Project Hail Mary's Screenwriter Thought The Ryan Gosling Movie Was A Nightmare To Adapt

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Sci-fi author Andy Weir's novels are immensely readable, but they're understandably challenging to adapt. Both "The Martian" and recent box office hit "Project Hail Mary" are based on books filled with Weir's love of science, featuring highly detailed (though still fun and quippy) explanations of the physics, chemistry, and biology at play. And unlike the traditional Hollywood screenplay, Weir's books don't have a big central conflict or an evil villain for the audience to root against; they're primarily stories about people working together to solve a problem.

Both novels were adapted for the screen by Drew Goddard, so by the time "Project Hail Mary" came around, he had already had great success in translating Weir's science-heavy brand of space adventure for the big screen in "The Martian." However, "Project Hail Mary" presented an entirely new and exciting challenge, as Goddard explained to Cynthia Erivo in a discussion for Interview magazine.

"I can look back at my work and see that so much of the joy is through the characters. That's what attracts me. Doing characters that aren't like me ... When I read ['Project Hail Mary'], I could find compassion for a creature that had no face. From a screenwriting point of view, it was a nightmare. From an artist's point of view, it was thrilling."

The creature with no face is Rocky (James Ortiz), an alien engineer who teams up with human scientist Ryland Grace (Ryan Gosling) to solve the problem posed by a star-eating microbe called Astrophage that threatens both their solar systems. Rocky doesn't need a face because he doesn't have eyes (he uses sound to "see"), and he eats by shoving food up his butthole. So, getting the audience to love him was no easy feat.

Writing aliens like Project Hail Mary's Rocky is sci-fi's favorite nightmare

Imagining what aliens might be like is one of the most interesting and difficult challenges in science fiction. Cixin Liu's "Three-Body Problem" novels (and their Netflix adaptation) side-stepped it somewhat by never revealing what the primary alien species actually looks like. When communicating, the Trisolarans "adapt" the story of their own planet into analogous stories that humans can understand and depict themselves as humans. A similar approach was used in the 1997 movie "Contact." When Jodie Foster's Dr. Ellie Arroway finally meets an alien, it presents itself to her in the form of her deceased father.

Denis Villeneuve's "Arrival" found a middle ground, presenting aliens who are extremely alien but keeping their nature largely mysterious. Like Rocky, the heptapods (nicknamed "Abbott" and "Costello") don't even have discernible faces. Oh, and they can also see through time. "Arrival" screenwriter Eric Heisserer told Vox that writing for Abbott and Costello was "particularly difficult" because, as he explained:

"Here I had characters who already knew the ending of my script before I'd written it. Quite often I was frustrated by them. So whenever I got lost in the woods on adapting [Ted Chiang's] "Story of Your Life," I'd go and I'd look at a screenplay that I'd written that had already been produced. I had a completely different perspective on that. All the words had been written, then I could see the finished product based on that and where it deviated and sometimes why [...] I could come back with a larger world view and imbue in the behavior of the heptapods a kind of tranquility that I just didn't have as a human being writing the thing. They were aware of how it was all going to turn out."

How Drew Goddard brought Rocky and Grace's friendship to the big screen

For "Project Hail Mary" writer Drew Goddard, the screenwriting "nightmare" of adapting the book was actually his dream job. "I just love learning," he told Cynthia Erivo, reflecting that the movie itself is about that love of learning. The challenge of creating a genuine alien-human connection became a mission statement: "Me and the directors, Phil [Lord] and Chris [Miller], we all kept each other honest by saying, 'The very hardship of creating this is going to be the point.'"

Goddard acknowledged that the film speeds through Rocky and Grace's process of learning to communicate, which takes longer in the book. "It sort of works on the page, but in cinema, you want to see these characters interact." The movie adaptation of "Project Hail Mary" benefits greatly from giving Rocky a voice (provided by lead puppeteer James Ortiz). But when Grace and Rocky first meet, they don't have any common language. Goddard is a master of witty dialogue, so writing a voiceless character was well outside his comfort zone:

"It was really hard. We've been working on this movie for six years. I always try to start from a place of emotion. What are we trying to convey? How would I convey this if you've taken away all my safety nets? You go brick by brick. With Rocky, the animated form was crucial. That's why Chris and Phil, who had revolutionized animation with the 'Spider-Verse' movies, were the right people to direct this. I don't know anybody else who could have made this creature come to life visually."

Like Rocky and Grace, the "Project Hail Mary" creative team had a big problem to solve. And, given the internet's intense love for Rocky, it's safe to say that they solved it.