Project Hail Mary Is #Based?

I saw it Tuesday night. I realized that was the last night to see it on a premium screen, because Super Mario Bros. would take al the premium screens Wednesday.

I'll review it below. (In short: It's good, worth seeing in the theaters.)

The movie isn't political, but the creators are pitching it low-key as a conservative-friendly movie.

First of all, the writer of the novel the movie is based on, Andy Weir, actually went on Critical Drinker for almost an hour. The Critical Drinker is hated and persona non grata with progressives, so when Weir decided he would ignore the #Deplatforming order on Critical Drinker, he was making a statement.

Not only did he #Platform Critical Drinker, but he trashed Fake Star Trek in much the same way as a conservative pop culture critic would.

"I forgot who it was--I wish I could remember who it was who said it, some analyst--he said something like, 'All modern science fiction TV shows and movies have been heavily influenced by the original Star Trek--except for the current batch of Star Trek shows,'" Weir noted. "I'm Gen X, so my sci-fi was like original series Star Trek reruns and Lost in Space reruns. And there wasn't really much in the way of [new] sci-fi that was airing--where people are off in space doing cool things--until we got to [The Next Generation]."

After discussing the fate of Starfleet Academy and Jordan suggesting that Paramount should simply decanonize all modern Star Trek, Weir offered something of a rebuttal while also revealing that he had attempted to pitch a Trek series of his own.

"You're a little more severe than I am--I'll give you my opinion, and I'm just a consumer. I like Strange New Worlds. I think it's pretty good. I didn't hate Enterprise. I thought it was kind of weird. Lower Decks, I thought, was entertaining and fun. All the others, they can go," Weir said.

"And here's another thing: I pitched a Star Trek show to Paramount, and I was in Zoom with the showrunners with all the shows and spent a lot of time talking to [executive producer Alex Kurtzman]," the writer continued. "I don't like a lot of the new Trek. He, as a person, is a really nice guy. But at the same time, those shows are shit. He is a nice guy. But they didn't accept my pitch, so, you know, fuck 'em."

He was forced to apologize for this -- conservatives also shouldn't court controversy or alienate potential ticket-buyers when they're promoting their movies, either -- but we all heard it. The Truth Is Out There now.

In another soft pitch to conservatives, star Ryan Gosling introduced the movie at a screening, he declared, "It's not [fans'] job to keep theaters open, it's our job to make things that make it worth coming out." That may seem obvious, but it's only conservative cultural critics who've been saying it. The left thinks we should show up for their Gay Illegal Alien Antifa Movies just to show our support for favored minorities.

Former Amazon executive Tom Price -- who greenlighted this movie -- writes in the NYT that maybe Hollywood should learn a lesson from Project Hail Mary's success and make movies which are -- get this -- broadly entertaining rather than filled with divisive and yet childlike political propaganda.

'Project Hail Mary' Is Fun. Maybe That's All It Takes.

By Roy Price

Mr. Price is the chief executive of International Art Machine, an entertainment studio, and was previously the head of Amazon Studios.

"Project Hail Mary" opened last weekend to more than $80 million at the domestic box office, the biggest opening for a nonfranchise, nonsequel film since "Oppenheimer" in 2023. For all the fretting about the decline of movie theaters, people apparently know where their local theater is just as long as they're given films they want to go and see. It's also the first major theatrical success for Amazon MGM Studios, which formed in 2023. (Despite my former association with Amazon, I don't enjoy any benefit from the film's success.)

It's not just a one-off hit, either -- the domestic box office in general in 2026 is up a robust 20 percent from the year before, driven by hits like the mid-December releases "Avatar: Fire and Ash" and "The Housemaid," along with the year's "Scream 7," "Wuthering Heights" and others.

A possible reason for this rebound? Movies are starting to feel fun again.

Eras change. Vibes, as they say, shift. In 1969, the low-budget counterculture road movie "Easy Rider" was the fourth-biggest box office hit -- edged out for third place by the low-budget, X-rated "Midnight Cowboy." By contrast, "Paint Your Wagon," a big-budget, star-driven musical, tanked. That was the end of an era: Musicals were essentially over and the cinematic 1970s had begun, one year early.

We've had other eras since -- the blockbusters of the 1980s, the Sundance generation of the 1990s. But the most recent era, which started in the wake of Donald Trump's election in 2016 and went into overdrive after 2020, was one in which political and social messaging were what seemed to matter most in Hollywood.

I actually wrote that he rejected divisive political messaging before I read the actual article. But he said it! I was only thinking he'd softly imply it.

Sex, erotic thrillers and humor were on the outs. Romantic comedies essentially disappeared. From 2012 to 2016, roughly 67 comedy films with budgets over $5 million were released a year on average. From 2017 to 2023 (excluding the Covid year of 2020), that average dropped by a third, to some 45 comedies a year. It was an era when you could make "Nomadland" -- a best picture Oscar winner in 2021 -- but championing the ribaldry of a film like "Bridesmaids" seemed suddenly out of the question.

