PEL Presents PMP#219: Weir-ed Sci Fi: Hail Mary and The Martian

Introduction

0:00We're listening to Pretty Much Pop, a culture podcast, sciencing the shit out of popular culture. We're talking about the films made out of Andy Weir novels, Project Hail Mary and The Martian, both which were adapted by Drew Goddard. The Martian came out in 2015, directed by Ridley Scott. Hail Mary just came out, directed by Phil Lord and Christopher Miller. This is Mark Lintenmayer. Just waking up on this podcast with no memory of how I got here, but I'm

0:30sure a steady stream of flashbacks will eventually catch us all up. This is Al Baker, and I just finished watching this movie, and I'm unexpectedly emotionally devastated, so I just couldn't prepare anything to say. It's the same, same, same. I'm Sarah Lynn Brooke, and I'm claiming this podcast in the name of Mars. At long last, my dream come true. Wow. This is Lawrence Weir, and I try to solve my life problems like Project Hail Mary. Now I'm just alone, confused, and hoping a friendly alien shows up to save me. The best alien. Sarah, were you doing the WB

1:03Marvin the Martian? Yes. I'm so glad. I wasn't sure if you guys were going to get Marvin the Martian, but anyway. Okay. Yeah, we got you. We got you. That's my alter ego. That's what you were doing. Okay. I had a feeling that's what you were doing. I was pretty sure, but that's a deep cut, and anyone who's under the age of 40 will not know what you're talking about. This makes me very angry.

1:27So, I've been thinking more about this, you know, if we just were talking about this one movie, it would be a very short conversation. I mean, it was a good movie. You said that last night, and then I went and watched this movie this morning, expecting it to be, you know, a fine but fairly throwaway experience. It is devastating. My whole life is different now after I've seen this movie. It's a devastating movie. Yeah. I don't want to talk about anything else for the rest of the week. I was crying in the movie theater, like legitimate cry multiple times in that movie theater. It really devastated me. Me too. All right. Well, let's

The Martian Book

1:57give our histories such as they are. The Martian, when it came out just as a book before it was a movie, was kind of going around my extended family, but I didn't read it. I didn't jump on the train, so I just read it this week. But I enjoyed the movie when it came out, and it seemed like an exceptional piece of hard sci-fi. I feel like this is a very rare thing for us to have. But I'm curious about how hard we want our sci-fi, how much math, even when there is math going on, we're not following it. We're not doing it along with the characters.

2:29So I'm sort of thinking about how the accuracy compares with, say, philosophical movies or just movies that present sociology or psychology or something. It seems we have a different standard of realism. Anyway, I hadn't really registered Andy Weir as a thing, as an independent entity. Some of the same family members were reading Project Hail Mary before this film came out. I didn't know anything about it. I jumped on that. I really enjoyed the audiobook. It was really great. I managed to squeeze in Artemis as an audiobook, his book between these two

3:03books, which will be adapted into something. Apparently, that was going to be what the film that Lord and Miller were going to make. But then I guess Hail Mary came out and it was better. It was just immediately more cinematic. But I could see Artemis being a TV series, like even a multi-season one. It's just about a moon base named Artemis. But then I started thinking about, we actually just had the launch yesterday as we're recording this, of the Artemis, coincidentally. I was kind of surprised that the launch had the same name as the book. It makes me wonder if

3:36like, and then the movie just came out. It just makes me wonder if maybe they did that on purpose. I don't know. But I was very taken aback that they had very similarities there. No shade intended, but it's a fairly basic name for a moon launcher. That's kind of, it's a little shade, a little shady. It's one of the only, you know, Greco-Roman gods that we don't have a planet named after. So there you go. Yeah. So this just got me reflecting on the fascination with the space program and, you know, how this reflects in these two books slash movies and a new season of For All Mankind

4:07just launched. So I watched the first episode of that. Oh, shit. Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. So the new season of For All Mankind just launched? Just the first episode of it just went up. So. That's one of my favorite shows. Like, I really liked that show. I don't know. If you ask Brian Hurt, a former co-host of these, he says that show is a bunch of nonsense. So in terms of like trying to be hard sci-fi. Well, I mean, some people don't like speculatives, you know, science fiction, alternate realities kind of stuff, but I love that show. I think it's like the first season's middling, but it really picks up in that second season. I like it quite a bit. Anyway, keep going. You're

Project Hail Mary Film

4:40pontificating, Mark. I'm done. I, you know, I enjoyed the entirety. I think Andy Weir is a really smart guy. I think he's an inspiration because the way he started is just doing web stuff, right? Doing web comics, writing The Martian. It was his third book that he just wrote sort of for free, for spec, just putting out on the internet for free for people to read. And the fact that this got picked up and he's remained apparently very modest throughout this. Brian was just telling me that when The Martian came out as a movie, like he still had this

5:11like website from the year 2002 that just had all these texts, like, here's this book. Here's this. Oh, I can't provide a link to this one. Cause it's being, you know, it's the rights got bought up by something, but like not a giant splash of like, I am the screenwriter. You know, I wrote this basis for this major motion picture. So I'm just so happy for him and I want to read more of his stuff. Yeah. He's really cool. He's managed to develop such a unique authorial voice and the way that he tells sci-fi stories is super interesting. And I think your first question mark was a good

