The air in that canister that he smelled was full of "air" from Rocky's atmosphere, which is ammonia. He basically got hit in the face with a smell of ultra-boiled cat piss.

In the book, it's explained that Rocky first made the dividing wall in their tunnel between ships out of a bunch of different materials so he could find out which one a human could see through, then he replaced the rest with the glass.

If Rocky hadn't given Grace enough astrophage to get home, Grace wouldn't have been able to save him, and Erid would have perished too. In a way, Rocky's kindness saved his species.

So the whole “thumbs up” joke was NOT in either the book or even the original script. It came from the fact that puppeteer James Ortiz said that the puppet was incapable of turning its wrists so it could only do thumbs down. So the directors decided to work with that and make a joke of it. Which absolutely worked. A perfect example of making an opportunity out of an obstacle.

Fun fact: for the original book, Andy Weir wrote a 16-page Word document to keep his lore on the Eridians organized. He posted it to Reddit, too. Here's some of the more interesting bits from the document:

* Eridians have a natural ability to sense electromagnetic fields, like birds. As a result, an Eridian always knows which way is "north." Their ship simulates the electromagnetic field of their homeworld for crew comfort.

* Eridians are mostly inorganic material. Unlike humans, who are mostly living cells, Eridians have a set of worker cells that builds and maintains an inorganic body for them to inhabit. Weir uses the analogy of a beehive that grew legs and a brain. While they can weigh on the order of 150 kilograms (in Earth gravity!), the total organic material only amounts to about a kilogram.

* The Eridians' circulatory system has two components: a hot system and an ambient system. When they need to move, they alternate the flow of the ambient and hot systems through skeletal muscle in their legs, heating liquid water held within and turning it into steam or back into water.

* An Eridian's intelligence is on par with a human's, though they specialize in different intelligence skills. As a rule of thumb, Eridians are better when it comes to multitasking and rote memorization, while humans are superior in spatial memory and especially focusing on a single task for a long duration. Human hands are also significantly more dexterous than an Eridian's three-fingered claw.

* The most important organ in an Eridian's body is the "colony," located in the center of the thorax. It is a safe space for the worker cells, and it is also the location of the brain. There are thousands of unique types of worker cells, each of which have a special function in the body.

* The Eridians are most comfortable in 28 atmospheres of pressure at 210 degrees Celsius (410 Fahrenheit). The reason they can tolerate such high pressures is because they breath primarily for heat regulation and not gas exchange, like humans do. However, because their homeworld has such stable surface conditions, they are significantly more sensitive to changes in temperature than humans are: they start to feel sluggish at anything over 214 Celsius, and 223 Celsius is eventually fatal.

* Keeping with their homeworld, because Erid has a thick ammonia atmosphere and very strong magnetic field (roughly 25 times stronger than Earth's), Eridians are significantly less tolerant of radiation than humans are, and their worker cells have none of the in-built defenses against radiation damage that we do. While their liquid mercury blood provides some defense, the blood itself then becomes radioactive, creating more problems than it solves.

* The Eridians keep time by dividing their day, which is about 5 hours and 6 minutes long, into 7,776 "time units" of equal length, each of which is equal to 2.366 seconds. That 7,776 number only seems arbitrary because Eridians utilize a senary counting system, with six unique digits compared to our ten. When we convert 7,776 back to senary, it comes out as a nice, even 10,000.

* Eridians are generally more tolerant of the effects of prolonged zero-g than humans are: most of their issues have to do with how they consume food. Their "mouths" heal over with carapace mineral material between feeding cycles, and this process doesn't work correctly in zero-g. As a result, their ship (in the book at least) has a centrifuge specifically for use when eating food and/or excreting waste.

* Eridian history and culture is said to be just as rich and varied as humans', though there is some information worth noting:

* Eridian technology is roughly on par with human technology. To be more specific, they are more advanced in the fields of materials science and mathematics, but significantly behind in computer technology.

