message to all shrimp: Hide @mosseatenrobot - Tumblr Blog

the pieces together! worlds apart…

ok I know I seem insane for watching project hail mary for the fourth time in 10 days but I got to watch it with the directors commentary tonight and it’s incredible how much thought and love went into this film by EVERYONE. the directors, ryan gosling himself, the sound department, costumes, set production, cameras. everyone has so much pride and the story is so beloved by all. anyway here are some of my favorite things from the commentary

no one knew how to pronounce eridani (air-id-ah-ni or air-re-deni) so they just literally never said it in the film

the “good luck” at the beginning is supposed to have been written by the astronauts on the ISS who delivered ryland to the hail mary

the mop ryland was dancing with was called moppy ringwald

when ryland calls stratt after successfully breeding astrophage and he says “carl and I made a baby,” that was ryan gosling calling sandra hüller on her day off and she had no idea that’s what he was going to say. that “what” was her genuine first reaction

the scientist whom ryland called a stagnating waste of carbon was the bearded guy sitting next to him and stratt in the initial phm meeting

the idea of the soundtrack being so hopeful was supposed to be like there were two different planets cheering him on

when ryland is sitting on the beach in that don’t-go-crazy room and sees a figure walking towards him, that’s him on erid at the end. he’s seeing himself

among the markings on rocky were the petrova line mission patch, his rank, family crest, and wedding band

rocky always stamped his claw on the ground twice for a question

they wanted to make it so that eridani could have different tones. so it could be a given series of keys for one word and then you could change the frequencies for happy, sad, scared, etc.

after rocky wakes up and asks ryland if they caught the taumeoba and ryland shakes his head no and then yes, the directors went “what an odd thing to do”

ryan gosling wrapped all the gifts that ryland gave to rocky himself

the entire reason that exchange panel was put on rocky’s ball was so that ryland could pass him the little beanie earth

the movie starts with an upside down shot of ryland waking up. the epilogue starts with a right-side up shot of ryland waking up. he also makes his bed and brushes his teeth to show how time has passed LOL

their headcanon for explaining the rocky nature of the beach is that the eridians tried to emulate sand but got the scale of the grains wrong

rocky had them create a beach, and wave machine for the beach, and a tree for ryland so that he felt closer to home, but rocky was all he needed for that

#phm

grouphug33

Eva and Grace’s dynamic is so important to me. They’re in love platonically. Like, that’s not a common dynamic. She put the way he likes his coffee into the ship’s computer. He follows her around like a puppy. In the book, she cracks jokes with him and him only. She cares about his opinion. He was the only one she asked about the coma gene, wondering if it was worth it.

He’s her best friend, and she doesn’t even know it. They’re so close, that in the book, people think they’re sleeping together, and poor Grace is so confused because he thought that was his platonic work wife, wdym people think we’re sleeping together, that’s my person that I crack jokes with and then she glares at me because they’re not funny.

She’s softer with him than anybody else and is only ever vulnerable around him. We see in the movie, he’s the only one who ever gets her to smile, and sometimes even laugh, and then she serenades all of them, but mainly him, and he stares at her with those big, shiny eyes so lovingly, and she points at him when she sings, “everything’s gonna be alright”, and then she gives him those eyes, so loving.

And then she’s trying to stop herself from crying when she’s sending him away because, against her will, he’s become her person, and somewhere along the way, she’s become his, and they will have forever ended this relationship on bad terms, and nothing can fix that.

It’s a platonic tragedy. It’s a platonic love story. This is something we don’t get often, or, like, ever, and it’s deep and it’s tragic and it’s sad.

But even after, Eva’s still taking care of him. Packing clothes she knew would bring him comfort. Programming the ship to know how he likes his coffee. And Grace is still watching out for her, speaking to her directly in his video logs, with that same lopsided smile he used to throw her way.

He uses Rocky’s sign for goodbye, and she uses it back, and how did this book and movie give us such a deep platonic friendship because, guys, this NEVER HAPPENS.