5:45one to start on because it is hard sci-fi, but it's really humanistic. He's not interested in applying the hard science for the sake of showing off that he can write like speculative hard science fiction or like solving science problems with cool hard science stuff. That is a part of his work, but it's there to feed the human story and the human drama. And that's what's kind of at the, at the core of it. And there is this really cool new genre, which seems to have emerged

6:15over the last 10, 15 years of that kind of humanistic speculative sci-fi, which is grounded in very real science, but lets itself like play a little more on the periphery. So I'm thinking of Arrival and what's the big one, the Christopher Nolan one that I absolutely shouldn't have forgotten. Interstellar. Interstellar. Yeah. And the Martian and this, and they're all like your Brian Hertz of the world are going to be able to find scientific flaws in all of those things, but the science isn't just window dressing,

6:46but it's not also the whole point. These are all deeply inspirational, humanistic sci-fi stories, which is something we haven't had a way of doing for a long, since, since Star Trek became old

Humanistic Sci-Fi

6:56fashioned. There's not really been an outlet for that kind of role that sci-fi can play until these movies started coming together. That's a very good point, Al. I'll just add Gravity. Gravity is absolutely in that bucket too. Oh, right. But this one is, I'm just off it, so, you know, prone to overstating the case, but God, it's a masterpiece, isn't it? Masterpiece might be too far, but we can talk about it. Might be. It's so good. Maybe. It's really good. I don't know about Masterpiece, because I got some- It's really emotional, so it grabs you and it plays with you.

7:27It definitely is emotional. So I'm aware that I might be still caught up in it. Yeah. I see the tears in your eyes. You did not read the book, right? Not this one. Not before I saw the movie. I read The Martian. It's a different experience. So I'm glad you got the pure experience. Yeah. Sarah, what'd you think of all this? So I watched The Martian when it came out, and then I watched it again last night, and we went and saw Project Hail Mary over the weekend. And I really love both of these films. I'm not a hard sci-fi kind of gal. Once people start talking about science-y stuff,

7:58my eyes kind of glaze over, I have to admit. But what I really appreciated about both of these movies was exactly what you highlighted, Al, which was the humanistic part. I come to story for character. I don't come to story to learn about what a botanist does. So that, for me, was the heart of both of these stories, was that human element. And I really, really loved it. And I don't know how much of that is coming from his novels, because there is so much science in there. And I

8:30had heard that the movie, at least for Project Hail Mary, they had to kind of downplay some of it. I mean, there's only so much you can cram into two and a half hours, right? But they had to kind of downplay it, which I thought did the movie a great service, because we were more focused on those characters. And I wondered, for those of you who have read the books, if there was a lot more focus on the science and less focus on the character, or was it pretty evenly balanced?

Characterization

8:59I think most of the stuff about characters were in the books as well. I think for both of the Martian and Project Hail Mary, there was a little more, I think, actually, in Project Hail Mary about... So there was this interview I linked folks to, I will link, that where Andy was explaining how Project Hail Mary is like five different ideas coming together. And one of them was, what if there was a world crisis, and somebody was just given carte blanche to do whatever was required, take over as much of the world's resources as required to solve this problem?

9:30What would that look like? And I think that was very underdone in the movie. I think that was just a little tiny thing. So that was a major character thing, you know, about the woman who's running the project. But, you know, the movie threw in karaoke and these scenes on sort of the hollow deck, which I don't think were in the book. To devastating effect. God, that karaoke scene devastated me. That, just to add emotional resonance, that, you know, sort of made me roll my eyes a little

10:01bit. I didn't completely... You're so cold-hearted, Mark. Yeah, man. Because one of the things I liked about, because one of the questions was, because I really loved The Martian as well, the movie, and I was thinking, you know, is this just the same movie again? Which, you know, there's something to be said of it. It's kind of, kind of, maybe... A little bit. Kind of is. I mean, I don't think, I don't, I don't think it is, but I think it's, it's a question that you could fairly ask about it. It kind of is. There are a lot of similarities. A man isolated, come on guys, it's kind of the same. It's, the bones are the same. The characters are also not dissimilar, but the supporting characters in the more recent

10:35movie are just far and away. Agree. You really care about all of these weird scientists. Yeah, The Martian's more just like, these are actors I recognize. That's right. There's a lot of... So these people care about Matt Damon too. A stacked cast. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And of course, the, I mean, are we doing spoilers? I don't usually care about spoilers, but so much was surprising and delightful about this movie. Yes, this is so focused on these two films slash books that here on out, we're going to spoil the crap out of them. Well, can I, well, hold on. Can I say something first?

11:08Yeah. Like you guys have been... Sorry. Oh, sure. I mean, I thought I was a podcast co-host here. I thought, I thought I was here. I mean, look, I'm happy you guys, you know, let me in. I haven't read the books. I have them sitting on my shelf. It's just that I have a ton of other books that I'm currently reading right now and that I haven't been able to get to it. I'm still trying to get to Ken by a good friend of mine who wrote that. Anyway, but the point is I didn't get a chance to get to those books. I tried to listen to them, but I just didn't have that much time, you know, running and doing all the stuff that I do to listen to them. I got about halfway through

11:42The Martian, but that's about as far as I got. But I will say that the movies devastated me, particularly Project Hail Mary. It emotionally... Like I went to go watch that with my son, my baby. He just turned 11. Happy birthday to him. He doesn't listen to this stuff. I went to go watch that with him and he got bored, you know, partially through the film. But when Rocky showed up, he was all in because Rocky is such a cute little alien character and such an innovative spin on an alien character because yeah, he talks, but he doesn't talk and it takes seriously the linguistic kind of barriers and challenges. And we slowly get to see how

