when i first read the project hail mary book, i thought it was alright, didn't dwell on it much. however, watching the movie butcher a few key points of it made me care about the book annoyingly too much.
what rubs me the wrong way about the movie is the way they unbalance the relationship of grace and rocky, and the relationship of grace and stratt.
in regards to stratt, i feel like the movie brings about this hyperfocus on grace as the main character that is too much, and it gives him this greater importance than he actually does have. this, in my opinion is what also kinda misportrays the relationship between grace and stratt. in the movie, you have the karaoke scene, but you also have the 3-astrophage scene.
the 3-astrophage scene kinda pisses me off, because in the movie she kind of flippantly and too easily gives him the small sample to keep working on, whereas in the book grace has to essentially argue his way into winning them and consequentially his place into the project.
grace is nothing, he was another part of a much, much bigger machine, and he fulfilled his part, that's it. stratt even berates his ass when he asks to keep experimenting, being like "you proved you were wrong, that's alright, move on." its only after grace yells about his kids and wanting to do anything he can to help them does she finally relent and give him the sample. she doesn't just freely give it away.
i don't think she so much cares for grace, as she just cares about the world. grace is just a very small part of the world. i think this is why i feel a bit iffy with all this hyperfocus on "the trauma/regret eva must be feeling because of what she did to grace", because grace was just a small part of it. she comforts grace the say way she comforts leclerc during the nuking of antarctica: an entire planet compels sacrifices. right before she's about to administer the amnesia drug to grace, she laments on the chaos that awaits the world, the terror of it, and how she's doing everything to try and prevent that, much like grace said about his kids. its why she reminds grace of them again before hes put under.
now in regards to rocky, they made him kinda... stupid? in the book, not only does grace spend so much time thinking about how cool, and smart, and intelligent, and ingenious, and special rocky is, but as you read you very much get the sense that grace is immensely lucky to have come across rocky, because nothing was gonna get done otherwise. rocky does essentially everything, and grace has some smart moments :p
with the movie, he feels a bit more... pet-ish? maybe a wee infantilized? i don't know how to describe it exactly. but, to me, movie rocky and grace don't feel as much as equals as they do in the book.
and all of these i feel culminate in downplaying the adrian incident scene. in the movie, its shown that grace passes out, rocky breaks a part of his compartment to go and pull grace out of the chair, then takes himself back to its compartment. outside of the logistics (if rocky broke his compartment, that would release severe amounts of ammonia into the ship which would kill grace for sure, nevermind the high temperature and pressure. even if you try to think that maybe rocky fixed it before conking out, the ammonia is still in grace's environment, but also rocky is fucking dying immensely quickly in grace's environment so how the fuck- anyway), the picture this paints of their relationship feels a bit shallow.
like, yeah rocky is saving grace because he's the main character and that's how it should go (to put it extremely cynically). whereas in the book, rocky (who comes out of his compartment through the airlock of his tunnels) get grace out of the chair and conks the fuck out (i cannot stress enough the 27 atmospheres and insane levels of ammonia he requires), then grace, after immediately righting the ship, gets right to getting rocky back to the tunnel, which is gruesome work because of rocky's weight, and because of the physical damage he undergoes (the ammonia spray burns in entire arm essentially).
i feel like this is the shit that deserves the "platonic soulmates" ao3 tag, not the movie version.
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