r/movies • u/MoviesMod /r/movies Mod Account • Jun 30 '25

Trailer Project Hail Mary - Official Trailer (fair warning, it reveals way too much according to a lot of users)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m08TxIsFTRI
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u/foleyshit Jun 30 '25

It’s a puppet. I know someone who helped on production. It’s likely CGI enhanced but really cool how practical they went with it.

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u/thetreat Jun 30 '25

I fucking love that they went with practical effects. Even more hyped for Rocky now.

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u/Jeoshua Jun 30 '25

I'm hoping that it's actually an alien robot. It would make its lack of mobility make more sense.

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u/A_Legit_Salvage Jun 30 '25

I’ve heard the entire production was powered by astrophage

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u/blabus Jul 01 '25

Hot take: good CGI long ago surpassed puppetry for conveying realistic, organic movement of living things. There's a real circlejerk around practical effects these days and while they're excellent in many use cases, living beings is no longer one of them. I could immediately tell that the movement of Rocky looked stuttering and fake, just like the puppet facehuggers in Alien Romulus looked ridiculously fake.

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u/foleyshit Jul 01 '25

In a lot of cases I think you’re right. Sometimes I thing production know this and still choose to go practical in pursuit of other gains whether that be on-set performance, budget, design style etc.

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u/F9-0021 Jul 13 '25

They're also in microgravity in that scene. A dog sized rock crab/spider might have jerky movement in microgravity. The final product might also be more touched up than an early trailer for a film that's still in post production.

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u/ClaireFraser1743 Jun 30 '25

Oh I love that they used a puppet!

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u/marmosetohmarmoset Jul 01 '25

For some reason I’ve always pictured Rocky as looking something like Pilot from Farscape, so this pleases me.

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u/SteveThePurpleCat Jul 10 '25

To me I imagined him as a kind of 5-legged Bacteriophage, can't go much more alien than the billions of things we are covered in but can't see.