'Project Hail Mary': Real Space Science, Real Astrophotography (wcvb.com) 71
Project Hail Mary has now grossed $300.8 million globally after earning another $54.1 million this weekend from 86 markets, reports Variety, noting that after just nine days it's now Amazon MGM's highest-grossing film ever.
And last weekend it had the best opening for a "non-franchise" movie in three years, adds the Associated Press — the best since 2023's Oppenheimer: Project Hail Mary, which cost nearly $200 million to produce... is on an enviable trajectory. Its second weekend hold was even better than that of Oppenheimer, which collected $46.7 million in its follow-up frame.
But the movie is based on a book by The Martian author Andy Weir, described by one news outlet as "a former software engineer and self-proclaimed 'lifelong space nerd'... known for his realistic and clear-eyed approach to scientifically technical stories." Project Hail Mary has plenty of real science in it, whether it be space mathematics, physics, or astrobiology... The film's namesake project is even comprised of the space programs of other nations, such as Roscosmos from Russia, the Chinese space program, and the European Space Agency...
The story relies on work NASA has done regarding exoplanets, or planets outside our solar system... [This includes a nearby star named Tau Ceti approximately 12 light years from Earth which is orbited by four planets — two once thought to be in "the habitable zone" where liquid water can exist.] Tau Ceti has long been the setting used by sci-fi authors and storytellers. Isaac Asimov used it for his Robot series. Arthur C. Clarke's "Rama" spacecraft came across a mysterious tetrahedron in the Tau Ceti system. Authors Ursula K. Le Guin and Kim Stanley Robinson also set stories in Tau Ceti, and it also serves as the extrasolar setting of the 1968 Jane Fonda film Barbarella. Most recently, the Bungie video game Marathon is set in the far-off system, serving as part of the background story for the extraction shooter, about a large-scale plan to colonize the Tau Ceti system.
The movie also mentions 40 Eridani A, according to the article, a real star about 16 light-years away that was said to be orbited by the fictional planet Vulcan, home to Star Trek's Mr. Spock. It's also mentioned in Frank Herbert's Dune as the star system of the planets Ix and Richese ("noted for their machine culture and miniaturisation," according to the Stellar Australis site's "Project Dune" page).
And in a video on IMAX's YouTube channel, the film's directors explain how for a crucial scene they used non-visible-light photography, which is also an important part of modern astronomy. "Even the credits incorporate real astrophotography into the final moments," the article points out, using the work of award-winning Australian astrophotographer Rod Prazeres. "The only difference between his work of capturing space data in images and what ended up on the big screen was that he gave them 'starless versions' of his photographs to make it easier to place credit text over them."
Prazeres wrote on his web site that he was touched the producers "wanted the real thing... In a world where CGI and AI are everywhere, it meant a lot..."
And last weekend it had the best opening for a "non-franchise" movie in three years, adds the Associated Press — the best since 2023's Oppenheimer: Project Hail Mary, which cost nearly $200 million to produce... is on an enviable trajectory. Its second weekend hold was even better than that of Oppenheimer, which collected $46.7 million in its follow-up frame.
But the movie is based on a book by The Martian author Andy Weir, described by one news outlet as "a former software engineer and self-proclaimed 'lifelong space nerd'... known for his realistic and clear-eyed approach to scientifically technical stories." Project Hail Mary has plenty of real science in it, whether it be space mathematics, physics, or astrobiology... The film's namesake project is even comprised of the space programs of other nations, such as Roscosmos from Russia, the Chinese space program, and the European Space Agency...
The story relies on work NASA has done regarding exoplanets, or planets outside our solar system... [This includes a nearby star named Tau Ceti approximately 12 light years from Earth which is orbited by four planets — two once thought to be in "the habitable zone" where liquid water can exist.] Tau Ceti has long been the setting used by sci-fi authors and storytellers. Isaac Asimov used it for his Robot series. Arthur C. Clarke's "Rama" spacecraft came across a mysterious tetrahedron in the Tau Ceti system. Authors Ursula K. Le Guin and Kim Stanley Robinson also set stories in Tau Ceti, and it also serves as the extrasolar setting of the 1968 Jane Fonda film Barbarella. Most recently, the Bungie video game Marathon is set in the far-off system, serving as part of the background story for the extraction shooter, about a large-scale plan to colonize the Tau Ceti system.
The movie also mentions 40 Eridani A, according to the article, a real star about 16 light-years away that was said to be orbited by the fictional planet Vulcan, home to Star Trek's Mr. Spock. It's also mentioned in Frank Herbert's Dune as the star system of the planets Ix and Richese ("noted for their machine culture and miniaturisation," according to the Stellar Australis site's "Project Dune" page).
