Project Hail Mary: Better Than Disclosure Day

Well, the wife and I saw Project Hail Mary last night on Amazon Prime (it just got there this month, after its release in theaters in March) and I  liked Project Hail Mary a lot more than Disclosure Day.  Which is not to say I didn't like Disclosure Day, and the two are not exactly the same exact genre, so maybe the comparison is unfair.   But they do have a lot in common: humans and interstellar intelligences, unlikely heroes, oddball humor, life and death situations on the planetary level.

But Project Hail Mary has a lot more soul in the story, more humanity in the best sense of the word, and a more memorable, lovable interstellar intelligence.   Ryland Grace (Ryan Gosling) is one of the best human emissaries to the stars -- Tau Ceti, in this case -- in all the movies and TV shows I've seen on that topic over the years, beginning with Captain Video and His Video Rangers in the 1950s on the shortly lived Dumont Channel.   Grace surprises us at numerous junctures, as does Rocky (James Ortiz), the intelligent being from the planet Erid (circling the real star 40 Eridani), who with Grace goes to Tau Ceti e (the planet named Adrian in the movie).  Rocky doesn't have a face, though if you look at Rocky carefully at certain times from certain angles, it almost seems he does (I say "he" because Ortiz does Rocky's voice).

Drew Goddard wrote the screenplay from Andy Weir's novel, not surprising given the excellent job they did with The Martian.  Like that movie, Project Hail Mary is a fine piece of science fiction that plays with the limits of scientific plausibility.   Indeed, because the threats and solutions in Project Hail Mary are interstellar, far wider in scope than Mars and Earth, its connection to science is stretched pretty far and thin.   But in the end -- and in the beginning and middle, too -- I felt I was seeing a riveting story that Isaac Asimov or Robert Heinlein could have written, unlike a central element of Disclosure Day which felt more in the province of Walt Disney.

I also had no idea about how Project Hail Mary would end, until the very end, which is always a big plus in a movie.   This derives from the complex, unusual character of Ryland Grace, astutely written and perfectly acted.   In addition, the cinematography was otherworldly convincing and topnotch.   If you're in the mood for a movie in which Earth is threatened by something from outer space, in a situation that unfurls in a way that Hugo Gernsback would have really enjoyed, you can't go wrong with Project Hail Mary.

Bladerunner 2049: The Only Better Movie of this Kind is Bladerunner, and Hey

I loved it.  So did my son Simon, who's now a father of his own.  We loved it almost as much as the original Bladerunner, which we saw more than once on videotape, before there even were DVDs for rent, back in the early 1990s.   That's high praise.  The only reason Bladerunner 2049 wasn't as good as Bladerunner circa 1982 was that the 1982 movie broke so much new ground.  Back in the mid-80s, when I was teaching in the MA in Media Studies Program at the New School, I asked Stephen Jacobs (who then was my student, and has long since become a professor himself, at the Rochester Institute of Technology) to give me an example of cyberpunk.  "Bladerunner" he replied.  It defined the field, at least in the movies.  It was and still is that good.  Not only that, it began Philip K Dick's run of stories made into great movies and TV series, with the current example of The Man in the High Castle on Amazon.  And it inspired me to write The Civil Right of Robots.

But Bladerunner 2049 did as outstanding a job as could be done in a sequel for that kind of movie - moreover, a sequel on the screen some 35 years later.  Rather than reviewing the plot, or even the acting - other than mentioning that both were excellent, and Ryan Gosling as "K" and Harrison Ford reprising his Deckard role were especially excellent - I'll go over certain points and questions which capture this visually and intellectually stunning film (and there will be spoilers):

• Did you catch that "CCCP Soviet" sign on the building in LA?  How could the Soviets still have a sign on a building in 2049?  Maybe Putin managed to restore the Soviet Union?  Possibly.  But I think a better explanation is that Bladerunner 2049 and in turn Bladerunner are and were alternate realities from the outset.  Or, at least they are now.  The Bladerunner of 1982 took place in 2019, in a world that doesn't look much like our world does now, in 2017 (except insofar as Times Square has seemed increasingly Bladerunner-inspired in the past decade). So the makers of Bladerunner 2049 had to make a sequel in a world that looked 30 years later than the world of 2019 and how it was depicted in 1982.  That world has Japan much on its mind - Japan looked like it could become the dominant computer power back then - and, of course, the Soviet Union and Russian were in everyone's head, too.  Bladerunner 2049 has both Russian and Japanese all over the scenes. It could have not flashed Soviet at all,  and benefitted from the unexpected prominence of Russia in our popular culture in the past year.  But instead the sign says CCCP and Soviet - as a shorthand for saying this is the future of Bladerunner 1982/2019, not our future.  Very nice touch.
• Did "K" die at the end?  The convention in movie-making is that if (a) you're very badly wounded, and (b) you're lying motionless with your eyes open, then (c) you're dead.  On the other hand, we've learned that the replicants can only be killed when their brains are destroyed, by a bullet, or, in the case of Niander's evil, powerful, beautiful replicant apprentice, by deprivation of oxygen because K drowned her.  But nothing like that happened to K.  He's been badly wounded - but I'd put my money on his not dying.
• So, is Deckard a replicant or not?  On the yes side, he has a pretty high survival quotient, too.  And he did father a replicant with Rachel, who definitely was a replicant.  But, wait, that's also evidence that he isn't a replicant, right?  I mean, isn't it more likely that human sperm and replicant ovum created a living being, than replicant sperm and replicant ovum?  I think so.  I am a little less sure that Deckard is human than K is alive, but I'd go with Deckard as human if push came to shove.
• I enjoyed the Elvis in what's left of Las Vegas hologram, with a quick shot of Marilyn Monroe thrown in.   (I just published Marilyn and Monet, so I'm always glad to see her given screen time, or for that matter, stage time, as in Anthony Marinelli's Max & Domino which I reviewed here just last week.)  But Elvis belting it out on a stage is a fine homage to David Lynch, and there was a touch of Twin Peaks, somehow, in Bladerunner 2049.

Highly recommend, for the senses and brain.  Bladerunner 2049 is 2017 movie-making at top of its game.  Kudos to Ridley Scott and everyone involved in this movie.

 

It all started in the hot summer of 1960, when Marilyn Monroe walked off the set of The Misfits and began to hear a haunting song in her head, "Goodbye Norma Jean" ...