This week sees the release of Project Hail Mary, the highly anticipated new sci-fi movie starring Ryan Gosling and helmed by directors Phil Lord and Christopher Miller. Hype for Project Hail Mary has been high for some time, but was kicked into overdrive a few weeks ago as reactions from early screenings were glowing enough to be seen from space. Proper reviews for the film have backed up the hype, confirming Project Hail Mary as one of the first great movies of the year. For fans of Andy Weir’s novel, however, the arrival of Project Hail Mary is one they’ve been anticipating for years, and not just the past few weeks with all the tremendous praise for the movie.
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Like with Weir’s previous novel that became a blockbuster movie, The Martian, the process of getting Project Hail Mary to the big screen means the adaptation has to make some sacrifices. Clocking in at 475 pages, it shouldn’t be too much of a surprise that there are elements from Weir’s book that aren’t present in theย Project Hail Maryย movie, and that a lot of condensing and combining has to occur for the film. That said, these ten moments from the Project Hail Mary book are huge ones for readers, and they’re not found in the movie at all. Full Spoilers for Project Hail Mary, the book and the movie, will follow.
10) Coma Resistance Gene
Given the length of the trip from our solar system to the Tau Ceti star system, the only star that is unaffected by the Astrophage problem, one of the ideas the Hail Mary project comes up with is an extended coma for the astronauts put aboard the ship. Stratt addresses this quite early in the story, revealing that a study was done in Thailand that began as a way to consider if cancer patients could be put into an extended coma in order to carry out their chemotherapy treatments and keep them from being awake for the process. In the end, it turned out not to work, but it led to the discovery that some humans, only one in every 7,000 people, are actually resistant to the health issues caused by long-term comas.
This is revealed to be one of the primary qualifying methods for selecting the crew of the Hail Mary, and, eventually, why Ryland Grace is selected for the mission after the deaths of DuBois and Shapiro, as he possesses the gene. None of this is in the film, though, not in a substantial way like the book.
9) Stratt Has a Full Pardon From All Global Superpowers
One scene in the book that doesn’t appear in the film at all, and its outcome isn’t even referenced, is when Stratt and the Hail Mary project get sued by the “Intellectual Property Alliance” because the team behind the Hail Mary has copied “literally every singel piece of software that has ever been copyrighted, as well as every single book and literary work” available in digital formats. In any normal circumstances, this would be a major legal battle with hefty fines, as Stratt and her team have circumvented licensing fees with all of these bodies; however, Stratt successfully has the suit thrown out after she reveals the ultimate trump card: an international treaty granting her personal immunity from “prosecution from any crime anywhere on Earth.”
Not only did the United States Senate ratify this treaty, but the cherry on top is that the United States president issued her a preemptive pardon “for any and all crimes” she’s accused of within the United States while developing the Hail Mary project. You won’t find any of this in the Project Hail Mary movie, though.
8) Grace Works Directly With the Astronauts
A key component of the prep for the Hail Mary is that Grace is seen by the crew of the Hail Mary (and the backup crew) as the second in command of the entire operation, in part because he spends so much time with Stratt. This isn’t really seen in the film itself, though, as the scenes showing Grace’s time on Earth are often about specific moments ahead of the launch of the ship and not as detailed as the scenes are in the book.
Weir’s original novel features several moments between Grace and the astronauts that will be on the Hail Mary, including scenes where he works directly with DuBois and Shapiro regarding Astrophage, as they’re the science officers on the two crews and will spend the most time studying it. Another major sequence with Grace and the astronauts that is only found in the book is when he speaks to the crew about their preferred methods of suicide. Each astronaut is given the chance to decide how they will die once their mission is complete, believing that the trip to the Hail Mary is a one-way journey. Though this isn’t in the movie itself, elements of it can still be found, such as the nitrogen requested by DuBois that becomes central to Grace and Rocky’s breeding of Taumoeba.
7) They Nuke Antarctica
The Hail Mary project is on a ticking clock, and as a result, some measures are taken to try to extend that clock as much as possible. In the Project Hail Mary book, one of the ways this is done is by nuking Antarctica. Utilizing two hundred and forty-one nuclear weapons, gifted to the team by the United States, charges are set off across Antarctica in order to release the methane trapped in the ice back into Earth’s atmosphere. By doing this, the team believes the gas will maintain the current temperatures on the planet as the sun itself has its electromagnetic radiation eaten by the Astrophage, which would cool the Earth’s atmosphere and lower temperatures. This is done in the book despite the massive effects it will have, like rising water levels across the planet, and the unpredictable effect it might have on crops and weather patterns, all because the alternative is much worse. Sadly, this isn’t seen in the movie at all.