The Dionysian elements of popular entertainment -- irreverence, sexual frankness and broad, even scatological humor -- were cast aside as the industry sought to correct historic wrongs and resist current ones. An unmistakable censoriousness and fear of saying or doing the wrong thing seemed to settle over the creative process. Cultural and political considerations played an outsize role -- not only in what movies got made, but in how success for these movies was defined.

What didn't seem to matter as much? Making sure that audiences were filling seats.

It can't be a coincidence that Ryan Gosling is echoing this line, minus the overt criticism of progressive propaganda. This feels like a coordinated message.

In Price's case, he has nothing to gain from Project Hail Mary's success. I guess he had no points in the project. But many in Hollywood have recognized that the industry is now in a state of dire existential crisis and they need to get their heads out of their stinky asses ASAP or the whole rotten house is going to collapse. His interest here is about the general viability of the so-called "entertainment" industry.

Some might object that comedy in particular waned in that era because the genre, in the words of the industry, "doesn't travel," meaning it lacks international appeal. But the international appeal of comedy didn't suddenly change in 2017. Hollywood's tastes did.

That era might finally be ending.

Hollywood loves box-office data, and the recent data suggests that there are two paths forward for the industry. One path is the prestige message films that dominated the most recent Oscars, exemplified by this year's best picture winner, "One Battle After Another" (although that movie, with its chase scenes and stoner jokes, had a crowd-pleasing element). The other path is represented by eight-cylinder entertainment like "Project Hail Mary" and "The Housemaid" -- as well as pulpy films like "Weapons" and "Sinners" (which had its political notions, but you could enjoy it for the music and vampires).

If this new era of fun has a figurehead, it's the actress Sydney Sweeney, who almost single-handedly revived the romantic comedy with "Anyone but You" and the erotic thriller with "The Housemaid," two genres that 10 years ago had been cinematically left for dead.

Hollywood was built on entertainment. A big part of what makes entertaining movies work is that they engage audiences in a way that feels contemporary but would be completely recognizable to Billy Wilder or Frank Capra. These films spring from the belief that movies matter in and of themselves -- and not just as a means to influence society.

The question is not whether Hollywood should make serious or socially conscious films -- it should, and it will. But the success of "Project Hail Mary" and other recent films reminds us that in our new era, whatever it will be called, people appear to be responding to fun.

There was an old rule that actual movie stars observed: "One for the studio, one for me." In other words, one broadly entertaining movie likely to make a good amount of money, and then one more personal and "arty" project which probably wouldn't make money but would boost the star's prestige.

For ten years, Hollywood's rule has been "one for me, and another one for me, and oh how about another one for me, and this one for me, and this one for me." Yes, they made Marvel and other superhero movies during this period, but those were among the only broadly-entertaining movies they made -- everything else was overt, mentally-impaired hardcore woke propaganda. And then, of course, even the stupid superhero movies started pushing braindead woke propaganda as well, and people stopped seeing those.

The "star" of the upcoming Supergirl movie just decided to alienate the mostly-male audience for superhero movies and announce that she is a pre-emptive victim (TM) of internet bullying. You see, Basement Internet Babies cannot stand the thought of a Stronk Female playing... Supergirl.

And so Hollywood now finds itself making almost nothing but woke propaganda movies people just don't want to see. And they can no longer point to Marvel's success as evidence they're still relevant.

A review:

As I said, it's worth your time and money. The movie has a fair amount of spectacle -- there's a great sequence involving skimming the atmosphere of an alien planet towards the end of the movie -- and supposedly most of the effects were achieved in-camera with models and painted backdrops.

The story is a little contrived: the Sun is dimming due to strange alien cells called "astrophages," or star-eaters. The earth has about 30 years left before it is plunged into a lethal ice age that will kill almost all life on the planet. Local stars are similarly dimming, probably also from these astrophages. All except a star 13 light years away, Tau Ceti. The earth organizes an emergency crash project to build a ship to go to Tau Ceti and find out what makes Tau Ceti immune from the plague of the astrophages, and send what they discover back to earth via small probes.

The hitch: It's a one-way trip, a suicide run. They cannot load enough fuel on to the ship for a return trip. Whoever goes, dies in space.

One thing I like about this set-up: Author Andy Weir avoids the usual end-of-the-world scenario of "global warming." Instead he conjures up a fictitious threat that results in... global cooling. I think he did this on purpose.

When Ryan Gosling's character reaches Tau Ceti, he is menaced by an alien space ship that also has just arrived there. But he soon guesses the ship was sent by another civilization threatened by the astrophages, for the same reason he's there, to discover why Tau Ceti resists the plague.

