I was just talking about how Mork’s hunger for the written word exposed him to all manner of richness, and one of those was a book called The Martian that a man named Andy Weir self-published first on his blog and then on Kindle. Weir wrote more books later, apparently he “caught the bug,” and one of them was called Project Hail Mary. There is a spoiler for the book that Mike has judiciously protected me from for four years, and at around two minutes into the trailer they just straight up let the space-cat out of the starbag.
What’s funny is that I was already in – I didn’t need to be sold it anymore. The trailer posits a scenario I’m already interested in, one where stars have begun to dim, and somehow it seems like it can spread to other stars. I’m good! You don’t gotta try and tantalize me with this shit, it already has spaceships. A race against cosmic doom is perfectly acceptable stakes for a movie.
As the strip suggests, I think it’s just rooted in a fundamental horror of their own audience. Ryan Gosling in space is gonna do most of the work, man. It’s like these Brave New World trailers. This movie was way better than I expected, though I suppose by the time it released my expectations had been interred. But these trailers were just a condensed version of the whole movie! Fear, and loathing. Something that should be a surprise, something that gets people talking after the movie, is superior.
And that’s assuming they were even willing to do the bare minimum. Brenna asked me if I wanted to see the new Marvel movie Iron Wolf, and I said, you mean Ironheart? And she said, maybe? And I said, actually, it’s just a teevee show. It’s not a movie. This changed the whole vibe – I mean, the snack situation alone. They’ve hidden it under a bushel; they’ve marketed this thing like they can’t imagine who would enjoy it – as though don’t even like it themselves.
(CW)TB out.