new sci-fi movie next year: Project Hail Mary

[mellowtigger]

Last year for Christmas, I got several books as gifts. One was from a coworker who sent me a bestseller that I knew nothing about, "Project Hail Mary" by Andy Weir. He's the same author behind the hit movie "The Martian" starring Matt Damon. This new book turned out to be a very enjoyable read for me.

I learned yesterday that there's now a movie based on this book, expected to arrive 2026 March 20. This movie will star Ryan Gosling, a casting choice that I enthusiastically approve for the main character. The theme behind the book is not really apparent in the unnecessarily suspense-heavy official trailer video that came out a few days ago. The plot requires understanding that our civilization on Earth is in danger because the energy output from our sun is diminishing. In fact, all of the stars around us are diminishing their output... except for one nearby star. The plot takes our main character to that solar system to investigate the issue, as a last minute effort (hence the term, "Hail Mary" in the title of the book and movie) to save humanity. The movie trailer barely shows us a glimpse of the alien character, but we'll have to see a lot more of it for the movie to match the tale in the book.

What the story is really about, however, is friendship. A human and an alien find themselves in the same strange solar system, trying together to unravel the mystery of dimming stars, before each of their civilizations collapses. They have obvious cultural and biological differences, yet they have a shared imperative with little time for research. Neither of them is the perfect representative of their species to do this particular task alone. Research together, however, they do because they must. I think that the psychological trait "openness to experience" is something that we could use a lot more of from societies that seem to be swinging towards authoritarianism. I hope this movie presents an effective motivation for strangers of that perspective to try it.

There's another plot twist involving our main character that carries from the beginning to the end of the story, so I won't go into details. But besides friendship, the story is also about redemption. After reading it many months ago, I put aside the book while feeling almost Star Trek levels of hope for humanity as a species.

I am very eager to see this film. Whichever service hosts it online will definitely receive my subscription to watch it. Sorry, but I'm still not doing theaters, not even with a mask.

Comments

[armiphlage]

yay!