Score by Daniel Pemberton, for Project Hail Mary (2026), directed by Phil Lord and Christopher Miller.
I'm really not a score girlie (shoutout the one true exception to all rules, lotr). That being said, on first watch in theatres, the music for this film was doing something obvious, original, and captivating.
For the nerds (like me) there is a whole 50-minute piece Pemberton did with Dolby to discuss the development of the score which took two years and involved building a sound library from scratch (I'm sorry WHAT).
For the tumblr heads who will never switch apps, please enjoy my blathering.
Pemberton talked a LOT about texture and natural elements - water, glass, wood, steel, etc. as opposed to going Full Orchestra, which would anchor it fully in a Western sensibility. He didn't want to lose the opportunity to capture a more universal otherworldliness. He talked about using the orchestra as one instrument (WHAT), along with his own recorded sound library, live choir recordings, electronic libraries, and so on.
My brother in Christ you are doing TOO MUCH. But we thank you for this perfection.
He also discussed not using themes or motifs in a traditional way, i.e. "the Rocky motif" or "the Grace motif." You can feel that when you listen; there is absolutely repetition, callbacks, building on themes throughout the score, but they just don't feel as identifiable, and that leads to something a bit more surprising. When the themes come around again later in the score, stronger, more developed, I feel a bit of delight and wonder to see them there.
There are many, many choral elements representing humanity - that Grace is not alone. He is being cheered on by every soul he left behind on Earth. But what Pemberton also talked about was how after Rocky is introduced, there is electronic layering over some of the choral pieces to introduce that element of being from another world. And that represents all the Eridians who are also on their side, cheering them on ughhhhh I want to die over that.
My personal favorite is the hand claps. Give me a hand clap and I'll show you my new favorite song. For me, it's that little bit of Andy Weir in the score - it's the little flair of science-guy grit, determination, and stick-tuitiveness (not a word) that is emblematic of his writing. But Pemberton talked about having a children's choir come to Abbey Road to lay those hand clap parts. Box in a Box with a children's choir? DELIGHTFUL.
There are many reasons to love Project Hail Mary but over the weekend, listening to the score in isolation, it has become abundantly clear that for me personally, the music is a foundational part of that love.
ALLLLLLLL of that being said - I have my favorites and would love to rap about yours.
"Box in a Box"
"Petrova Line"
"Centrifuge" (ofc)
"The Message"
"Learning to Communicate"
"A Moment"
"Time Go Fishing" (maybe one of the most brilliant pieces of music composed for film but holy shit listen with caution and make sure you're in the right frame of mind to be tightened like an overturned screw until you want to run screaming from the room)
There are no shortage of shitty politicians in the world. As of now, we have at least two Hitler 2.0s running around and starting wars in the Middle East, Diet Stalin trying to annex Ukraine, a poorly-dressed brain damaged ogre who sold his soul to the devil, a deranged pseudo-Democrat whose catty tweets disguise the fact he’s an unprincipled twat, and all manner of people who seemed genuinely cool but who ended up being completely drained of all their personality or otherwise sold out. In America, literally the only good politician we have is in New York, delivering on his promises and making all landlords feel the fear of God in their hearts, because outside of him the lot of them either waffle about on human rights or blatantly enjoy pissing all over human rights. I imagine the rest of the world has plenty of daft twats running things too, but I can only speak for American politicians (and Putin and Netanyahu are basically that since Trump has been gargling their balls his entire time in office).
And yet, even among all the other shitty politicians out there, J.D. Vance is remarkable for just how pathetically unpleasant he is.
Vance is notable because he isn’t. He was completely overshadowed by Elon Musk during the election cycle to the point everyone pretty much forgot he existed. If you did somehow remember he existed, it was likely because of the pervasive (and definitely completely true) rumor that he fucked his couch. After that was his condescending remarks towards Volodymyr Zelenskyy and the endless sea of memes made to mock him, with countless edits making his face redder and fatter than it already is. Then there were his pathetic attempts to lean into the memes and roll with the jokes, which only served to make him look lamer than he already is. Literally the most interesting things about him were in his past, with his drug addict mom and his college crossdressing escapades. These days he’s essentially just a background extra in the Trump’s White House, an utter bore of a politician who’s hated by his own side for not marrying a white woman and hated by everyone else because they have morals. He’s the Scrappy-Doo of politics, but that’s insulting to Scrappy because at least he did shit and had a loving family!
He also wrote a book, Hillbilly Elegy. I haven’t read it because I don’t read books written by stupid people, but by the accounts of people who have brains (as in, the reviewers who aren’t conservatives) it is a sloppy book that makes broad generalizations, downplays racist tendencies among blue collar voters, and of course makes Vance look like a massive hypocrite for trying to shed a light on a poor rural upbringing only to then go and help destroy those very same people when he got to the White House alongside his senile sugar daddy. Notable criticisms come from Jared Yates Sexton of Salon, who argued that Vance "totally discounts the role racism played in the white working class's opposition to President Obama;” historian Bob Hutton said in Jacobin Vance relies on eugenics and circular logic and was basically just an exercise in sucking his own dick (he said it in a classier way, though); two different Sarahs from two different publications ridiculed it, with Sarah Jones of The New Republic saying it was "a list of myths about welfare queens repackaged as a primer on the white working class" while labeling Vance as “the false prophet of Blue America,” while Sarah Smarsh of The Guardian said "most downtrodden whites are not conservative male Protestants from Appalachia;” and Anthony Harkins and Meredith McCarroll wrote a response book called Appalachian Reckoning: A Region Responds to Hillbilly Elegy, which put his feet to the fire for reproducing myths about poverty as well as for his broad generalizations.
