This is such an interesting read of Project Hail Mary. I saw it completely differently. I read Ryland as an extremely competent individual who was unsure of himself. The movie was a stride toward taking ownership of your intellect and harnessing it the full extent for me. Love reading that you saw it through a different lens.
Thanks Benjamin! I definitely understand your reading. I think yours is more or less the interpretation that the filmmakers were going for. Cheers for engaging mate.
This is an interesting take. Yes: we are awash in moronic heroes whose incompetence is redeemed by sentimentality. Yet in Project Hail Mary, Grace isn't incompetent--he's just irritating after a while. (The Jar-Jar comparison made me laugh.) Your mention of Maverick at the end made me nod, because as I was reading, I thought of the MI films, where the protagonists are supremely confident and we are drawn to them for that reason.
How does the movie not characterise him as competent?
He figures out how Astrophage breed. Figures out what they are made of. Figures out how to use them for energy.
He and Rocky find out how to kill them.
He’s exceptionally competent - he builds, teaches himself to fly a spaceship, learns how to speak to an alien. He saves his alien friend.
He’s shown on screen being the mind behind saving earth. Then (spoiler) he sacrifices his life to save a friend.
He’s wacky, because he’s trapped alone in a spaceship. But it seems you are unhappy that he didn’t face complete isolation stoically, and then punch something in the face to save earth.
Ryland is shown as an everyman, but he is downright heroic and in his world Earth would have made statues in his honour.
Fully agree that he does some clever things as the plot requires, but I’d argue he is characterised far more in the mode of the lovable buffoon that has been popularised in recent years (and that Gosling has mastered pretty much since The Nice Guys). There is no specificity to his intelligence - he figures these things out because the plot needs him to, but the movie isn’t interested in the psychological work of him grappling with and solving these problems. So the solutions when they came felt more magical/deus ex machina than intellectual/ hard-earned to me. And his bumbling persona read to me as apologetic - ‘don’t worry, we’re telling you he’s a genius but he’s still one of us.’ I definitely didn’t want him to punch anyone.
The key thing I think is that the movie is more interested in telling a buddy story than a scientific problem-solving one, which is a valid storytelling choice, but impacts character in a way that is relevant to my thesis.
Totally fair if you see it differently, that’s the fun of these things!
Hmmm... fair call. I think I am biased because I read the book first. Because it is written in first-person point of view, you get to hear a lot of his thoughts and gives you a deeper understanding of who he is.
They missed a lot of that in the movie, so what you see is "school teacher goes to space and saves the world" and miss a lot of the "ostracised scientist, gets recruited and uses his unusual expertise to save the world.
There are passing mentions to his past, but they don't linger - so they are blink and you miss it moments.
I think you’re off-base about PHM. I’d argue that Grace’s arc in the story is primarily defined by how he transitions from someone who is afraid of the moment (e.g., his teaching career) to being someone who embraces it and rises to the occasion. In other words, he becomes competent.
I think your thesis is interesting, but I don’t think Project Hail Mary is a good example. Grace is extremely competent. It’s more obvious in the book, where he’s walking you step by step through the problems he’s solving. But in the movie, too, the whole story is that he personally made the scientific breakthroughs that allowed humanity to save the earth.
Cheers Will - I’ve seen others make this argument as well, and I can definitely understand it. I’d argue that the film tells us he is competent, and needs him to be clever for the plot, but doesn’t actually characterise him as so. I haven’t read the book, but, as you say, it sounds like he’s characterised a little differently there.
This is exactly my beef with a lot of modern culture - it seems to have lost all aspirational element. I don’t want to sound like one of those “decline of Western civilization” guys, but I wonder where this leads us. And what does it say about people who enjoy watching protagonists who are more stupid than themselves instead of watching people smarter/stronger/better then themselves? Nothing good, tbh.
Seriously, this “foolish everyman” trend needs to die. Although I fear it won’t go away anytime soon.
Decades of being told about how escapist action movies are, “let’s be more realistic”, “protagonists need to be more vulnerable” and here we are.
In my world, though, art needs to be aspirational, a hammer to build character with.
It’s hard to be aspirational when what you are aspiring to has been so thoroughly debased. After watching the selfishness, myopia and impunity of society’s elites for so long can you blame people for losing faith in aristocratic virtue?
I see your point, although honestly I don’t see why depravity of the elites would make you stop aspiring to competence, goodness, knowledge, self-actualization, etc. Elites have rarely been perfect, and yet people were always striving for things they find good and beautiful.
I wasn't referring to "Project Hail Mary", as I haven't seen it. This comment should go to the author of the article, if at all, not to me. I'm just making a remark on a general trend that I have also seemed to notice in culture.
That’s weird, because the author wrote a piece about Project Hail Mary and your response began “this is exactly my beef with modern culture…” If you haven’t even seen the movie, I’m not sure how you can have a “beef” with anything the author claims it represents.
No, the piece is not entirely about PHM. It mentions a whole lot of other movies and touches on a general trend the author observes. The fact that the image is from PHM doesn't make it a piece about this movie. It's just a starting point.
