The very anticipated book adaptation, Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir, was released in late March this year. The movie surpassed my expectations, and as someone who had read the book, I came into it more critically than I would for other movies. However, the movie turned out to be extremely good and very entertaining.
Project Hail Mary is a science fiction movie, about a scientist who is a teacher, Ryland Grace, who has to go to space to figure out why an alien microbe named Astrophage, is causing Earth and the planets around it to rapidly cool from eating their stars, but isn’t affecting one planet that is 11.9 light-years away. He has to go to space to understand the problem and send information back to Earth.
The overall plot of this movie was very good. It stayed true to the book’s plot, with only a minimal amount of scenes missing or added. The pacing of the movie was good, it did not feel rushed. I also enjoyed the themes of this movie, as it provided a positive outlook on humanity, and our ability to problem solve. All in all, the movie had a fairly upbeat feeling, and an ending that I greatly enjoyed.
One of the factors that made this movie so good was its soundtrack. Not only did this movie use notably famous songs, in a very intentional way, for example, Sign of the Times by Harry Styles, Two of Us by The Beatles, and Sunday Mornin’ Comin’ Down by Kris Kristofferson, but the background score for this movie was also extremely impressive. All the songs throughout the movie had a memorable sound and effectively added suspense when needed. The soundtrack to this movie put it on another level.
Not only did this movie have a good soundtrack, but its visuals were remarkable; it was a lot of fun to watch. One specific scene is when Grace is by the planet Adrian, floating outside the spaceship, and looking at the massive green planet. It is a very pretty visual, and there were many moments in the movie that had visuals similar to this.
My only critique of this movie would be that some of the scientific explanations were left out. Obviously, not everything in the book can be in the movie, but I thought that a couple of the scenes could have benefited from a bit more explanation of what was going on, as this was a fairly scientifically complicated story.
Overall, I really enjoyed this movie. Prior to watching, I set the bar pretty low, for books don’t usually translate well into movies. However, this movie was extremely good, and it is now one of my favorites. I highly recommend for any one to watch this movie to anyone, especially if they are interested in space or science. It was put together very well and had many components that made it a great movie.
