When Ryland Grace (played by Ryan Gosling) wakes up alone in space in ‘Project Hail Mary,’ the stakes are already cosmic. The sun is dying, the earth is freezing, and he is the only astronaut who can save humanity. But unfortunately, Grace suffers significant retrograde amnesia upon waking from a long coma on his spaceship and has zero backup.
The new movie, directed by Phil Lord and Christopher Miller, which hit theaters on March 20, maintains this intense tension. However, one of the scariest parts of the book was not included in the film, and the screenwriter Drew Goddard says it still bothers him.
The Scrapped Antarctica Doomsday Strategy
In Andy Weir‘s 2021 bestseller, the crisis on Earth reaches a point of pure desperation. To counter the Astrophage’s damaging impact on the sun, world leaders, led by the tough and determined Eva Stratt (played by Sandra Huller), approve an extreme plan.
They decide to set off a series of nuclear explosions deep under Antarctica’s ice. The goal? Release huge amounts of trapped methane and water vapor and create a short-term greenhouse effect. This would give the planet just enough time for Grace’s Haily Mary mission to succeed.
Goddard told SlashFilms that it was a bold choice that really shows how desperate things had become and connects to the story’s bigger themes.
“It was in there and I loved it. It was such a concept that was interesting and showed the desperation that we were in. […] And so that is the thing that I’m saddest about that we had to lose,” he said.
Why ‘Project Hail Mary’ Film Dropped the Antarctica Explosion Plot
The sequence was part of Goddard’s early drafts, the same writer who adapted Weir’s ‘The Martian‘ so well. He fought for it, but ultimately, he was the one who pulled the plug.
“It was just too complicated to explain to an audience within a short period of time and we just didn’t have a lot of screen time to take the time to do that correctly,” he explained. “And so you would just feel it and you’re like, ‘I keep trying to do this in three pages but you have to do this in eight pages and I don’t have eight pages to do this. I just don’t.‘”
In case you missed it: ‘Project Hail Mary’ Makes History As First Movie To Premiere In Space, IMAX Screen In Stratosphere Looks Unreal
The film already runs quite long, and including the Antarctica subplot could have made it feel bloated. It also risked disrupting the balance between the darker survival elements and the lighter, more playful moments between the characters.
Even ‘Project Hail Mary’ Author Agrees on the Hardest Cut
Weir himself admitted that it was the hardest thing to cut. “Drew and I both agree that the biggest thing we had to give up for time — I mean, it’s already a pretty long movie — was nuking Antarctica,” the author said in a Polygon interview.
He even pictured the cinematic payoff, “a bunch of nuclear explosions going off, and an ice shelf collapsing into the ocean. It could have been really awesome.”
Yet, at the same time, both knew that the soul of the story was not on Earth. It was far away in space, about 12 light-years from home, in the relationship between Glosling’s Grace and his brilliant four-armed alien friend, Rocky.
In the end, ‘Project Hail Mary‘ shows that sometimes cutting the hardest parts makes the story stronger. The sense of desperation is still there, but you feel it through every tense moment in space instead of a mushroom cloud over the ice. And for millions of people watching in theaters this week, that is more than enough to save the world.
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