And in a video on IMAX's YouTube channel, the film's directors explain how for a crucial scene they used non-visible-light photography, which is also an important part of modern astronomy. "Even the credits incorporate real astrophotography into the final moments," the article points out, using the work of award-winning Australian astrophotographer Rod Prazeres. "The only difference between his work of capturing space data in images and what ended up on the big screen was that he gave them 'starless versions' of his photographs to make it easier to place credit text over them."
Prazeres wrote on his web site that he was touched the producers "wanted the real thing... In a world where CGI and AI are everywhere, it meant a lot..."
Has Anyone Here Seen It? (Score:2)
I certainly won't be going to movie theaters for this. I'll wait a couple of months for it to be available on Prime.
Has anyone here actually seen it and able to do a review. Ryan Gossling causes to set my expectations on Underwhelming.
Re:Has Anyone Here Seen It? (Score:5, Insightful)
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All the big productions these days are in some “universe”
Not all, maybe only 2/3rds. But does that surprise you? Would you invest $1 in a chance to make $10? What would you ask about the investment? What about $1000 for a chance to make $10000? You'd probably want a bit more assurance that you will at least get your $1000 back. How much risk will you take on if we change that number to $100million? I'm guessing you will not part with that money without a "proven track record".
Movies shouldn't be sewers (Score:3)
Would you invest $1 in a chance to make $10? What would you ask about the investment?
George Harrison paid half the production costs of Life Of Brian simply because he wanted to see the movie. Cost/benefit analysis works great if you're building a civic sewer system, it's far from appropriate to making art.
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No all you've proven is that people have different perceptions of risk/reward. Your example here is a case of survivor bias. There are plenty of examples out there of people who paid their own production cost only to create complete flops as well. Battlefield Earth failed to get funded until Travolta put a significant amount of his own money into funding the film and it was objectively a trash movie and today is used as a textbook example of not understanding art or the concepts within it (entire thesis hav
Re: Has Anyone Here Seen It? (Score:2)
Is it really non-franchise?
How about this:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Re: Has Anyone Here Seen It? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: Has Anyone Here Seen It? (Score:5, Informative)
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I saw it in eyeMax opening weekend. I rarely go to the theaters these days and this one was certainly wroth it. I've been listening to the sound track all week too. Really well done. Good coding music.
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Toned down? If anything, they added camp. Like turning Rocky into some kind of overly excited dog. And the ludicrously long and stupid posing scene in the airlock? Was that even in the book? A lot of the science in the book got chopped out as well. The movie felt dumbed down. I preferred the book.
Re: Has Anyone Here Seen It? (Score:2)
I saw it and loved it. Definitely worth seeing in the big screen IMO.
Re:Has Anyone Here Seen It? (Score:5, Interesting)
Yes, I saw it. I also read the book. I preferred the book, but I also enjoyed the movie a lot..
The movie was quite faithful to the book, and even though it was a long movie (over 2.5 hours) it didn't seem long and it moved along quite nicely. The alien creature was pretty much exactly what I had pictured while I was reading the book, and they did a good job imbuing it with personality.
I think the movie was worth seeing in a movie theatre.
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I saw it in the theater and while the movie was good, I do think the cinematography doesn't warrant seeing it on a big screen. It seems to have been shot for TVs primarily, so you're not going to be missing anything by seeing it at home.
Re:Has Anyone Here Seen It? (Score:5, Insightful)
Oh I dont know. Some of the scenes at the gas giant in Tau Ceti where pretty spectacular. Was it *Dune* spectacular? No. But I think the immersion of the theatre certainly helps.
Plus it sends a nice signal to the studios saying "more of this please!". Support hard sci-fi, its a frigging rough environment for films in general, and double rough for genre films like this.
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Yeah I saw it , and it was actually really good. Gossling is kind of comical at times, but he actually does really well in this, and the comedy is more in service of the premise that he's a competent scientist and not-so-competent unwilling astronaut, and that he's got a weird friendship with the alien.
From a hard sci-fi point of view its really good, good enough that the few places where it does seem to veer off from known science (The solid xenon that the aliens use as a construction material) seems a lit
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Ryan Gosling is a decent actor, and I'm sure his presence will goose the attendance. I'd definitely give it a gander.
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I saw it and I recommend it (Score:2)
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Woohoo! It's about time! I've long been a fan of Brian Reynolds [wikipedia.org]!
(Oh. Ryan? Who the heck is that?)
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Ryan Gossling causes to set my expectations on Underwhelming.
Did you calibrate against "Project Hail Barbie"?
Re:AI Editor Slop (Score:5, Informative)
I've updated that sentence so it describes 40 Eridani A as "mentioned in Frank Herbert's Dune as the home of Ix and Richese ("noted for their machine culture and miniaturisation," according to the Stellar Australis site's "Project Dune" page [stellaraustralis.com]). Hope that's more informative for you than the original version (which was taken straight from the original article). No AI involved -- and I wasn't dictating it [on] a phone while walking in the market either.
