The Fandom Calendar

Got to watch Project Hail Mary over Zoom with some folks over the weekend, and I had a good time! I'd wanted to watch this movie for a while; i was originally going to wait to read the book first but the hold times for it at the library made me reconsider, lol.

One of the things I was realizing more about myself than anything while watching is: it was obvious to me based on the tone of this movie and also the glimpses of fanart and fan discussion I'd seen that that basically no matter what happened our protagonist was going to be just fine. Thus, whenever a big dramatic scene happened on one hand it was relieving to know that everything was going to be fine, but on the other hand said moment often dragged on for so long that I was kinda like "guys everything's gonna be fine why are we being so dramatic about this". Which made the last wrench in the works the movie threw near the end kind of frustrating, tbh. It makes sense in hindsight to do something like that, like it makes for a good and interesting story and i really like the ending that results from it, but in the moment I was just so mad because we've already gone through enough I think!

(I got up to go to the bathroom during some of that scene and I looked at the clock and it had been like two and a half hours and I was like what do you mean it's been two and a half hours, huh??? I think this is the longest movie I've watched in recent memory, mostly because the last movies I watched were the Sonic movies and the Mario movie and those are not long movies, lmao)

But yeah I think the other part of it was that the music felt like it was doing a lot of lifting wrt the emotions each scene had, to the point it felt almost overpowering? I dunno. The little opera(?) song that played in the last 3rd or so of the movie felt a little silly, anyway. Maybe I'm just not used to things like this. I don't watch many movies.

The flashbacks, while interspersed in a cool and non-intrusive way, were upsetting and I did not like most of them, as in, they made me really sad because this guy is getting yanked around!!! But maybe that was the point? And then of course there's that last flashback... I think I'd seen someone on Tumblr talk about how an aromantic reading of this film is horrendously depressing and that's all I was thinking about when that last major flashback happens like. Oh my God. It was sad in like a bone deep soul sucking way, rather than a normal "sad moment in a movie" way. I think it's what stuck to me the most after finishing the movie, which makes it a bit hard to appreciate the rest of it, ha.

Also I really liked the visuals, especially that one scene where they're collecting the astrophage samples, except for that one bit in the climax where they do all the flashing lights that I had to look away from. not for fear of headaches or seizures or anything but I just did not understand what the hell was going on so I decided to look at my video game I was playing on the side instead of whatever that was and figured if that scene was important then the movie would probably belatedly explain what had been going on there or I'd be able to figure out what happened via context clues.

But anyway tl;dr I see why everyone is obsessed with this movie it's a very good movie. I'm excited to remove the tag from my blacklists now~