAS THE FIRST PERSON TO EDIT BOOK RYLAND!!! I GOT LITERALLY ALL MY FRIENDS AND FAMILY AND COWORKERS TO READ IT!!! And come ON. Directed by Lord and Miller. Score by DANIEL PEMBERTON??? OF LITTLE BIG PLANET???? My Whole Childhood. Cinematography by Greig Fraser who had done Dune and The Batman. Rocky being a PUPPET instead of CGI??? And Ryan Gosling as Ryland Grace. They have the same initials so it’s basically fated. There has never been a movie more poised for success. And that’s what we got. Arguably one of the most faithful book adaptations ever made. I loved all 156 minutes in that theater and I got to experience it sitting next to two people who read the book from my recommendation and loved it too.

And yet, I had the slightest of mixed feelings afterwards. I had never experienced having my favorite book adapted into a feature film before. I’m the biggest proponent of live action adaptations and I’m so forgiving of live action anime/manga adaptations, but after seeing Project Hail Mary, I kinda understood people who go THEY DIDN’T DO THIS SCENE EXACTLY THE SAME AS THE SOURCE MATERIAL WHY WOULD THEY CHANGE THIS!!! I’ve just been so hyper-critical of things I’ve consumed lately that it translated to my brain reminding me that they didn’t put in my favorite line or the stakes didn’t feel as high or that we didn’t get to know the additional crew as much through Ryland’s memories. These are all valid criticisms of the film, but the book was so jam-packed that even trying to fit the story under 3 hours is a massive undertaking. If they had tried to fit every single line from the book into the movie, it’d be at least 2 hours longer, so while removing parts referencing the damage done to Earth (mass astrophage production by paving the Sahara Desert with solar panels and attempts to speed up global warming to save time for the mission to solve the issue of their dying sun) did end up lowering the stakes, it’s not something that absolutely killed the plot for me.

(Scenes I wish they had put in: I AM HAPPY. YOU NO DIE. LET’S SAVE PLANETS! (my tattoo line hehe), I WISH THE BEGINNING PART WAS LONGER ‘I am Emperor Comatose. Kneel before me.’ ‘I am scary space monster, you are leaky space blob,’ Rocky not realizing Ryland only has 2 arms ‘Use third han- hmm. Get beetles. I make new screws’) 

Don’t get me wrong, this is one of my favorite movies of all time and I actually loved a lot of the changes they made and little additions they wrote in. The hugs they did were so adorable and Ryland’s ocean motif manifesting in his own ocean biome was so beautiful. AND RYLAND GOT TO SEE ROCKY’S SHIP!!!!!!

The cinematography was deeply beautiful. The Adrian scene where the infrared light kicked in and the universe was sparkling made me tear up and !!! GUYS THE CLOSEUPS WERE DONE WITH PRACTICAL EFFECTS. HOW FUCKING COOL IS THAT??????? Everytime they showed a flashback or a memory and we weren’t experiencing it fully yet, it had this amazing analog texture to it with light streaks connotating the past. I had never seen memories shown in that way and it was easily one of my favorite elements of the film. Rocky being a puppet was the coolest option they could’ve done in bringing him to life. #ThatsMyRocky!!! Plus his reveal was sooooo darling… ROCKYYYYYYYYY I’m gonna cry again. Seeing Rocky moving into Ryland’s spaceship and acting like a hyper puppy knocking everything over was SO CUTE. 

They changed up the scene where Rocky rescues Ryland and instead of Ryland’s arm getting burned by Rocky’s enclosure’s air, Ryland now has a Rocky hand shaped scar on his arm. I. Love. That. So. Much. THEY’RE BONDED BRO… And the addition of Ryland getting to see Rocky’s ship was something so considerate of the medium they were telling this story in. They couldn’t include absolutely everything from the book as it just wasn’t possible with their constraints, so to include a new scene that feels like it was meant to be in the original story and letting us into Rocky’s world more felt like a gift not only for everyone watching, but for the fans of the original book for trusting this crew with the story of Ryland and Rocky. Funny enough, I cried multiple times, that scene being one of them, but not at the one scene I thought would get me (Rocky saving Ryland).

Also, of course I have to mention that Stratt was perfect. Ripped straight from the pages of the book. I loved that they gave her the karaoke scene because it helped humanize her character who is mostly shown as the tough, unbreakable Eva Stratt who makes decisions for all of humanity. Like I said earlier, I wish we had gotten more opportunities to get to know the additional crew of the Hail Mary, but it certainly made sense to keep the focus on the main friendship to prevent the plot from feeling convoluted.

If you’ve just watched Project Hail Mary and you’re missing the dream team, pick up the book!!! There’s so much more of Ryland and Rocky being silly and as a bonus, you’ll get to experience more of Ryland’s memories, hear more from the Hail Mary crew, and read Rocky learning sarcasm in real time.

I LOVE YOU PROJECT HAIL MARY. FRIENDSHIP FOREVER.