We’ll have to agree to disagree that characters are incompetent unless they show what the author calls a “muscular competence”. God forbid movies show men who use their heads to solve problems, rather than their “tough-guy”ness. If F1 is your idea of “male competence” then go for it, I guess.
Maybe I need to rewatch it but, as far as I recall, ‘The Killer’ does not fuck up every kill; it’s only the inciting incident - the failure of the first job - that sets the whole story in train. What follows is an extremely efficient sequence of events in which he deals with the aftermath of that initial fuck up.
I likewise haven’t seen it for a little while, but my reading was a little different. I thought the juice of the movie was the discrepancy between who he thinks he is (as told via his interior monologue) and what he’s actually doing on screen, ie fucking up. From memory, he messes up the first kill, the nailgun, the dog tranquiliser, and makes a strange decision with the final boss. He also breaks his own rules repeatedly through the movie re no attachments, don’t take it personally, etc.
This conversation is making me want to rewatch it…
I wasn’t really thinking about the ‘juice of the movie’ - the interior monologue - more about the killings. I’d have to rewatch it myself to confirm your analysis. Still, if the inciting incident does cause him to question himself, it also endangers those he’s close to in a way that hasn’t happened previously.
There’s no reason to think he had a rule about no attachments, just that he was meticulous in keeping that part of his life separate… until his screw up puts all that in jeopardy and he has to deal with the aftermath.
You brought up an interesting argument in this. As someone who loves action and suspense, I am drawn to older films and media precisely because that competency was one of the protagonists main qualifiers.
I find myself profoundly uninterested in a lot of modern filmmaking and books because of this trait.
And now it's a little more flexible with the competent protagonist, because in the late 2010s and early 2020s that was an ever harder sell that would get labeled as toxic masculinity if the protagonist was male and he showed confidence.
So sorry that these men don’t fit into your toxic image of the ass-kicking tough guy hero. I don’t think anyone other than you was concerned about Ryland Grace’s masculinity and I certainly didn’t view him as “Jar Jar Binks”. Grow up a little.
maybe they're not idiots, just human??? don't you do silly things and are incompetent in some fields (just like everyone else)? or maybe they should make those movies with characters as super duper humans but with the usual flaws of super duper people like being friends with Jeffrey E. - would that make you feel like they're competent and make you smile? :----)
This is such an interesting read of Project Hail Mary. I saw it completely differently. I read Ryland as an extremely competent individual who was unsure of himself. The movie was a stride toward taking ownership of your intellect and harnessing it the full extent for me. Love reading that you saw it through a different lens.
Thanks Benjamin! I definitely understand your reading. I think yours is more or less the interpretation that the filmmakers were going for. Cheers for engaging mate.
This is an interesting take. Yes: we are awash in moronic heroes whose incompetence is redeemed by sentimentality. Yet in Project Hail Mary, Grace isn't incompetent--he's just irritating after a while. (The Jar-Jar comparison made me laugh.) Your mention of Maverick at the end made me nod, because as I was reading, I thought of the MI films, where the protagonists are supremely confident and we are drawn to them for that reason.
Thanks Daniel! I like your way of phrasing it BTW - “incompetence redeemed by sentimentality.”
Nailed it. In my books, I embrace old-school heroes, cunning, and artful violence.
How does the movie not characterise him as competent?
He figures out how Astrophage breed. Figures out what they are made of. Figures out how to use them for energy.
He and Rocky find out how to kill them.
He’s exceptionally competent - he builds, teaches himself to fly a spaceship, learns how to speak to an alien. He saves his alien friend.
He’s shown on screen being the mind behind saving earth. Then (spoiler) he sacrifices his life to save a friend.
He’s wacky, because he’s trapped alone in a spaceship. But it seems you are unhappy that he didn’t face complete isolation stoically, and then punch something in the face to save earth.
Ryland is shown as an everyman, but he is downright heroic and in his world Earth would have made statues in his honour.
Fully agree that he does some clever things as the plot requires, but I’d argue he is characterised far more in the mode of the lovable buffoon that has been popularised in recent years (and that Gosling has mastered pretty much since The Nice Guys). There is no specificity to his intelligence - he figures these things out because the plot needs him to, but the movie isn’t interested in the psychological work of him grappling with and solving these problems. So the solutions when they came felt more magical/deus ex machina than intellectual/ hard-earned to me. And his bumbling persona read to me as apologetic - ‘don’t worry, we’re telling you he’s a genius but he’s still one of us.’ I definitely didn’t want him to punch anyone.
The key thing I think is that the movie is more interested in telling a buddy story than a scientific problem-solving one, which is a valid storytelling choice, but impacts character in a way that is relevant to my thesis.
Totally fair if you see it differently, that’s the fun of these things!
Hmmm... fair call. I think I am biased because I read the book first. Because it is written in first-person point of view, you get to hear a lot of his thoughts and gives you a deeper understanding of who he is.
They missed a lot of that in the movie, so what you see is "school teacher goes to space and saves the world" and miss a lot of the "ostracised scientist, gets recruited and uses his unusual expertise to save the world.
There are passing mentions to his past, but they don't linger - so they are blink and you miss it moments.
If you’re looking for unabashedly competent protagonists, look no further than Cassian Andor.
