Stairway To The Stars

 I enjoyed my trip to the moving picture show. My wife and I went out to see the much ballyhooed Project Hail Mary last weekend. There was a certain element of peer pressure involved, since it seems that a great many Americans chose to go see a movie rather than doom scrolling as we await the next tick of the Doomsday Clock. The good news here was that the challenges facing science officer Grace were environmental and not human. The future in which he found himself was one of a dying sun, but with a worldwide collaboration to try and save the planet, not unlike the mission featured in Contact.  Or the one in 2001: A Space Odyssey and its sequel, 2010:The Year We Make Contact. 

Honestly, I do not want to spoil the experience for any of you who may not be as committed to divining influences in feature film, but Hail Mary has some baggage and isn't afraid to share it. 

One of the first movies ever made was science fiction. Le Voyage dans la Lune by George Méliès predates both NASA and Stanley Kubrick, and gives us a glimpse of extraterrestrial life long before Steven Spielberg thought of phoning home. Perhaps it was ironic that the hopeful can-do story of Hail Mary was offset somewhat by the preview we saw before the feature, Spielberg's "scary alien" movie Disclosure Day. I suggest this was ironic because, spoiler alert, embedded in the story of science officer Grace is a direct reference to Close Encounters of the Third Kind. 

Establishing communication with beings from another planet is not a new notion. Michael Rennie came to Earth seventy-five years ago to attempt such connection. Klaatu was here to foster cooperation with his race and ours, even if he had to make the Earth stand still to do it. Aliens put Amy Adams through a lot to teach her a language that she could use to move about in space and time. Drew Barrymore at five years old had a much easier time teaching English to an ET. 

When it was Ryan Gosling's turn to be the scientist faced with using all that knowledge for the betterment of mankind, he stood on Matt Damon's broad shoulders to do so. Of course, long before Good Will Hunting was solving equations at MIT Robinson Crusoe landed on Mars. Crusoe didn't make friends with a rock, but he did get to hang around with a space hippie named Friday. 

Again, I had a nice ride at the movie theater, and I would encourage those of you looking for a two and a half hour escape from the moribund existence we seem to be sharing currently to head on out to the movies. You might end up getting more than one movie all rolled into one.