12:15the character is able to speak to us. And I kind of love that, you know, and I understand that not everyone is going to be hardcore science person. I'm not a hardcore science person, but I do appreciate, I mean, I am a, you know, I work at a university. I am in an institution. Like I appreciate that it takes its time to make people know this is complicated. This is hard. And it shows how the process is to make things work. Just something very simple, you know, in any other kind of science fiction, that's not a hard sci-fi kind of story. Rocky would have just

12:49been walking around on the spaceship, right? But it takes the time to let us know that there are differences between these two atmospheres and they need different kinds of things. I enjoyed that, but those things were there, but they did not overshadow the human component. Because one of the things that I think is similar about the Martian and about this film, I took a whole bunch of notes, but I'm not going to go through all of them. But one thing that really jumped out to me is the fact that survival is collective and not individual. And what I mean by that is that these individuals, they're independent, they're by themselves for a large portion of the story.

13:22But even though they are alone, they have like a cadre of people behind them who are supporting them, you know, who are the reason why they are surviving. And then in Project Hail Mary, we have Rocky who shows up. And Rocky is honestly the hero of the story because nothing would have happened really if Rocky hadn't shown up and kind of helped things happen. So that is a huge component to me that really stood out to me that honestly, I think I'm going to use this in a philosophy class moving forward, because it is a wonderful example of like that ethical dimension of that really kind

13:56of gets close to utilitarianism. And the whole idea that like, you know, yes, we're individuals. Yes, we're kind of separated. But like, there is something that gets us all together, come together. And we're trying to solve this kind of puzzle. And yes, science is there. And yes, science is helping us do it. But like that ethical dimension just kind of jumped out at me. And it really, really kind of emotionally devastated me. Like I, as I said, I cried maybe three, four times in a theater. And I was emotionally devastated that like the day after, like it is a really good film. Now,

14:29I think it's a little too long. Like those are my notes. It's just it's too long, maybe a little too much science. The flashbacks don't always work. But man, when it's working, it is really, really good. And I really enjoyed the film. I mean, I know it was very well telegraphed, but when his son died of the plague. Yeah, sorry, sorry, I just bring you a hamnet. It's a comparative movie experience that was a wonderful. Yeah, that was a wonderful scene. My wife did not walk out of this one did actually enjoy.

14:58It's not it's not that kind of devastating. What I found interesting with both of these movies is that we don't know a whole lot about each of the main characters, what they were like off their ships, right? We don't really have an idea. We know that Grace was a middle school science teacher. We know that he has a PhD in molecular biology. We know that he used to have a mate and doesn't have a mate anymore. We know he's stubborn. We definitely know he's stubborn. And that's the reason why he's teaching

15:30that class. We do have hints of his character, but we don't have a ton of information about him. And the same with Matt Damon's character, we don't have a ton of information, which when I think about it, I think that that's pretty rare, especially a character that is born in a novel, because you get all of this background information, usually in a book, and we have to end the challenges to translate that to the screen when it's adapted. But we don't have that problem here. Yet I feel like the filmmakers Ridley

16:04Scott and the Project Hail Mary team, they did such a great job of making us care about these characters who really don't have much of a backstory at all. Yeah, I should change my answer to your question before, Sarah, about the characterizations. I feel, you know, Andy Weir is not Dostoevsky. His main character is sort of that pluckiness that is his personality. If you read his webcomic that he wrote in the year 2000, like that's the sense of humor that is coming through. I think he tries harder in Artemis. The protagonist is a woman and she has

16:40like a definite backstory of like why she is on the moon and her relationship to her Saudi Arabian slash Kenyan culture. So I think he's really like making steps in this direction. And in the book, the Hail Mary protagonists, I think has a bit more of a backstory to motivate why he has, you know, not to spoil something really near the end, but that he is a, let's say the, not just the reluctant hero, but the... Okay, let's get into spoilers. Okay. Like, because we're talking around things.

17:15All right. We need to get into spoilers so we can talk about this. So listener, just know that we all enjoyed the film. Know that you should watch the film as soon as you possibly could. Honestly, you've probably already seen the film because the film is a huge financial success, but know that we're going to spoil the film moving forward. This podcast is brought to you by Squarespace. I want to interrupt this conversation about my new favorite movie to tell you about someone I care about who is in a difficult situation. His name is Mark Linzenmayer. You know him as the wise and gracious host of this very podcast. What you may not know is that somewhere out there bearing his name

17:51is a website. It has no design, no layout, no styling. It is when all is said and done. A list of blue underlined links interspersed with red text on a background, which I can only describe as mauve. It's the kind of thing that would have seemed a little bear when I was going to see Fellowship of the Ring in cinemas. Clicking some of the links makes my browser behave like I'm trying

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19:29listening. Okay, Al, what were you going to say spoiling the film? I was going to bring up Rocky and how huge he was, but the point of character is really sound and there's, I think, a couple of interesting things from it. So yeah, the characterization isn't particularly deep, very clearly a self-insert. But what's interesting about the kind of self-insert that it is, is that the heroes of both of these stories are not every men. They're like skilled, knowledgeable people.

20:01Underappreciated geniuses. Underappreciated geniuses. But I think the thing is they're not geniuses, right? These are competent scientists. That's a very important point. Yeah.

