The Olive Opinion

  Can the box office be saved? Project Hail Mary is, well... a Hail Mary in itself to revitalize exceptional box office for a stacked year of movies, but can Ryan Gosling stick a landing without Barbie on his side, or have another flop on his hands despite it being another worthwhile addition to his repertoire? With this adaptation of the sci-fi bestseller, the author of The Martian brings another space-adventure story about a lonely astronaut.  The adaptation centers on Rylan Grace, a scientist and teacher who is hired to figure out what is causing the Sun and other stars in the nearby solar system to dim, as if they were ill, a development that could lead to Earth's extinction. He is sent to space on a mission to figure out why one of these stars is not affected by this space disease and meets an unlikely friend along the way. With a lack of a serious tone in how I presented that summary, which is the opposite of what marketing is for, is the best way I can explain the plot....

  Pixar has never shied away from themes that make one ponder, especially as of late, to broaden its audience, even if some of these audiences don't seem interested or just blame it on not knowing the movie existed in the first place. Hoppers, I hope you do not suffer this fate, similar to last year's Elio, where the story is as bold as its animation.  This Pixar feature centers on Mabel, an animal activist from birth, a passion that leads her to a rivalry with the Mayor of the fictional Beavertown, who wants to build a new freeway at the expense of the lake where her grandmother used to teach about the wonders of nature. Caught between wondering where the animals had gone from this lake, she also learns of a secret experiment her professor is conducting in college of putting their consciousness into life-like animal robots as a way of making species anthropology easier. She defies her professor and puts on a beaver suit to bring animals back to the lake and avoid further high...