I almost never watch the adapted movie after I’ve read a book, usually opting for just one or the other. But when I heard Project Hail Mary was getting a movie adaptation, I knew it had to be an exception to the rule just because of how much I loved it after reading it in 2023. I even dragged along a friend who’d never read any of Andy Weir’s novels, just to get a perspective on how much someone would like it having never read the novel, though a big Interstellar fan. Overall, the cinematography was stunning and the story was optimistic and heartwarming. However, it’s generally very difficult to adapt a 476-page novel into a movie exactly, so I want to look into these differences and see what impact these missing moments had on the movie as a whole.
It’s commonly known that Weir doesn’t write characters very well, at least not very unique ones. Ryland Grace, played by Ryan Gosling, is a pretty typical nerdy but quippy guy being tasked with saving the world, but I did like that they chose to really hone in on his feelings of inadequacy in bravery. My friend said his character was initially a bit confusing, which makes sense with amnesia combined with the limited omniscience, but that the use of flashbacks clarified it pretty quickly. The film had to balance using the flashbacks to tell a significant part of the story, while also keeping the story centred in the action-packed present, so a lot of the content being stripped might have contributed to it being a bit harder to connect with the story being told in these parts, along with the character Eva Stratt, played by Sandra Hüller, who felt a lot more fleshed out in the novel.
On the other hand, I felt like the secondary character, Rocky was given a lot less depth. One highlight of the novel for me was just how similarly Rocky’s species was to us, in terms of their scientific discoveries, and comparing the knowledge that his species had gained which we hadn’t and vice versa. While it can slow down the novel a bit to go on a scientific side tangent, I think it’s a defining feature of Weir’s writing, and the difficulty in adapting it to film turned what was originally two lab partners filling in each other’s knowledge gaps into a silly little sidekick who mostly gets in the way but is just so darn cute about it. It feels like an attempt to use the tried and true formula that conveniently comes with strong merchandising opportunities, rather than show an unconventional partnership of individuals with equal intelligence in very different ways.
Overall, I really don’t want to be a book purist who criticizes a film adaptation for not following the book line-by-line. I think that rarely leads to a better result, and I think the choices made for Project Hail Mary made a lot of sense, making for a super entertaining film. I think it’s a testament to how memorable Project Hail Mary was, that I can even recall small details that didn’t make the cut. If you just watched the movie and wanted a lot more detail about the science-y explanations, I would highly recommend the book. I think most fans of the book would say the movie did it justice. And if you haven’t done either, what are you waiting for?