Drew Goddard's Work

20:09And I think a really important thread running through both of these things is that neither Matt Damon nor Ryan Gosling are world geniuses. In Project Hail Mary, they make a really, really strong and good point about the fact there are literally hundreds of thousands of people with the same qualifications. The reason that he's on that ship is that he was in the right meeting so he knows all the context. And he has a genetic, this is not, this did not come up in the movie, but that like only one very small percentage of the population can survive the long-term coma process. And

20:40he just so happened to register. Well, I'm glad that they cut that out of the movie because that's a really dumb, dumb point. Yeah, I don't like that either. And it really undercuts my point, so I'm going to ignore it. But the point that I wanted to make was that that's kind of what makes it humanistic in my view. Like there is nothing, these aren't the kind of heroes who are special. These are the kind of heroes who are ordinary and by succeeding in their heroics, that's why it's inspirational, right? Because the reason why this feels so important and current and why I think it connected so hard with it is it's a way

21:13of telling stories which just displays of like fundamental faith in the capability of people and like including like the moral capability of people. Like I loved in this movie how when Rocky and, I'm just going to keep calling him Ryan Gosling, first made contact. Rocky and Grace first made contact. There was no, there was like one throwaway, no one seriously thought there was an attack going on, right? No one was like, they so quickly identified. We are both scientists and we're both here to help each other. And the fact that that is a natural and coherent

21:47step in a story means that you're telling a really powerful kind of story. It's also really optimistic. Yeah. It's an optimistic science fiction story, which Very much like Star Trek. Yeah, we don't get a lot of those stories these days. And I wonder if one reason it's just hitting so hard right now is because we're living in a world where science and intellectualism has been downplayed. I'm sorry. Cut that out. Cut that out. Cut that out. I'm sorry. Well, yes, I agree. And this is a, this is a world where science is revered and we don't

22:22live in that world right now. We live in a world of where it is thrown out, where we have people who don't believe in science and have loud microphones. I think it's really refreshing to be in that space for two and a half hours where science isn't actively hated. Okay. So we're recording on April the 2nd. On April the 1st, they launched Artemis into space and it's going to go around. And there's a black astronaut who's going to go to space. Very happy about that. But anyway, and they're going to go to

22:54the moon and come back. And I saw echoes of that optimism. Like I remember when I was younger, we really revered scientists and we really revered science and we really were awed by the possibility of space travel and whatnot. And that's definitely dimmed down some, but this really took me back to that childhood and those feelings of that childhood. And one of the things I think that Al said is really impactful for me is that this, I mean, now Mark may know more about the genetic

23:25makeup of the characters and the fact that, you know, because the person has a particular genetic makeup, they were able to survive this travel, but that's not in the film. So I'm not going to respond to that in the film. It just, it just presents it as though he was just in the right place at the right time. And he's competent. He is utterly competent, right? Yes. He's smart. Yes. He has his PhD. Yes. He's gone to school, but it opens very, it really quickly lets us know, as Al has already said, that there are many other individuals who are just as smart, many other

23:58individuals who have the same intellectual abilities. And some are even probably smarter than him. He just got lucky when it comes to, you know, coming up with an idea and following it through. And it really kind of hit home that it's not about being the smartest because there's, there's many films where the protagonist is the smartest person in the room and the protagonist is the smartest person on earth, particularly science fiction films, right? But this doesn't go that route. It just makes the person very, very competent. And the person is able to engage

24:30in problem solving and the person, you know, yes, the person has scientific literacy, but he's also very persistent and he messes up and he keeps going. And it really speaks to the fact that that's how science is, right? That is the way that it is. You have an idea, you try something out, you fail, you figure out what you did wrong, you go back and you do it again. And that is the heroism. It's just science, right? And just the scientific method and someone who's dedicated to that. And that was really impactful for me. And I really have, I was really happy to see it.

25:01I was thinking about how these two films are similar and how these two films are different. And I felt that The Martian was really about self-reliance and Project Hail Mary was really about teamwork. How you have Grace, who is this molecular biologist, and then you have Rocky, who's essentially an engineer and you have them come together and they're able to solve their problem. And that I thought was really something that as an audience member, I could really kind of hang my hat on because we don't see enough of that either. It isn't about, you know,

25:35this, this lone, you know, like you just said, this isn't about some lone genius who is marked as special. He is special, but he's really essentially MacGyver in space. You know, he is trying different things. Very true. Very good. Very good. That's a good point. And he's creative and he's coming up with ideas, but he can't do it by himself and he doesn't do it by himself. And I love that message. That teamwork here is important. There is a clear, like ecological theme that we should probably mention. The action of the movie

26:06is prompted by the fact that there is, you know, an unstoppable ecological apocalypse happening. And there's a very powerful point in the film where the woman who's leading the project tells Grace that we've got 30 years left or we're going to lose a quarter of the population. And that's if everybody cooperates to ration food. And of course they're not going to. Yeah. And of course they're not going to. But that, and that makes it so powerful that in the film, the two heroes are people who are just cooperating, even though neither of them,

26:38so this is never mentioned, but both of them have every reason in the world to stiff the other one to make sure that their own planet gets saved. It never, it never comes up. There is never a question about it. And there's that, that kind of faith in teamwork and friendship. And I'm about to cry again, but it's, it's just really, it's really good to see. Al, you're going through it today. Well, especially because the movie's not like the movie's not naive. That's the point. They say the thing about like, everyone's going to die and everyone's going to die because people can't work together. Uh, so it is, you know, grounded. It understands the context that it's

