Following up my "I Think Andy Weir Might Be An American" post, I wanted to talk about what the movie does. you'd think we'd lose some of the stereotyping in the adaptation, but if anything, the movie takes it a step further I think. Some rambling and spoilers under the cut:
In the movie, we're introduced to the Project through the "cool" and "sophisticated and important" American military (who are, for some reason, heavily armed at this scientific conference). The aircraft carrier is intentionally flagless, unlike in the book, where it's made very clear that it's a Chinese vessel.
2. Not to worry, though, there are Chinese military personnel on this ship-- we see them stoically standing guard, observing the silly party. The other faceless guard has a Russian flag patch
2.5. Ok upon watching this scene again I noticed you could also see some guys in blue camo. I won't pretend like I know fucking anything about identifying military uniforms, but that big ass flag in the background of the next shot looks vaguely familiar. Hm.
3. Speaking of the Russians, there are several instances of book!Grace going on about how his EVA suit is Russian-style, Russian-made, the best there is available...only for him to be wearing a suit emblazoned with NASA's logo
4. They cut Dimitri from the movie?? They cut a lot of the earth-bound characters, but Dimitri is weird because they replaced him with Narender as their astrophage exposition guy. And they kept the Chinese scientists being able to mysteriously replicate Grace's results. Ok sure.
5. Hey, remember those blue uniforms from earlier? Grace is chased down by men in very similar uniforms. It's very blurry, but you can see they're wearing Russian flags in the scene where Grace is betrayed, pinned down, and sedated. not revealing of any typical american anxieties at all
I guess he was wrestled down by a Russian solider in the book, so points for consistency there, but they did cut out that crazy line about the CIA and interrogation drugs...
I know obviously some of these changes stem from practical reasons-- they had to cut the entire coma gene thing, ryan gosling would have lost a lot of his mobility if they stuck him in an actual Orlan EVA, and so on.
As clumsy as he was, Weir was very intentional about making the Petrova Taskforce a multinational team of equals. The movie makes it seem like it's primarily American driven, with other nations lending support. And where those other nations appear, they're cast in very stereotypical roles (not including Yáo and Ilyukhina)-- shady Chinese, aggressive Russians, stern Germans. Carl, who was invented for the movie, is a walking example of the "black best friend/side kick" trope. It's like the movie went out of it's way to be as white, US-centric as possible. I don't know what to make of it but I wish I saw more people talking about it
ellievsbear
vaporwave
stormborns
prguitarman
gracieabrams
titsay
2087