So as you can see, people who aren’t dumb as fuck find his stupid little life story bullshit, and people who are awesome as fuck thinks his mom should have pawned him off for more drugs so we wouldn’t have to deal with him. But despite all that, they still decided to adapt this dumb book into a film in 2020. Ron Howard is director, and by all accounts he seemed more drawn to the story than anything else, and was not particularly happy with Vance’s turn to sucking Trump’s dick. So how is the film? Does it rise above the source material and real life and deliver a beautiful, inspirational story?
No.
I went into this film with as open of a mind as I could muster, but at the end of the day reality makes this impossible to look at objectively. There was a zero percent chance I’d ever feel an ounce of sympathy for or root for the success of the right hand man of the American Reich. Maybe if I’d watched this before everything, back when Vance actually criticized Trump because he thought that morals were more important than the grift, but not now. Every time he failed or was berated or hurt, I was elated. Every time his mom tried to kill him, I was rooting for her. I wanted the course of history to change because Vance is just such a miserable, unlikable man in real life. Imagine if someone made a movie about the touching, inspirational upbringing of O. J. Simpson. Knowing what you know now, would you root for him and want him to succeed? Would you want to watch him rise up to the level that would allow him to get away with murder? The flow of time is cruel, and it saved so much of that cruelty for this film.
But ok, if you somehow are able to ignore the fact that this is basically The Adventures of Lil’ Himmler, is this film really all that bad? Glenn Close and Amy Adams turn in good performances, the rest of the cast does well with what they’re given, so is it actually a watchable film with an inspirational message that is the victim of the cruelest of circumstances?
No.
This film is still pretty fucking awful, for much the same reasons as the book. It’s poverty porn, and it’s incredibly self-righteous. There are so many scenes where people just doing their jobs like doctors and rehab workers are painted as antagonistic for refusing to help Vance’s addict mom, and Vance himself is painted as kind and noble for essentially begging to get what he wants. It’s all part of that “our people look out for each other” attitude, but it makes the whole family come off as incredibly entitled to endless second chances just because they said please. Even more shocking is that any racism his backwoods family might have is glossed over; an hour and thirteen minutes in is the first time his grandma says anything remotely bigoted, and then there’s a couple of bits later but beyond that there’s nothing. His mom instantly being accepting of Usha seems odd given who raised her. I don’t want them to be racist, mind you, but given who we’re talking about here it sure feels like a lot was whitewashed.
And then there’s the score and how everything’s shot, all perfectly manufactured to tug at your heart strings, make you feel inspired, it’s just Oscar bait schlock. It’s so hokey and insincere, so disingenuous. The stereotypical poverty on display actually hits its head early on and perfectly encapsulates the sheer glurge of the film. At a fancy dinner, Vance looks down at the numerous forks and knives and has a (realistic depiction of a) panic attack. It’s so over the top and stupid it’s almost funny, and it never gets any less ridiculous.
And it’s all just totally undermined by the fact Vance completely turned his back on these sorts of people just for a quick buck. He sure wasn’t keen on helping his own when he could make up stories about immigrants eating cats and dogs, immigrants who probably have a similar story to his own—but they’re brown, so fuck them, right?
I’m not gonna couch my criticisms in kind language (mostly cuz I’m afraid Vance might try and fuck them), so here: This movie is fucking disgusting, repulsive propaganda—but only retroactively. It is fake, phony, a Kentucky-fried snowglobe. It was streaming sludge when it released, and now it’s just genuinely vile. I recommend it to no one, because no one gives a fuck about that fat moron Vance or his stupid fucking life enough to sit through this shit unless they have to for some godforsaken reason. One of the only moments of joy I felt (aside from the multiple times Vance almost died) is when the Magic: The Gathering card Atog showed up and had his name dropped. That’s it. That and the depressingly good acting which is being wasted making you feel pity for the worst VP in recent memory are the only good qualities here.
There’s a point in this movie where young Vance says to his grandma, “I can be bad?” Boy, you have no fucking idea how bad you can be. I wish those bullies had drowned you at the start so that we’d all be spared from your bullshit.
With Brendan Fraser and Rachel Weisz being Oscar winners I thought it would be funny to make a poster for the movie, but make it look like some Oscar bait film.
On further research I've come to the conclusion that my least favorite Oscar bait movie genre is "[minority] is ostensibly the main character and the movie is definitely advertised that way but the movie's real main character is someone who isn't [minority] vastly misunderstanding what it's like to be [minority] (to be clear the filmmakers also do that)".
And that sounds weirdly specific but also I can name five examples of my head.
Emmy bait is always so much more interesting than Oscar bait. Oscar bait is always something about wartime, the emotional struggles of a successful white male in Hollywood, or white guilt. And yeah they're good usually but they're not interesting. You already know what to expect at every turn. On the other hand, some of the greatest Emmy bait episodes of television are:
Community - the episode with the six timelines that everyone remembers
Adventure Time - the time Finn falls into a pillow universe and lives a lifetime in an instant
Breaking Bad - the fly episode
Malcolm in the Middle - what if Lois had all girls? Also, the bowling episode
House MD - the story of how House was a victim of medical negligence and lost his leg through an insane storytelling device
Fresh Prince - how come he don't want me?
The Emmy season is always better than the Oscar season.
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I predict some studio is gonna make a big dramatic oscarbait biopic about Sonny and Cher, and it'll be called "Salvatore and Cherilyn." It's coming sooner or later, I can feel it in my bones.