27:10dealing in, but it still puts forward this, this incredibly like profoundly hopeful story, which is just really, makes it really beautiful. One thing I did notice, and Mark, we still haven't gotten to the thing that you wanted to spoil. We need to probably spoil that because that's very important to the story. Um, but I'm going to let you spoil it. But one thing that I noticed is that we didn't get much in the way of politicians in this film. There was no politician walking in saying, we must do this. We must do that. What not? It was the scientists who were leading things. And I think that that was a very interesting, and I, and I even read Rocky. I don't remember like,

27:43you guys can help me on this. Was Rocky a scientist? He had to be a scientist to be doing space trouble. I thought he was an engineer. He was an engineer. He was not the scientist. But like, so science adjacent. Well, your, well, your statement that Rocky was the real hero, nothing would have happened without Rocky. I didn't know if that was actually made clear in the film that in the book, it's very clear that they have complimentary skill sets that they, uh, besides just the species differences. I intuited it in the film. I mean, I don't know if it was explicitly stated, but I kind of intuited that they had, you know, a complimentary skill set.

28:14Yes. I mean, they have complimentary technology in that, like, they don't forget anything. How did Rocky learn his language? He didn't have a computer. So that's the thing. They never developed computers and the whole thing, like, well, the stuff they would boil away in their atmosphere. So how could they have any really technology? This was very thoroughly explored. I think, you know, Andy's, the way that he came up with this alien race and the kind of atmosphere and the kind of, uh, you know, that they don't have eyes because they, no light could get into the planet because the atmosphere is so thick, you know, that it's,

28:47it's very coherent. And then his specific thing that he just happened to be in the part of the ship that the astrophage was all around this fuel. And so that's what saved them from radiation because in some ways that race was dumb that they didn't know anything about relativity and radiation. And a pretty key thing in the book is that Rocky doesn't realize how far his, you know, he thinks he has all the time before his, uh, planet is going to be, his sun is going

29:19to be dimmed enough for it to matter to his planet. Uh, you know, doing the differences of the distance from that sun and other things about the planet. But he doesn't realize that even though it's five years or whatever for him, it's been much longer because they went near light speed. And so this is kind of a little bit of a tragedy, like, Oh, there actually is some urgency. And also the fact that he's been apparently sitting there for 50 years because he didn't know what to do. So it wasn't even just, you know, Rocky is the real hero. Like Rocky couldn't

29:49do shit by himself. Like that. He needed the humans. I like Rocky in the film. It's very consistent. He's my hero. These are all improvements. I think these are all things that the movie improved by dropping. It's just stated straight out. Oh yeah. Their race doesn't know anything about relativity and stuff, but like it doesn't spell out what that means. So I don't think that the film is actually contradicting anything. It's just leaving out details. No, I'm just trying to think how good, like if it's, if it's even possible to build a spaceship, if you don't understand relativity, like to build a functioning spaceship, if you don't, surely you can't build a spaceship

30:22that's going to go where you think it's going to go. If you don't understand on Newtonian, this is the wrong podcast to have that conversation. Yeah. I don't remember how, how they worked out where the ship was going to go and how it would be directed, but also that it sort of made a little deal about how all this stuff that Rocky can make very quickly is with this solid form of xenon. And that's a very big thing in the book. And, and actually a very key plot point. I thought this was just very hand wavy how, Oh, Oh. So this is a big spoiler. We think we've worked out everything, but we found out that the Tao Miba,

30:55the thing that we've developed to fight the astrophage can now, because we bred it in the xenon tubes. Now it can burrow itself. It can go through xenon. And so it actually, it spoiled all the fuel only in his new Rocky produced xenon tanks that were replacing the ones that just fell off in that one scene where they're escaping the atmosphere, but all of Rocky stuff is made of xenon. So all of his fuel is now shit. I feel like that was just sort of hand waved about in the film,

31:26why that would really be an issue and how this could possibly work. I don't follow. I mean, it seems to be, it seems to be pretty clear. One thing that Lawrence pointed to earlier about the different atmospheres, right? And that was a really lovely example of a piece of hard science, which is there not just for the sake of it, but because it directly fuels a character driven plot point later on. I mean, the movie had me so far in its clutches. I should have seen it coming, but I didn't. But as soon as you know, oh, Rocky can't survive inside the spaceship atmosphere, you should know that he is going to have to heroically crawl through it to

31:57press a button at some point. And indeed, that is what happens in the movie. I didn't see it coming either, but it caught me off guard. Yeah, exactly. But that's the obvious plot point. And that's good use of the hard science, right? You introduce it and it pays off. And that seemed to be exactly what was going on with the xenon thing. Like it made sense in the moment, Rocky can make the new thing. You've used it to solve the one problem, but it creates another. And that gives you a reason to have to go back and save him. And it kind of worked as far as it needed to. For me, I mean, you're already dealing in sci-fi magic with the weaving of a state of an element that doesn't exist. So sure.

