{"id":400041,"date":"2026-03-23T18:05:10","date_gmt":"2026-03-23T18:05:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/400041\/"},"modified":"2026-03-23T18:05:10","modified_gmt":"2026-03-23T18:05:10","slug":"4-lessons-hollywood-wont-learn-from-its-success","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/400041\/","title":{"rendered":"4 Lessons Hollywood Won’t Learn From Its Success"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tProject Hail Mary<\/a> blasted off<\/a> to a spectacular $80.6 million at the domestic box office, blowing past expectations to land the second-biggest opening for a non-franchise film in the past decade after Oppenheimer<\/a>. Critics are likewise heaping praise on Christopher Miller and Phil Lord\u2019s adaptation of Andy Weir\u2019s novel, with a 95 percent positive score on Rotten Tomatoes. For once, moviegoers are in lockstep with the critics, with the film\u2019s audience score at 96 percent.<\/p>\n

\n\tIn some respects, Project Hail Mary <\/a>\u2014 about an astronaut (Ryan Gosling) who befriends an alien in an effort to save both their planets from a solar catastrophe \u2014 is a rather traditional, feel-good hero\u2019s tale. The story\u2019s concept and broad beats are not subversive or esoteric. And yet, there are several elements of the film that are \u2014 in their own quiet ways \u2014 daring in their retro simplicity that swim against the currents of tentpole moviemaking.<\/p>\n

\n\tHere are four lessons studios could take from Project Hail Mary\u2018s success \u2026<\/p>\n

\n\tAssume Audiences Are Smart: <\/strong>Project Hail Mary is dumbed down compared to Weir\u2019s novel. Still, for a major studio release, it leans heavily into science and doesn\u2019t hold the audience\u2019s hand nearly as much as one might expect. The storytelling is the exact opposite of Netflix<\/a>\u2018s alleged tactic of restating a story\u2019s plot repeatedly on the assumption audiences are too distracted to follow a story (Netflix executives have denied this<\/a>, but anybody who endured the exposition-laden final season of Stranger Things<\/a> suspects otherwise). It\u2019s interesting that the other $80 million-plus non-franchise opening weekend was Oppenheimer, as Christopher Nolan\u2019s film was also brainy and science-heavy. In fact, Nolan \u2014 whom Hollywood seems to regard as some outlier hitmaker whose success cannot be replicated \u2014 repeatedly trusts his audience with challenging narratives. It\u2019s always better to be a bit too smart than a bit too dumb.<\/p>\n

\n\tEmbrace Sincerity<\/strong> and Optimism<\/strong>: When you think of Hollywood, two words that probably don\u2019t leap to mind are \u201csincerity\u201d and \u201coptimism.\u201d And you can tell by the films and shows the industry puts out. What\u2019s striking about Project Hail Mary protagonist Ryland Grace is his earnest, \u201cLet\u2019s figure it out!\u201d attitude. It\u2019s a deeply old-school American sentiment. There is also not a single character in Project Hail Mary who might be considered a villain, or even vaguely obstructionist. Everybody is presented as a good and capable person trying to do the right thing. We get a smart twist when the film reveals that Grace didn\u2019t volunteer for the apparent suicide mission and was forced onto the ship, which makes him overcoming his cowardice all the more heroic. As has been widely pointed out, the film is a stealth 1980s-style family friendly \u201cPG\u201d movie, but without the smarmy, manic tone that infuse so many productions targeted at that audience.<\/p>\n

\n\tPatience Can Be a Virtue<\/strong>: Nobody wants to be bored watching a film. But there\u2019s something to be said about letting a film breathe rather than over-optimizing an edit. Project Hail Mary is two hours and 36 minutes. There are scenes in the film that are surprising in their inclusion that one imagines a studio (like, say, Disney) would typically insist on cutting \u2014 such as Grace giving a tender funeral for his crew mates who the audience hadn\u2019t even met (at least, at that point), or project leader Eva Stratt (Sandra H\u00fcller) singing \u201cSign of the Times\u201d at karaoke (a scene that was Gosling\u2019s idea). Neither of these scenes advance the plot. They do not contain action. They do not contain comedy (both are, in fact, a bit of bummer). But they make the film richer.<\/p>\n

\n\tUse Practical Effects Whenever Possible<\/strong>: A Hollywood Reporter story picking up the directors\u2019 comments about Project Hail Mary not having a single greenscreen shot<\/a> went viral a couple of weeks before the film opened (the film does have digital effects, but used practical backgrounds and, for the alien Rocky, employed an animatronic puppet). \u201cNot a single green or bluescreen was used,\u201d Miller said. \u201cThe whole ship was built as a set from the inside. We had a huge section of the exterior of the ship on the outside that we built. [The alien character Rocky] was really with us at all times. And so, that\u2019s what makes it feel real and makes it feel natural.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tIt\u2019s rare that any statement nowadays gets universal support online, but you\u2019d be hard-pressed to find a moviegoer who doesn\u2019t appreciate this idea. You see it in other franchises, too \u2014 the level of adoration fans had for the practical and on-location filming used by Andor over Disney+\u2019s other Star Wars efforts, which typically shoot against an LED volume wall. Other recent examples: Actors flying in real fighter jets in Top Gun: Maverick<\/a>, Denis Villeneuve<\/a> building massive practical sets and shooting in a real desert for the Dune<\/a> films, and Alien: Romulus returning to animatronics and actors in suits for its franchise revival.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe rise of \u201cAI slop\u201d online has, if anything, made moviegoers crave authenticity even more. Yet the industry is going full speed ahead the other direction to keep costs down, particularly as AI hybrid production (filming on a studio set and using AI to help with backgrounds and effects) takes off. But notice how Game of Thrones fans loved the tactile feeling of A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms \u2014 largely filmed outdoors in Northern Ireland \u2014 over the far bigger-budget House of the Dragon<\/a>, which heavily leans on Warner Bros. Studios in Leavesden. It\u2019s easy to point to a CG effect and say, \u201cLook, we added value.\u201d But the feeling of real also has high value \u2014 and doesn\u2019t always need to cost more \u2014 it\u2019s just tougher to sell in a trailer. Real is a vibe \u2014 less \u201cknow it when you see it,\u201d but \u201cknow it when you feel it.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Project Hail Mary blasted off to a spectacular $80.6 million at the domestic box office, blowing past expectations…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":400042,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[263],"tags":[14170,67864,18,117,20511,19,17,327,127,63166,105152,27613,59868],"class_list":["post-400041","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-movies","tag-denis-villeneuve","tag-dune","tag-eire","tag-entertainment","tag-house-of-the-dragon","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-movies","tag-netflix","tag-oppenheimer","tag-project-hail-mary","tag-stranger-things","tag-top-gun-maverick"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ie\/116279818649486851","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/400041","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=400041"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/400041\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/400042"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=400041"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=400041"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=400041"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}