Eva and Grace, the platonic male/female friendship of all time.

launch day

can't stop thinking about how hysterical project hail mary would be from rocky's pov when you consider that, by eridian standards, basic human functioning is simultaneously an incredibly hostile and violently perverted body horror fetish nightmare. imagine you make first contact with an alien and it's an apex predator with an obscene number of orifices, made up mostly of toxic substances that it oozes constantly from said orifices, thrives in an unforgivingly cold and suffocating atmosphere, is highly motivated by searching for its next meal + consumes its food publicly in violation of your society's main taboo, and is capable of rapidly transitioning from vulnerable in sleep to alert and in full possession of its faculties at the slightest change in stimuli. grace is in a heartwarming scifi buddy comedy and meanwhile rocky is bonded with and planning on bringing home his species' equivalent of the xenomorph.

#phm

halethleia

this scene is an actual nightmare scenario like. imagine you are sleep deprived and sweaty and delirious and you threw up like 2 minutes ago and then you have to do a presentation to some of the smartest and most important people in the world.

and one of them is the guy that you called a waste of carbon at a conference in denmark before you got kicked out of your field

#phm

wanderingrestlessly

imagine your last memory of earth being violent imagine the last human touch u remember being someone pushing u to the ground imagine the last time u feel the sun on ur face or dirt under ur hands is when ur clawing at the ground desperate and terrified to stay on earth ryland grace if i think about u too long i feel physically SICK

#phm

interstellarfr0g

do you think the eridians would repatriate grace's body to earth after he inevitably dies? or would they understand that he wouldn't want to face the cold dark void of space again, and keep him on erid? would rocky trawl through the huge expanse of information stored on the hail mary, hoping to find something about earth funeral customs? do you think they would at least send a message about it to earth - after all, he was theirs first? do you think by that time, there would be people on earth who weren't even born during the astrophage crisis, but nevertheless had grown up hearing the stories of the brave astronaut and his alien friend who had saved the planet? do you think ryland grace, who starts out the movie as stratt's dispensable guinea pig, no partner or family, "you don't even have a dog", would become the first living thing to be globally mourned by TWO planets? yeah just a thought

#phm

pissmotif

the hackey sack made me sob because yes, stratt didn’t have to pack it, but also. here’s your hackey sack, it’s not lava. here’s your hackey sack, remember who you are. here’s your hackey sack, realise who you are fighting for. here’s your hackey sack, hopefully by the time you remember you didn’t ask to fight you’re too far gone to let us down. here’s your hackey sack, hold onto your joy and your whimsy even after i sent you to your death. here’s your hackey sack, i’m sorry.

#phm

rylandgracie

what kind of soulmate crack cocaine was everyone snorting in that set when they made this film i'm being serious

#phm

hailed-marys

sleepover! only grace is asleep but it still counts

#phm

one-real-wrimonkey

Ok but the Eridians being worried Rocky kidnapped Grace and Rocky is like no it’s fine they threw him away he’s ours now

#phm

susiephone

i love love love how Project Hail Mary (the book at least the movie isn't out yet) handles Eva Stratt's morality. she wants to save the world and she will do whatever it takes...and the book does tackle how, if it's in the name of "the greater good", you can justify doing just about anything. Stratt did an absolutely terrible thing to Grace - but in the end, she was right. it saved the world. but also? Grace never forgives her! while it's pretty clear he wouldn't change anything in the end (it did save not just one but two worlds, and he met Rocky because of it), he never stops being pissed at her for what she did to him, and it's clear even she knows that she's crossing every ethical line there is. and even outside of Grace, this is a woman who nuked antarctica and wreaked havoc on the world's ecology - there are definitely people who died as a direct result of what she did. she knows that. but more people would've died if someone less ruthless, someone less pragmatic were in charge. and the fact that she fully accepts she'll probably be thrown in prison for every illegal and unethical action she took shows that she's not evil or heartless; she just won't let anything, including her own self-preservation, stop her from doing what she thinks will save the world.

i really love how Project Hail Mary takes "the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few" and "human rights are a thing and no one deserves to have theirs violated" and lets them coexist with no easy answer.

#phm