* Eridian writing relies on changes in texture and acoustic medium. As a result, their handwriting relies on a thicker paper equivalent and much thicker ink that stands about 1mm off the page. Their printing press punches holes in the substrate so the book takes up less space.

* Because Eridians have such good hearing and automatically build out a mental map of their surroundings just from ambient noise, their walls are naturally very soundproof.

* Because Eridians are helpless when sleeping, they evolved communal instincts to watch over each other while they slept. It's not an overpowering instinct, but it does help them to know that someone is watching them while they sleep. Think of it like this: you could sleep without a blanket, but you'd prefer to have one if at all possible.

The East German lady ends up in prison, confesses, and pleads guilty once the mission was a success btw.

Given the ship name, and its crew. It's Hail Mary full of Grace. Its a cool detail.

My favorite little thing about this movie was that at the beginning he was teaching humans about sound waves, and at the end he was teaching eridians about light. It’s a really clever way to show their differences.

So in the final chapter of the book, there’s actually a 16 year time jump after Grace is taken by Rocky to Erid. He originally only had enough human food to last him, maybe two years, but Rocky saved him by coming up with the idea to have him eat Taumoeba in a slurry form, like the slurry he was feed when he was in his coma. It kept him alive long enough for the Eridian scientists to analyze and try to re-create his food as best as possible for him to live off of. The first few years he suffered from severe malnutrition, especially from not getting enough protein due to the fact that all Eridian food is loaded with poisonous heavy metals. But they eventually made him meat he could eat. Meat that was actually cloned from his own body! Yeah, the Eridians learned how cloning worked from Grace’s computers and learned that they could reproduce meat by cloning parts of him that he could then cook however he wanted, that’s right, he’s eating hamburgers made from himself! Or as he calls them “Me-Burgers”.😂

The 16 year time jump was also necessary because that’s how long it takes for light to travel from Earth to Erid. And that’s how he was informed that his mission was successful, because they saw that the Earth’s Sun was actually back to its normal brightness. Unfortunately, even though Grace is only in his 50’s by that time, he has to walk around with a cane due to the stronger gravity. And he teaches his class using a specialized pipe organ that creates musical notes that give more detailed subtext to his vocabulary which he can’t reproduce with his own language. So that way the kids can properly understand him. So imagine your teacher playing a pipe organ while teaching you.😂

Also, Andy Weir said that he purposely left the deaths of the rest of Grace’s crew unknown because he might use that as the basis to make a sequel! But he’s also a writer who will not go ahead with something unless he thinks it absolutely 100% makes sense narratively, and scientifically. So until something concrete comes from that statement, we’ll just have to assume that the crew died of natural causes that the machines on board weren’t either equipped or qualified to handle

1) Rocky is 291 years old and his race have an average lifespan of 689 years, and Rocky was sadly alone on his ship for 46 YEARS, so Rocky was already alone on that ship before Grace was even born! And his people, as seemingly far more advanced than humanity, did not know about other things humans knew about such as radiation and relativity. So he didn’t know that because his ship had traveled to Tau Ceti faster than they had theorized, and because they were nearing light speed, time for them moved slower than back on their home world.

2) Grace was given the amnesiac drug because Eva Strat knew that Grace by nature would want to finish the mission and help save the world. Because after Stratt told him he was going he was threatening to sabotage the mission out of spite, so by wiping his memory of being forced into doing this mission he would be completely dedicated to completing the mission.

3) In order to breed enough Astrophage to make enough fuel to reach Tau Ceti, most of the Sahara desert was actually turned into a solar powered breeding ground, also in order to buy enough time for the Hail Mary to complete its mission and send its findings back, the governments of the world actually had to nuke Antarctica in order to release enough trapped methane gas to create enough greenhouse gases to warm the Earth long enough for the Hail Mary crew to complete their mission. It’s actually a very heartbreaking scene in the books because the idea is proposed by a scientist who devoted his entire life to fighting human made climate change, and is now using that same knowledge to essentially endanger the planet while saving it.