32:32I mean, it's hard sci-fi, but it's still sci-fi. And I don't know how deep the book goes into this. And low key, it sounds like I wouldn't have liked the book very much because I like the movie so much better. Because for example, I'm re-watching LA Confidential and I read that book many, many years ago. And I liked that they made changes to the movie because it's a little bit more coherent. It's one of those things where I think that, you know, movies are a different element, movies are a different kind of medium. And I liked that they made these changes. And even with the changes, the movie was way too long. I thought it was much longer than it needed to be. So I have a

33:03feeling I probably would like the movie better, but I really enjoyed what they did with it. And I thought that it was, you know, like they kept what they needed, but they got rid of the things that they didn't. So you mean LA Confidential was too long, not that Project Hail Mary was too long? No, I'm talking about Project Hail Mary was too long. Oh, okay. LA Confidential was perfect. I have no notes. No notes on that one. I had Project Hail Mary as well. It was two and a quarter hours. That's positively lean for a sci-fi epic. Movie was way too long. I'm sorry. Yeah, I think it was two hours and 34 minutes or something. That is long, but they crammed so much into that movie.

33:40I don't know how they would have been able to, they had to yada yada the science. They just, they had to. Otherwise, what are you going to cut? Otherwise then you'd have to cut character. And that's just not why we come to the movies. Sure. I'm officially done here with trying to recount whole plot points in the book, because I feel like I did a hash of it. And the thing that else that you couldn't follow. And it's, you know, so this'll leave some, when I came out of the movie theater, I thought like, this was a great illustration of a book. And this

34:12is the way that a book and a movie should relate to each other. That of course the book is going to have more information. Usually it's character information. In this case, it's science information. It's not actually a lot more character, but a little bit, but you want to actually see Rocky. You want to actually see all the spacewalks and the cool stuff. I mean, when it's done as well as it is, especially because also everything about the movie is beautiful. Like everything, all the space stuff looks great. The way they do the movement in space, the fact that everything properly really reminded me of The Expanse, but even better the

34:46way that everything properly moves the way it does when there's no gravity acting on it. And it's just no one can see that I'm making gestures. I see it, Al. I see it, Al. You know what I mean? Everything looks like it's claymation because it's moving without any gravity attached. Gorgeous. At the beginning of the film, I was wondering if it was worth, because I saw it in IMAX and I was wondering if it was worth the IMAX. I was wondering if it was worth it, but the movie is absolutely IMAX worthy because when you get to the latter half of the film and you get to the climax and you get to all the space, you know, timey-wimey stuff, it really, really pays off,

35:22right? It is an absolute spectacle. Like I lament the fact that there's probably going to be some person in a couple of months who's going to watch this on their iPhone in the bed as they're going to sleep and not really be able to kind of take in the spectacle of the visuals of the film because it is a strikingly beautiful film. It is a wonderfully, the cinematography did a wonderful job and the special effects were really, really good and I was really taken aback by how beautiful the film was. Yeah. Yeah, a lot of practical effects too. I mean, I think Rocky was a puppet.

35:59I can kind of tell that. I can kind of tell. Yes, I was trying to figure out what he was. He looked amazing. Who did the voice? Yeah, I don't know. I don't know. Was it Alan Tudyk? It sounded like it was probably. No. Ortiz something? The guy that did the voice is the main puppeteer. Okay. Ah, okay. Oh, cool, cool, cool, cool. I thought that was you when I was watching the film, Mark. I could really, we're really muppetated. You should do some voiceover work, Mark. It wasn't Marvin? You have a really good voice for that. We should give a little credit to Drew Goddard who adapted

36:30both of these. Unbelievable screenwriter. Really good. As well as adapting World War Z. He wrote Cloverfield, Cabin in the Woods. He co-wrote and directed, co-wrote with Joss Whedon, as well as writing for Buffy Lost. He did Daredevil, the first iteration of the show. Honestly, Drew Goddard is low-key really good at what he does. Yeah. And he stays in his lane. He doesn't deviate from his lane too much, but he's really good at this sci-fi stuff. He's really good at either comic book stuff

37:02or comic book adjacent stuff. He's really done something. He's made a name for himself. Now, I will say that for my money, and it's kind of unfair to say this, but for my money, The Martian is a better directed film because, of course, there's Ridley Scott. It just looks on a whole different plane. But this is a very well-directed film, though. It's really something that Drew Goddard was behind both of these films as far as the screenplays are concerned. I'm really impressed by that. Absolutely fair point on Ridley Scott, but I didn't know this was a Lord and Miller film going into it. And they did a really good job. Halfway through, I had to say who made

37:32this movie. But it's not just that they did a good job. Their last six, seven projects, everything they've done since Claddle with a Chance of Meatballs has been genuinely outstanding. And you talked about that Drew Goddard is a sleepyhead. They've kind of sneakily become the most consistent blockbuster filmmakers working. Are they the new Steven Spielberg? I don't know. I don't know. I mean, Loris was turned away from the camera, so he's not... Because otherwise he would shout at me if he's saying something like that. I mean, they were famously fired from Solo. I would not shout at you. Steven Spielberg had to start off somewhere. They're doing some really

38:05good stuff. I had to check because I knew that they were involved in Spider-Verse movies. I had to check what they directed it or not. But no, I mean, they're definitely doing something interesting. They started off in animation. I love their animation stuff. Their human projects, it shows a lot of promise. It's not theirs. It's not as polished, but it shows a lot of promise. But they're really good at spectacle. And another thing that they're very good at... I mean, I'm going to tell myself a little bit, but like the Lego movie, like another thing that they're really good at is drawing out emotion. Did you cry at the end of the Lego movie? Is that what you're

38:39saying? I did. I'm going to be honest. They're really good at drawing out emotion. Lord Miller absolutely hit my buttons every single time. Like the Spider-Verse. Yeah. They're really good at drawing out emotion in really kind of any kind of scene. And so, I mean, you guys might be learning this about me, but in addition to being a horror person, like I am a melodrama person. Like I cry at shit. I have no problem admitting that. And so I think that I might've cried at almost every one of their movies, including Cloudy Widow's Chance of Meatballs. So there's an emotional scene in that one.

