Screenwriter Drew Goddard has become the definitive cinematic voice for Andy Weir’s literature. After successfully adapting Ridley Scott’s 2015 hit The Martian, he returned to tackle Phil Lord and Christopher Miller’s Project Hail Mary. Both stories center on brilliant astronauts utilizing grit and physics to survive the vacuum of space. Goddard masterfully translates Weir’s signature blend of technical jargon and irreverent humor; however, he consistently excises one of the author’s most macabre recurring themes: cannibalism as a survival joke.
In the isolation of deep space, calories are the ultimate currency, so it is perhaps inevitable that Weir’s mind wandered toward the unthinkable. Much of The Martian follows Mark Watney (Matt Damon) as he orchestrates a precarious potato harvest on the Red Planet. Yet, the novel reveals that the pressure of starvation extended to his crew mates aboard the Hermes during their unauthorized rescue mission.
The crew formulated a grim contingency in case NASA’s supply probe failed to reach them. Beth Johanssen, the youngest and smallest member (portrayed by Kate Mara in the film), was designated as the sole survivor. The plan? She would consume her fellow crew members to ensure she had enough protein to make it back to Earth. In the book, this dark reality is handled with a jarring, comedic lightness—Johanssen awkwardly reassures her mother while her colleagues tease her about which of them she’d find most delicious.
Warning: The following contains major spoilers for the conclusion of Project Hail Mary.
In Project Hail Mary, Ryland Grace (Ryan Gosling) embarks on a desperate, one-way journey to Tau Ceti. Goddard’s screenplay retains the fatalistic wit of the crew, including engineer Olesya Ilyukhina’s (Milana Vayntrub) preference for a heroin-laced exit. However, the story shifts when Grace encounters the alien engineer Rocky (James Ortiz), who offers a glimmer of hope for a return journey.
While the film focuses on the spectacle, the novel emphasizes the logistical nightmare of Grace’s diet. Having lost his crew, Grace has an abundance of food initially, but not enough for a round trip. He faces a choice between a lethal medical coma or consuming the repulsive “slurry” used for unconscious patients. Complicating matters, Rocky’s food is rich in heavy metals—pure poison for a human.
This desperation heightens the stakes of Grace’s heroism. When a containment breach allows the predatory “taumoeba” to threaten Rocky’s ship, Grace chooses to rescue his friend despite knowing it will leave him stranded without a sustainable food source. It is the ultimate evolution for a character who originally had to be forced into his heroic role.
Grace survives on the alien homeworld of Erid, but his health deteriorates as he subsists on taumoeba, eventually suffering from scurvy and beriberi. To save him, the Eridians learn to synthesize human vitamins and—most bizarrely—begin cloning Grace’s own muscle tissue to provide him with protein.
“I’m eating human meat. But it’s my own meat, and I don’t feel bad about it,” Grace remarks in the book’s final chapter. “I love meburgers. I eat one every day.”
It is easy to see why these self-cannibalism subplots were left on the cutting room floor; they are eccentric diversions that don’t fundamentally alter the narrative arc. Weir himself has noted that he was more disappointed to see the “nuke Antarctica” sequence cut from the film. Nonetheless, these omitted “meburgers” highlight the delightfully strange and cynical edge that makes reading Weir’s original novels such a unique experience.
Source: Polygon
