It’s worth noting that Project: Hail Mary is called Project: Hail Mary.
After the Hail Mary (American) football pass thrown in the final seconds to a catcher a loooong way down the pitch in a desperate attempt to win the game.
Which is the basic plot of Project: Hail Mary but with a starship instead of a football.
BUT
Hail Mary is also a core Catholic prayer, that book and movie can’t escape once invoked.
I don’t believe either book or movie are explicitly religious. But the movie does add this line, captured in a meme by my fellow critic Paul Anleitner
Who is a believer in God, and interprets the line as part of a “vibe shift” back towards belief in our culture.
Do I agree?
First lets do a quick review of the presence of God, religion and belief in cinematic science fiction.
2001 : humanity transcends material limits to become the Overman.
Interstellar : Joseph Cooper is space Jesus Christ, who meets space Satan then is resurrected and becomes the Trinity.
Blade Runner : Roy Batty, holding a dove and a nail through his palm, dies so that Rick Deckard can find salvation.
Contact : Jodie Foster takes a journey to meet the great sky daddy.
Ad Astra : Brad Pitt takes a journey to meet the great sky daddy.
Gravity : Sandra Bullock goes through the stages of grief then a fiery rebirth.
Many of these movies incite a “that’s not how physics works” from audiences who watch them as as literal stories of space travel, and don’t notice the religious allegory / metaphor / symbolism etc.
So Project: Hail Mary is really a rarity in NOT being a religious allegory in space. And once you accept the Astrophage, it’s all relatively accurate science and engineering.
So what is this line about? Was it just added by the filmmakers on a whim? Andy Weir’s book has one mention of God including Relativity in his design, so humans can explore it. But it’s no statement of religious meaning.
Alongside the Male Pattern Fantasy, PHM is really a celebration of secular humanism. Humans are great, we are innovative, we can do anything with enough time and tax payer funding.
But here’s the thing:
Christianity and Secular Humanism really aren’t that different. The UK Secular Society actually includes Jesus as a secular thinker. Atheism referred to early Christians originally.
Humanism is really birthed from Christian faith. It puts God and the eternal soul aside, but it keeps the belief in human divinity, and in an ordered, knowable reality that is structured to the good of humanity.
So I think I agree with Paul in a kind of “vibe shift” where Humanism and Christianity are moving back together in the face of an ever more nihilistic reality.
Where I suspect we differ is that Paul sees this as a wholesome development, whereas as more of a nihilist I see it as copium 🤣
🔗👇
PHM and the Male Pattern Fantasy
Paul’s tweet on Xitter
Damien Walter 