39:12Like, so I'm like, they're really good at it. What about 22 Jump Street? Did you cry at that one? That one didn't tug on my heartstrings. Looking through their wiki page, Sarah, for whatever is the most objectionable thing. But I laughed a lot, but no, I didn't try. Sort of back to the weir of it all. Stricture, using structural things to limit your creative choices when coming up with fiction. And usually it's characters. Usually it's, all right, I outline these characters, put them in the scene and then what would they do? But here we're adding like nature and scientific law being

39:49one of the things. And in fact, an inciting thing that we're going to set up, you know, what the situation is. And one of the founding ideas of this, which we're admits is actually bullshit, is this astrophage molecule that stays the same temperature, no matter what, like you could put it on the sun and it would still stay at a lukewarm. And like, how could this work? So he says, like, actually on a quantum level, it doesn't work. And I don't even remember his explanation. This, this maybe says something about how I respect the fact that math and science are being done, but I don't

40:24need to do it along. I think this is the, it makes you feel smarter being in the presence of this stuff being done. But yeah, I just, I think that's a cool way of, you know, that he says like, as much as I would like characters to do this or that, if the science does not allow it, then I don't let it turn out that way. That video you posted Mark about him talking to, it was produced by his publisher and he might've been talking to one of his editors or something. But anyway, the interview was really interesting because the way that he sees hard science as kind of a cheat, because he admits his

41:01strength is not necessarily on character, but it's definitely on plot. And he definitely knows his stuff. He's very much, you know, knows the stuff about science and he wants to make sure that he gets that right. And so that if it's not right, then he throws that out. And he says that you automatically root for the character when the bad guy is essentially nature. You know, even if you have a human being who is the bad guy, there's some part of you, or he says as a viewer that kind of

41:31wants them to see that them get their licks in, I think is how he's phrased it. But with science, you are fully on the side of the creatures who are working to survive against nature. You're always going to be on their side. And I thought that was so interesting. And the way that he views it as an author as kind of a cheat. Yeah. It seems to me like science functions in Andy Weir stories, particularly like how magic functions in fantasy stories, which is to say you set up the rules and what doesn't, doesn't feel

42:03like a cheat. Because if, if the idea of hard sci-fi is this should be, you know, as much like real science as possible, then as you say, Mark, like the inciting incident doesn't make sense because the monster doesn't make sense. So, you know, do you go back to the drawing board and come up with a scientifically plausible sounding monster? Or do you just say, okay, the limits of my scientific, my scientific realism ends where like the action of the plot has to take precedence. So we admit of the quantumly impossible sunlight eating bug thing. But the thing that works is they carefully

42:34establishes that the way that characters succeed or fail against nature is all entirely to do with the laws of science and physics as we understand them, or as the characters can explain them. So it feels fair. The point about failure is really, really, it was really, really good, I think. Because yeah, it's important that we learn what the rules of science are. And that means seeing the failure, the learning from the failure. And it means that we, you know, we get to earn the success and the point about, yeah, you automatically root for the people surviving, especially if you've got even a

43:06minimal reason to like them. That's absolutely right. But yeah, it feels like a really interesting way of essentially writing fantasy because you have to do the same kind of work to make the moves feel fair, to make the plot feel fair, to make the reward and punishment feel fair. And that gets you out of having to argue about where the inevitably unfaithful science comes in. Because you have to say, look, it's just functioning like a magic system. It doesn't actually have to bear any real resemblance to the way real science is. It just does so, so that the audience has an easy time

43:38following. Because I did some research into this guy and he doesn't have a PhD in science. He, I don't even think he finished college, but his parents were, well, one of his parents was a scientist. I think the other one was an engineer. And so what it does is like a scientist writing this particular story will probably be like, no, we got to adhere to the rules of science and yada, yada, yada. But what it allows for him to do is to, yes, have some science. Yes, to have some hard science in there. But as Al said, to allow for it to be, you know, a little, a little magic-y, right? And

44:12for some flourishes and for things to happen that would not really happen in the real world. But nevertheless, he allows for some flourishes to come in. And I think that is one of his strengths, honestly, instead of as one of my good friends who is a PhD in physics, doesn't like the movie or the books very well, we say, no, that wouldn't happen. That's not how science works, but it works for the purposes of storytelling. And I appreciated it. With The Martian, because he released in the way he did, he says that he got a lot of feedback from actual scientists to beef up some particular

44:44things, like to make sure the math was right. And, you know, so this actually was just like the character. He was supported by this audience of science geeks that was helping him bolster to make the content. But the fundamental start of the whole thing, where there's a Martian sandstorm that, you know, strands him on the planet, apparently scientists told him that's not the way that works. That would never happen. And he's just like, too bad. I mean, I needed to set up the plot.

45:14It's a good storytelling. Like, it's a good story. I'm going to use what is best for my story, even though science doesn't work like that. I appreciate it. And the fact that he pointed out that the main initial thing is like, how do I get enough water? And that after he wrote the book, that they discovered actually that the soil is full of water. So too bad. Like, this is why I like philosophy more than science, because as soon as you think you've learned something, you find out that that was actually wrong. It changes on you. I completely agree, Mark. Oh my gosh, I agree.