4) There are a couple chapters where Grace and Rocky seriously struggle with the Taumoeba. 1) Because it’s actually much harder for them to breed nitrogen resistant strains of it, and 2) it actually escapes containment, gets into the Hail Marys fuel tanks, and consumes all of the Astrophage leaving them dead in the water. So Grace has to go inside the tanks, clean them to the point where they’re completely sanitized, then breed more Astrophage from the fuel reserves that were for the beetle drones. And using said drones to push their ship to Rocky’s ship. Then Rocky uses the Xenonite to make Grace new fuel tanks to replace the ones he had to eject back on Adrian.

Oh, in case you’re wondering why Mary’s estimate for the return trip to earth was only going to be just over four years, that’s the time for him and the ship. Fun physics lesson: The closer you approach light speed, the slower time moves for you but everything else around you goes at its regular pace. So the ship is moving so fast that it more than halves the time for him. If you remember from school Einstein not only came up with the equation E=MC squared, he also came up with the theory of relativity.

@ 12:30
He was looking at Golden plaques which is analogous to the Golden discs that are being carried by Voyager probes. The Hail Mary is an Interstellar ship and so, those Golden plaques will may become a reminder that there was once humanity existed before the dimming of the sun spell doom upon Earth if the mission fails :')

The Gosling scream is always a 10/10. The nice guys shows it a few times.

You should watch "The Martian" next. Its based on a book by the same author as "Project Hail Marry" book.

In the book Rocky doesn't say his eating looks beautiful.
Erid's body is basically a space suit, completely sealed. So when they eat they open a compartment take out the waste and then, clean themselves, then put in the food.
So for them eating is very private, since its like pooping at the same time.
It was Grace that had to convince Rocky to let him see.

Also, Grace had to explain that humans need to sleep more regularly, and they go crazy if they don't sleep periodically.
A few other points:
Rocky is the best builder on the planet, that's why he was sent and likely why he was in the workshop
Rocky's people don't launch rockets into space, they have an orbital elevator.
They have mercury for blood.
Their brain is a crystal, and functions like a computer (super memory). In fact Eridians don't have computers. Thats why he liked "Human thinking machine"
He and the girl didn't fall in love in the book. Actually she was much more abrasive, the movie softened her a bit. I don't know if the movie was going for "love" but rather friends in some fashion, trusted work colleagues.
Grace didn't see Rocky's ship
Grace's habitat was much smaller (just the house)
He didn't have anything to eat so they had to clone his own muscle tissue and grace its that. Memeat.
They also nuked Antarctica to try and give more time for the earth.

23:19 It's another way of saying they messed up because if you somehow have egg on your face, you probably messed something up somewhere

I watched every Ryan Gosling movie and bro is just so handsome and charismatic (im straight) like he doesn't miss in every performance. Hands down the best casting of the movie including Sandra Huller.

About the "get inside, we can do the collector mission again" part.  According to the book, it took Rocky and Grace three weeks of metal weaving to make all the chain required to skim the atmosphere.

@21:08 Tau Ceti is a real star, about 12 light years away from Earth. So is Rocky’s home star, 40 Eridani. When he started writing Andy Weir read that there was speculation that 40 Eridani could have a large gas giant type planet in a close orbit, so he imagined Rocky’s race by trying to think what kind of life could exist on the rocky core of such a planet under an atmosphere so thick and deep it wouldn’t let light through (like creatures in the depths of our oceans). Later research showed that there’s actually no such planet and the companion is probably like a brown dwarf star or something. So Rocky’s star is real but his planet has been taken away by more advanced research, sorry. 😅 Check out Andy Weir’s interview with Neil deGrasse Tyson (up on YouTube) where he talks about the considerations that went into creating the story and setting!

Fun fact: There was recently a World Cup soccer match between Mexico and Korea, and the Mexican player who scored a goal made Rocky's farewell gesture after the goal.

23:17 "To have egg on your face" means you've acted foolish, or ridiculous. Beacuse he was all panicky over the "bomb" that turned out to be completely harmless.