Re: AI Editor Slop (Score:3)
Well when you address the Need Congress that is Slashdot audience and mention aliens in Dune you trigger a strong reaction from us because the whole point of Frank Herbert's Dune universe is that there are no known aliens, all the weirdness of that universe is human derived. Purity of the Human evolution only on the Golden Path's door step.
The only references to alien intelligence is the human created machines that we're defeated once during the Butleriam Jihad and which survived and escaped by travelling
Worth reading the book than seeing it (Score:5, Informative)
I ended up hearing about this movie coming out from the same author that did the Martian whose name is Andy Weir.
So I immediately got the book and read it and after that went to see the movie. I ended up reading his other book, the one that was in between about the girl at the space station and that was pretty enjoyable so.
This movie's definitely enjoyable and we want to see it in a nice theater where we have dinner and drinks and it was definitely worth it. Since I read the book week in advance, it was a nice little visual representation of the book and it was very faithful to the book.
The author definitely captured the ability of doing hard science space stories and making them appealing in book form and also in visual movie form.p
Re: Worth reading the book thEn seeing it (Score:2)
Yes, it's worth seeing the movie.
Sorry about the bad grammar in the original subject. I was dictating it and the phone while walking in the market. I didn't see the mistake.
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I found the book underwhelming. The Martian was a great book, and I read it long before I heard of the movie. Project Hail Mary I found was much more formulaic book and much less compelling a read than The Martian. I haven't read Artemis - in fact, I didn't know of it until recently.
It was my friend who introduced me to Project Hail Mary and said it wasn't as good. After getting my own copy at a local indie bookstore and reading it, I have to agree. It's a nice book, but honestly it lacked a lot of the surp
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Artemis, about a woman living on the moon. I read it too, it was pretty good.
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Good but they 'summarized' al the science. (Score:3, Informative)
Anything that wasn't action, drama, or comedy was largely dropped and almost all of the science was quick summary explanations.
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Exactly the same as the approach to the movie version of The Martian.
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You're forgetting that most of the country has the reading comprehension of an 8th grader.
Re:Good but they 'summarized' al the science. (Score:4, Insightful)
Anything that wasn't action, drama, or comedy was largely dropped and almost all of the science was quick summary explanations.
I think that's necessary. Providing explanations of depth comparable to the book would require a 10-hour movie. Squeezing the story down to feature length requires cutting a lot of exposition. In many books there's a lot of description that can be replaced with visuals, but it's pretty hard to do that with a lot of the science.
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10 hour movie would have been awesome! I think it would have made a fantastic prestige-TV type show.
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I read the book (Score:4, Interesting)
I haven't seen the movie but I did read the book since there has been so much hoopla, and meh. A completely unremarkable book. At about halfway through I was starting to skim it. Written in the first person, the protagonist moves through a long series of improbable difficulties. Which he solves of course, with the help of his trusty alien sidekick. It gets a little tiresome.
The alien is so remotely unlike us that it's a little hard to believe it would have a thought system we could understand and communicate with. Plus it is blind. Nonetheless, communication happens almost immediately. The alien swiftly sets up residence in the human starship and they are cozy as bugs. The unbelievability factor ramps up from there.
I generally like science fiction and have read a lot of it, this book moves through some very well explored literary imagination. There are a few fragments of creativity but nothing at all special.
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The alien is so remotely unlike us that it's a little hard to believe it would have a thought system we could understand and communicate with.
I thought exactly the opposite. I think Rocky is far too "human". I didn't mind it, though, because a lot of the humor would be lost if Rocky was properly alien.
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His behavior is human for sure, emotions and all. But physically (according to the book) his blood is mercury and his atmosphere is ammonia under very high pressure. No eyes and it was never clear how he actually perceives things other than something to do with sound. He is ashamed of his 'eating' process which consists of splitting his body open to remove a waste sack and stuff in some new consumables.
And yet he somehow fits right in, which is critical for the story but so very unlikely.
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Everything in the story was highly implausible. I think you just have to suspend disbelief and enjoy the storytelling.
Re:I read the book (Score:4)
Right, but the storytelling was ham-handed. One manufactured crisis after another. And really there's no excuse for writing things that are completely implausible.
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>> Rocky's echolocation can even work through walls
Yeah, his echolocation can work through impervious xenonite walls and then through a completely different atmosphere/pressure on the other side. Give me a break!
Re: I read the book (and seen the movie...) (Score:2)
Yep, I completely agree with you ZipNada, but I knew that the book is not going to offer up some phenomenal new science fiction shift of a paradigm type of a literary invention.