45:46Right. Science also changes too. So I can... Yeah. Philosophy doesn't though. Philosophy doesn't change. No, that's the point. We're still arguing over the same things that were 2,000 years ago. And that's the way we like it. I think the Martian took that sort of writing of what's the science problem, next science problem, next science problem to an extreme. And I do like the point that you were pointing, saying, Al, that, you know, maybe not a genius, but actually it was in the Martian, the movie added the epilogue

46:18where he's teaching some students and saying, like, look, you're under pressure. Just solve the immediate problem in front of you. Do some math. Do the next math. If you solve enough problem, you get to live. Like, that was a brilliant coda. And it's not in the book at all. Like, he doesn't get back to Earth yet. They just stopped the plot there. And I think that points out, yes, that these are doable things, maybe different. I was sort of seeing the science as a spectator used in the same way that the geniuses on the various, in fact,

46:52one of the Drew Goddard things that he just adapted was this show High Potential, which is a police procedural with a genius character, as often happens on these shows, who can just solve crimes using science magic. The power of autism? Pretty much. Yes. Yes. But you're right. It is kind of a different thing, even though the appeal is similar, having the genius. We were talking in one of the after talks about Ludwig, you know, a guy that is a master puzzle solver played by David Mitchell that he could

47:24sweep in and do these permutations and figure out who the murderer was just based on the way that you would do a logic puzzle. But they don't do it slowly enough for you to actually follow it. So like, it is just more like you marveling at this cleverness, as opposed to where is a little more, you know, invites you to try to follow along and learn with him. But at the same time, if your whole book is just problem, problem, problem, problem, problem, the end, how many books can you really do like that? So I feel like Artemis and Hail Mary both had additional elements,

47:57like more normal, you know, it's a first contact story. That's not the same thing as problem, problem, problem, problem. It's a, you know, he had to use the problem, problem, problem in designing the alien, but not necessarily just in every single thing that happens on the screen. I think both the Martian and Project Hail Mary are aspirational worlds. I don't think we live in those worlds. I don't think we treat people in the same way that the people in these worlds are treated. I, it's, so this optimistic tale still is depressing me, I think. Even having all of these

48:36very intelligent people all coming together for one specific goal is just, it would never happen. I don't know if you're right. I mean, I think that the absence of politics makes this possible. Yeah, that's not, we don't live in that world. But the thing is, like, if we're facing extreme conditions, they're right that, you know, and Al has already said this, that people probably wouldn't work together to ration and all that kind of stuff. Like, that part is true. But the idea of going

49:09somewhere to kind of fix this problem, eh, I could see it. And I do know enough scientists to say that scientists do work together like this and they do come together. It's just always politics that pushes them away. I like to think that we live in a world, like, where something like this could be possible if we're facing this kind of apocalyptic threat. I like to think we're living in that kind of world. I mean, but I'm an optimist, so. But the obvious cynical point there, Lawrence, is that we are living in a world which faces that kind of apocalyptic threat. Yeah, that's true. We are. Yeah, we are.

49:39Right. Again, that one of the premises of this book was just, of Hail Mary was, what if politics wasn't an issue, whatever, you know. So that's just like, imagine along with him. But certainly in The Martian, one of the characters is, you know, just trying to defend the space program and we don't want this to look bad. We don't want to show his corpse. So we won't even like put the telescope on the area where he was, which if that had been adhered to, then the whole thing would have gone quite differently. That he ends up having to be overridden at key

50:11points or else, you know, politics would have screwed up everything. And there's a similar similar things in Artemis that it's all about this moon base that is a city. How did it get funded in the first place? Why does it exist? Oh, there's an organized crime element. Why is there an organized crime element? Why is that allowed to be there? Well, because we couldn't get money to actually make the thing happen in the first. You know, so there's interesting sociological problems. If you're not doing pure science, science, science, science, it becomes more like black mirror. It becomes more like science. How do people react to the

50:43science? That's the normal sci-fi thing. And I, and that's great. That's the, you know, you would expect that. And then how do people, how do humans emotionally, not just as a society, we become like brave new world or something, which is a kind of science fiction that doesn't even necessarily involve anything that's beyond our current technology, right? We have drugs, we could, we could create a brave new world now, but it's all about the sociological science fiction. So yeah, you're always going to involve some of that. And that's, I think the direction that Andy's going. Yeah. Any other final thoughts about this? Yeah. I love this movie. I'm going to

51:16watch it again this weekend. I'm definitely going to buy the movie because I want to own it. I want to have a physical copy of it and I might go watch it again and watch it again in IMAX. And I think watching it again, knowing where it's going, I might even enjoy it more, honestly, because the first time I was just kind of surprised by things. I want to see the beats. I want to see what they're, what they built. I'm really eager to rewatch it. So yeah, high recommend for me. Yeah, me too. I love this movie. And I wish the world was the world we're living. All right. Well, in the after

51:47talk, which I know Lawrence is not going to be on, but anybody else can stick around with me. I will, I'll share a few more little tidbits of book to movie stuff and some of the other Andy weird things that I looked at. And we can maybe talk about some other related media that we didn't get into. Thanks everybody for hanging with us. Bye guys. Bye bye. Bye. Thank you.

52:08Pretty Much Pop is part of the Partially Examined Life podcast network. Get more Pretty Much Pop at prettymuchpop.com. Get bonus content for every episode at patreon.com slash prettymuchpop.