This brings up two closely-related criticisms I have about the movie:

1, Hollywood's continued belief that audiences still love Marvel Trash Humor. The movie is loaded with jokes -- or "jokes" -- and while a fair number of them work, a lot of them are just thrown in because the movie thinks the audience has a short attention span and is bored by science and so there's a joke a minute to keep the audience engaged. Now, maybe they're right that the Modern Audience demands this constant barrage of light humor, but it grated on me. I have to repeat, a fair amount of the humor actually is funny, but I got annoyed at the many pop culture references. I felt like I was stuck at a party between Star-Lord and Dr. Strange trying to out-clever each other and both losing.

2, the movie aggressively wants you to like it and like the characters. It's like a hyperactive puppy in its drive to be liked. Of all the sins a movie can have, this is a pretty forgiveable one, but... I liked the characters well-enough without the cloying attempts to ingratiate themselves with me.

Directors Lord and Miller were fired from Solo for making that movie too much of a comedy. I long assumed that Kaffeine Kennedy was in the wrong, but now I'm not so sure.

Those flaws knock the movie down a point, but it's still a strong movie. The atmospheric-skimming sequence at the climax of Act II is spectacular and so tense that I wanted to walk out of the movie. That's not the movie's fault, it's just as I've gotten older I flinch from tension (and horror) more and more. The suspense was, for me, unbearable at points. But that is, of course, what they were aiming for.

Oh, I recognized Milana Vayntraub as a background character after a while. (Pretty much all characters except Ryan Gosling and his alien contact are background characters.) She is pretty, but, as usual, she dresses in baggy clothes because she really, really hates guys looking at her boobs. I count this as another attempt by the film-makers to appeal to conventional/traditional audiences, men in particular.

There is a flaw I felt when I was watching the movie but later decided wasn't a flaw: When Gosling encounters the alien craft, there's a sequence taking about 40 minutes of Gosling figuring out how to communicate with the aliens. While I was watching it, I felt as if Gosling was spending too much time on this rather than his actual mission, which was to explore Tau Ceti.

But of course partnering with aliens for this mission would greatly improve the odds of succeeding. I wish there had just been a quick line inserted where Gosling speaks into his video journal and declares that finding a way to communicate with the aliens will help him complete his mission. I know that's obvious, but he does spend a long time figuring out the alien language. I kept thinking, "What about your mission?" If the movie just offered a quick line saying that this is part of the mission, I wouldn't have been bothered.

I listened to that Idiot Whore Grace Randolf because I wanted to hear how the movie was performing financially. She was sure that there is no way the human and alien could have communicated with each other.

I was kind of infected with her Very Stupid Idea as I was watching the movie, but upon reflection, I think the learning-the-language sequence is perfectly plausible.

They don't learn each other's language at all, actually. They say words to each other, and get the other's equivalent word, and then enter the matching pair into the computer. It's the computer that does the translating, working from a lexicon they enter into it. Not having to actually memorize vocabulary really speeds things up.

Even though this takes a fair chunk of screen-time, in real time, I think it would only take 2-3 days. Because they only learn, at the end of their big language-learning session, 250 words.

At the end of a process of sharing vocabulary with each other, Gosling says something like, "We know about 250 of each other's words, not a lot but enough to order dinner in a restaurant." That's about right. Vocabulary goes by a power law: the 500 most common words in a language make up fifty percent of all words you will ever read or hear in it. The next 500 most common words make up 25% of all the words you will ever encounter. The next 500 most common make up 12.5%, the next 500 6.25%, etc.

So upon further reflection, their 250 word lexicon would be enough to start communicating.

I also realized that this explained away part of my problem with the movie: the cutesieness. I hope I am not spoiling the movie by telling you the alien Gosling partners with is very cute -- too cute, I found during the movie. Cuter than Ewoks.

But I now realize that a big part of why I found him so cloyingly cute was that he spoke with a child-like vocabulary. When he objected to an idea, he would say "Bad bad bad" or "dumb and stupid."

But... that's exactly what he would say, if he's limiting himself to the simplest possible vocabulary he knows so that the computer can look it up in their tiny 250-word lexicon. So the cuteness was actually plot-justified, which I didn't realize when I was watching it.

Of course he speaks like a little child, because he's working from a little child's 250-word vocabulary! Little children do not say "sub-optimal" or "insufficiently evidenced." They say "Bad bad bad" and "dumb and stupid."

(How exactly they communicated more technical/scientific ideas, I don't know. Fortunately for them, the science they end up doing is pretty basic. I don't know what they would have done if it got very technical. And they do continue adding to their lexicon as they work together through the movie.)

Maybe with that explanation, this aspect of the movie won't grate on you as it grated on me.

Overall, a good movie. Often over-cute, marred by Marvel humor, and there's a character arc that feels too writerly to me -- like Weir thought of it and then patted himself on the shoulder -- but worth the $11 and two and a half hours.

Plus, if they're trying hard to pander to normie audiences, normie audiences would do well to reward that.

posted by Disinformation Expert Ace at 04:30 PM

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