6) Solar Farms Across Africa
In order for the Hail Mary to make it to Tau Ceti, some 12 light-years away from Earth, it’s determined that the best fuel to power the ship that long and that far is none other than the problem itself, Astrophage. The trouble, of course, is coming up with enough Astrophage to power the ship, which is where disgraced New Zealand engineer Dr. Robert Redell comes in. Absent entirely from the film, but a key part of the book, Redell comes up with the idea of using massive solar panel farms to breed astrophage on a major scale to create enough for the Hail Mary’s full journey. All that it will take is 2 trillion square meters of area to create enough, leading him to say it should be placed in the Sahara Desert in Africa, itself nine trillion square meters in total.
If you’re wondering how they get the African nations to agree to this, they allow them to keep the panels after the process is completed, effectively making them some of the wealthiest nations in terms of energy after they’re used. Unfortunately, once again, none of this is in the film.
5) The Construction of the Hail Mary
The Hail Mary is a massive ship in the context of the story itself, so big in fact that its construction isn’t like a regular rocket or shuttle as we know it, instead, the Hail Mary is put together in space. This subplot is removed entirely from the Project Hail Mary movie, whereas the book details that at least sixteen launches take place across the years the project is put together, each carrying a piece of the ship to the International Space Station, where they are then taken to the frame of the Hail Mary and pieced together in Earth’s orbit.
4) Cleaning Up After the Taumoeba
While doing their extensive experiments on the Astrophage-eating Taumoeba, of which many in the Project Hail Mary book are condensed considerably for the film, a byproduct of this consumption is revealed, which fails to make it ot the big screen: Taumoeba poop. Grace ends up having to enter the fuel pods of the Hail Mary and personally clean all of the Taumoeba excrement from each of them before they can be reused to power the ship for his return home. It’s a subplot that makes a lot of sense in the context of the book itself, but which the movie doesn’t have much time to consider.
3) Grace Threatens to Sabotage the Hail Mary
One of the key elements of the Project Hail Mary story is that Ryland Grace is forced to become a member of the crew after tragedy strikes. The film naturally includes the scene where Stratt reveals to him that she has decided he will be a part of the mission no matter what he wants, but stops short of major moments from the book itself. In the book, in an effort to try to convince Stratt not to send him on a death mission in space, Grace actually threatens to sabotage the ship and the mission entirely. Stratt doesn’t believe him, but does not realize that his saying this will require her to use powerful interrogation drugs from France, which will render him with an extended amnesia upon waking.
This detail is revealed late in the book and is the last piece of the puzzle for the narrative, confirming why exactly Grace doesn’t remember anything from his time on Earth and why the structure of the story carries out the way it does, with him slowly remembering details and moments. As with everything else here, though, it’s not really mentioned in the film, and Grace’s threat is cut entirely.
2) Stratt Confronts Grace Before His Departure
In the Project Hail Mary movie, Grace runs away after learning that he’ll be put on the ship against his will, and is put aboard the ship just after he’s apprehended. Weir’s novel adds an extra scene with Grace in a holding cell waiting for this trip. He gets one last visitor in that moment before he’s put in a coma and given the amnesia drugs, where Stratt appears to him one last time. In her final visit, Stratt doesn’t have a nice goodbye or offer a friendly wave; instead, she tries to justify her decision to Grace, noting that she expects life on Earth to become almost unbearable in the years ahead.
Not only does she expect famine to cause world wars, but disease to spread and overwhelm the medical community. She summarizes the problems that will be caused by Astrophage as being the apocalypse, quite literally, bringing with it all four horsemen: death, pestilence, famine, and war. Grace and Stratt don’t end on a friendly note at all, which makes sense why it was cut from the movie.
1) Grace’s Classroom Translator on Erid
The finale of Project Hail Mary is almost the same in the feature film as it is in the book. The scientists on Erid have created a habit for Grace to live in on the planet, and there’s a small alcove where he can still teach, with room for an entire classroom of little Eridians to learn from him. One of the details in the scene that is cut from the book, though, is how Grace communicates with the young Eridians. In the film, he simply asks them the same question he asked his Earth students at the start of the film: “Who can tell me the speed of light?” But in the pages of the Project Hail Mary book, Grace has a keyboard-like creation in front of him that he plays like a piano to speak in the musical tones of the Eridians. It’s a small detail that the movie doesn’t need, but which adds a little more depth to the book’s narrative. Despite that, the ending remains powerful and sweet, with the Eridian kids shaking their little arms to answer his question.
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Image Courtesy of Universal Pictures