I started Andor a few years ago and stopped. By all accounts I should finish the first season and watch the second.
I think you’re off-base about PHM. I’d argue that Grace’s arc in the story is primarily defined by how he transitions from someone who is afraid of the moment (e.g., his teaching career) to being someone who embraces it and rises to the occasion. In other words, he becomes competent.
I think your thesis is interesting, but I don’t think Project Hail Mary is a good example. Grace is extremely competent. It’s more obvious in the book, where he’s walking you step by step through the problems he’s solving. But in the movie, too, the whole story is that he personally made the scientific breakthroughs that allowed humanity to save the earth.
Cheers Will - I’ve seen others make this argument as well, and I can definitely understand it. I’d argue that the film tells us he is competent, and needs him to be clever for the plot, but doesn’t actually characterise him as so. I haven’t read the book, but, as you say, it sounds like he’s characterised a little differently there.
This is exactly my beef with a lot of modern culture - it seems to have lost all aspirational element. I don’t want to sound like one of those “decline of Western civilization” guys, but I wonder where this leads us. And what does it say about people who enjoy watching protagonists who are more stupid than themselves instead of watching people smarter/stronger/better then themselves? Nothing good, tbh.
Seriously, this “foolish everyman” trend needs to die. Although I fear it won’t go away anytime soon.
Decades of being told about how escapist action movies are, “let’s be more realistic”, “protagonists need to be more vulnerable” and here we are.
In my world, though, art needs to be aspirational, a hammer to build character with.
It’s hard to be aspirational when what you are aspiring to has been so thoroughly debased. After watching the selfishness, myopia and impunity of society’s elites for so long can you blame people for losing faith in aristocratic virtue?
I see your point, although honestly I don’t see why depravity of the elites would make you stop aspiring to competence, goodness, knowledge, self-actualization, etc. Elites have rarely been perfect, and yet people were always striving for things they find good and beautiful.
It’s a shame that literally saving the planet is not “aspirational” enough for you.
I wasn't referring to "Project Hail Mary", as I haven't seen it. This comment should go to the author of the article, if at all, not to me. I'm just making a remark on a general trend that I have also seemed to notice in culture.
That’s weird, because the author wrote a piece about Project Hail Mary and your response began “this is exactly my beef with modern culture…” If you haven’t even seen the movie, I’m not sure how you can have a “beef” with anything the author claims it represents.
No, the piece is not entirely about PHM. It mentions a whole lot of other movies and touches on a general trend the author observes. The fact that the image is from PHM doesn't make it a piece about this movie. It's just a starting point.
We’ll have to agree to disagree that characters are incompetent unless they show what the author calls a “muscular competence”. God forbid movies show men who use their heads to solve problems, rather than their “tough-guy”ness. If F1 is your idea of “male competence” then go for it, I guess.
Great piece and I agree with your assessment. The everyman needs a hero too, but superheroes aren't real.
Maybe I need to rewatch it but, as far as I recall, ‘The Killer’ does not fuck up every kill; it’s only the inciting incident - the failure of the first job - that sets the whole story in train. What follows is an extremely efficient sequence of events in which he deals with the aftermath of that initial fuck up.
I likewise haven’t seen it for a little while, but my reading was a little different. I thought the juice of the movie was the discrepancy between who he thinks he is (as told via his interior monologue) and what he’s actually doing on screen, ie fucking up. From memory, he messes up the first kill, the nailgun, the dog tranquiliser, and makes a strange decision with the final boss. He also breaks his own rules repeatedly through the movie re no attachments, don’t take it personally, etc.
This conversation is making me want to rewatch it…
I wasn’t really thinking about the ‘juice of the movie’ - the interior monologue - more about the killings. I’d have to rewatch it myself to confirm your analysis. Still, if the inciting incident does cause him to question himself, it also endangers those he’s close to in a way that hasn’t happened previously.
There’s no reason to think he had a rule about no attachments, just that he was meticulous in keeping that part of his life separate… until his screw up puts all that in jeopardy and he has to deal with the aftermath.
Yep, definitely going to have to rewatch!
I thought Project Hail Mary was a warm bucket of scutter.
lol I’ve never heard that phrase before but I like it. I’m guessing it means bad…
You brought up an interesting argument in this. As someone who loves action and suspense, I am drawn to older films and media precisely because that competency was one of the protagonists main qualifiers.
I find myself profoundly uninterested in a lot of modern filmmaking and books because of this trait.
And now it's a little more flexible with the competent protagonist, because in the late 2010s and early 2020s that was an ever harder sell that would get labeled as toxic masculinity if the protagonist was male and he showed confidence.
So sorry that these men don’t fit into your toxic image of the ass-kicking tough guy hero. I don’t think anyone other than you was concerned about Ryland Grace’s masculinity and I certainly didn’t view him as “Jar Jar Binks”. Grow up a little.
maybe they're not idiots, just human??? don't you do silly things and are incompetent in some fields (just like everyone else)? or maybe they should make those movies with characters as super duper humans but with the usual flaws of super duper people like being friends with Jeffrey E. - would that make you feel like they're competent and make you smile? :----)