I wanted something that was very much like The Martian which was a science fiction-based adventure in space instead of on Mars. I would say science fiction lite and enjoyable like a shoot-em-up heist movie except for nerds and geeks with some nice science thrown around; and without having to do any equations or discuss quantum mecha
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>> not going to offer up some phenomenal new science fiction shift
Just something a little fresh would have been nice. Most elements of that whole story have been around the block quite a few times.
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Are you sure you were paying attention when you read it, because that's not what happens in the book. For example, Rocky needs essentially an environmental suit to survive in an atmosphere suitable for humans, due to his planet having much higher pressure and temperature. Communication is established over some time based on engineering principles, which are universal properties of the universe and a classic sci-fi trope for communicating with very different alien species.
I thought it was a pretty good book
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I didn't say Rocky was able to live in Earth atmosphere. I said he "swiftly sets up residence in the human starship".
In the book Grace quickly implements a language translation program on a laptop. They were communicating within hours, starting with rudimentary sign language. Meanwhile on Earth we've been largely unable to decipher the languages of fairly intelligent creatures such as birds, primates, and cetaceans. We don't understand their thought systems and vice versa, so it seems like quite a stretch t
Not actually hard science fiction (Score:3)
A fun movie, but the movie wasn't in any way hard science fiction. I don't think there was any real science in it, other than the distances to various stars. It was hand-wavium from beginning to end.
But, heck, that's par for the course for film science fiction. If you try to find the science in "Dune" or "The Last Jedi", good luck.
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I was turned off when I read that the astrophages are immune to electromagnetic radiation. Also, storing large amounts of energy in an astrophage is dubious at best.
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Even if you don't completely buy Weir's science, he gets into imagining what chemistry and physics apply to varies scenes.
Maybe in the book. In the movie there is no science.
Although I don't think I can come up with ANY plausible explanation for the magical bugs.
Not falling for it (Score:2)
Every time Hollywood sells a movie as 'realistic', it's turned out to be bullshit. The trade mags and entertainment reporters repeat the lie, but that doesn't make it true.
I'll be watching this movie soon, it looks fun. I will not expect them to get physics anywhere close to correct enough that someone with a decent high school physics class under their belt won't see where they got it wrong.
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Wait what?
Are you also dating that love does not in fact transcend the fifth dimension and interstellar was also bullshit?
Come on man.
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And that the 'Newtonian' physics of Gravity wasn't.
I'm a huge buzzkill. I can watch Pacific Rim with a smile on my face, but tell me you've made something realistic when you haven't and it nukes suspension of disbelief for me completely.
Andy Weird is a hack sci-fi writer (Score:1)
It's sci-fi for your mom and dad.
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That's the sci-fi for my mom and dad, so if that's what this guy does...
Was hoping for a more serious film (Score:2)
So I was a bit nonplussed at it being somewhat corny: The alien goes "Rocky! and not the movie!" amongst the things it has learned from Gosling. The religiosity bit with "Do you believe in God" wa
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> All in all, it was just ...so american.
My father often said that if you want tits and explosions to watch with your brain turned off, you watch American. If you want something that doesn't spoon feed you, watch British. If you want to commit suicide, watch something Scandinavian.
Things have evolved a bit since those days, but it's not the worst general rule to start with.
Read the book, forgive the movie (Score:2)
I've read the book already and I'm re-reading it prior to going to see the movie. The book has about as much "real" science as any Asimov or Heinlein or Pournelle book, and meshes that fairly seamlessly to the "what if" science and plot portions of the book.
My big challenge is to see if I can get my kids to read the book before going to see the movie, and if I can get them to do that while it's still showing in IMAX.
I'm tired of seeing (Score:2)
for profit commercial garbage. People can tell the difference between a quality film and a film where the nice exec's step in and rewrite it for profit, and they will vote with their movie tickets, or stay home.
It's a good film. But it's not this (Score:1)
Science removed = Space fantasy movie (Score:3)
Yeah, TFA is not what this movie was. It's a space fantasy movie. It's fine for what it is. But any science was left in the book.
Tau Ceti on the Sinclair Spectrum (Score:1)
Movie is way better than the book (Score:2)
The movie is way better than the book. The book bogs down in the minutiae of calculations, all of which are fundamentally irrelevant to the story. I gave the book a 3/5 rating. The movie skips all of that and focuses on the great story between the two characters. It's only missing a few details, such as the DNA factor, that would explain some actions. Movie is a 9/10.
How it should have ended (Score:2)
Cool video about them aliens. (Score:2)
I haven't seen the movie yet, but I want to. Slight spoiler warning: I watched this really cool interview with the author where he describes the worldbuilding and biology of the alien(s) in the movie: https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]