{"id":354006,"date":"2026-03-29T18:11:08","date_gmt":"2026-03-29T18:11:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/354006\/"},"modified":"2026-03-29T18:11:08","modified_gmt":"2026-03-29T18:11:08","slug":"why-project-hail-mary-cut-andy-weirs-cannibalism-joke-from-the-movie","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/354006\/","title":{"rendered":"Why Project Hail Mary cut Andy Weir’s cannibalism joke from the movie"},"content":{"rendered":"

Drew Goddard<\/a> wrote the screenplays for Ridley Scott\u2019s 2015 film The Martian<\/a> and Phil Lord and Christopher Miller\u2019s Project Hail Mary<\/a>, both based on Andy Weir novels about astronauts using all their ingenuity to survive in space. Goddard captures Weir\u2019s mix of complex science and goofy humor in highly faithful and captivating adaptations, but he also cuts one of Weir\u2019s weirdest recurring gags from both books: cannibalism humor<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Food supplies are a major concern in space, so it\u2019s not surprising that Weir\u2019s thoughts turned to the possible necessity of cannibalism. Much of The Martian focuses on astronaut Mark Watney (Matt Damon) growing enough potatoes to survive after he\u2019s left behind by his crew, who thought he was killed in a dust storm. However, the book makes it clear that the members of Watney\u2019s crew also need to worry about their own food if they\u2019re going to return to Mars to rescue him and make it back to Earth together.<\/p>\n

NASA sends a rocket with more supplies, but the crew have a contingency plan if they can\u2019t successfully intercept it. Their youngest and smallest member, computer specialist Beth Johanssen (played by Kate Mara in the film), would eat everyone else to survive the trip back. It\u2019s a grim plan, but presented in a very funny way. Johanssen reluctantly explains to her mom that she doesn\u2019t have to worry about her, while the rest of the crew teases Johanssen about who she would eat first.<\/p>\n

\"Matt
\n Photo: 20th Century Fox<\/p>\n

[Ed. note: The rest of this article spoils the ending for Project Hail Mary]<\/p>\n

In Project Hail Mary, Ryland Grace (Ryan Gosling) is sent on a one-way trip to Tau Ceti. Goddard\u2019s script keeps the morbid joking about what that means, with ship engineer Olesya Ilyukhina (Milana Vayntrub) explaining she\u2019d like to die by lethal injection laced with heroin and commander Y\u00e1o Li-Jie (Ken Leung) agreeing that sounds like a good way to go. But then Grace gets a lifeline from his new friend and lab partner Rocky (James Ortiz), who can supply him with enough fuel to get home.<\/p>\n

In the book, food becomes Grace\u2019s new primary concern. Because his other crew members died, he has a decent supply of food for the mission. He\u2019d still run out before going home, though, and have to either put himself back in a medically-induced coma and risk death, or eat the disgusting coma slurry he was being fed while unconscious. He can\u2019t eat any of Rocky\u2019s food because it contains heavy metals that would be toxic to humans.<\/p>\n

This adds extra weight to Grace\u2019s decision to rescue Rocky when he discovers that the taumoeba has escaped containment. Rocky created containers made of xenonite to breed taumoeba on the Hail Mary, but over the course of many generations the single-cell organisms evolved to be able to escape from the material. Grace is able to isolate the taumoeba by enclosing them in aluminum but Rocky\u2019s ship, the Blip-A, is entirely made of xenonite. That means there\u2019s nothing to stop the taumoeba from getting into Rocky\u2019s fuel tanks and eating the astrophage used to power his ship. It\u2019s proof of Grace\u2019s character growth, since he refused to die to save Earth but is willing to risk starving to death in order to save Rocky.<\/p>\n

\"Rocky
\n Image: Amazon\/MGM<\/p>\n

Thankfully, the Eridians work very hard to keep Grace alive. He spends years eating taumoeba for calories, but was severely malnourished, contracting scurvy and beriberi because he was missing vitamins. The Eridians eventually learned to synthesize the vitamins he needed, and also started cloning Grace\u2019s muscle tissue to create lab-grown meat.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m eating human meat. But it\u2019s my own meat, and I don\u2019t feel bad about it,\u201d Grace says in the final chapter of Project Hail Mary. \u201cI love meburgers. I eat one every day.\u201d<\/p>\n

It\u2019s understandable why cannibalism was cut from both films, as it doesn\u2019t really add anything to the plot. Weir is much more disappointed<\/a> that the Project Hail Mary sequence where scientists nuke Antarctica to keep Earth warm while the sun cools didn\u2019t make it onto the screen. But these jokes show why it\u2019s worth reading Weir\u2019s books to appreciate just how weird and dark the bestselling author can be.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Drew Goddard wrote the screenplays for Ridley Scott\u2019s 2015 film The Martian and Phil Lord and Christopher Miller\u2019s…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":354007,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[156,409,111,139,69],"class_list":{"0":"post-354006","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-movies","8":"tag-entertainment","9":"tag-movies","10":"tag-new-zealand","11":"tag-newzealand","12":"tag-nz"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/354006","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=354006"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/354006\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/354007"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=354006"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=354006"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=354006"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}