Watching a movie is generally considered one of the best in-class experiences that there are. Kelly Rintala, a STEM 10 teacher, read Project Hail Mary over the summer and loved it, and with the movie coming out in the middle of March, she decided that it would be a perfect read.

  “I read 75 books last year, and Project Hail Mary was in my top five favorites even though I am not a reader of science fiction… I thought it was kind of the perfect book to bring into class. Also, I knew there was a movie coming out in March, so I thought it’d be really fun if we worked through the story together and then we could go see the movie,” Rintala said.

  However, they didn’t see the movie in class, as it’s 2 and a half hours long, and won’t be on a streaming service for a while. Instead, they planned to have an optional meet up outside of school to watch it together. Some students, including Lennon Bliss, a sophomore in Rintala’s class, planned on seeing it.

  “A lot of us in the STEM block [made] plans to go see it as a group,” Bliss said.

  Throughout the class, the general consensus was that most students enjoyed the book. The class would listen to the audiobook once a week for a few minutes, but as that was too slow, it changed to reading it on your own if you wanted to.

  “A lot of people, including me, really like it, and it’s really interesting. Some people [thought] it’s really boring listening to the recording, but now that we have the choice to read it on our own because we’re not doing the recording, a lot of people enjoy it a lot more,” Bliss said.

  While most books in school have assignments or tests as part of the curriculum, this read was just for fun, excluding the small check-ins.

  “We read other novels and have assignments and assessments and analyze them, but with this particular book, it was more of a ‘this will be fun for us to have this shared story together,’” Rintala said. “They just had what I call ‘stop and jot’ sheets where they are kind of practicing some of that metacognition with reading a book; like, what happens in your brain, let’s pay attention to that, and they would just stop and jot or they could doodle on it.”

  When they went to see the movie, many people enjoyed it. One such person was Luka Dumon, another sophomore in Rintala’s STEM 10 class.

  “I thought the film was incredible. It was surprisingly hilarious, which I was not expecting having not read the novel, but all the emotional beats hit home as well,” said Dumon.

  Although a film heavy on sci-fi might seem unappealing to some, the movie is still a great watch even if you’re not into the genre.

  “I am not a huge science-person, but the creators were able to weave the science-fiction aspects with the more grounded, real scientific stuff very seamlessly,” Dumon said.

  Even if you’ve never read the book, or aren’t even into science at all, this movie is still a great watch. While it does have a focus on the science aspect, it also has lots of emotion included, to make it feel like a real film that people would watch instead of a poorly-made movie adaptation.

  “Even if you are not a typical Sci-Fi fan, I think that the raw emotion and comedy in this movie combined with the beautiful cinematography will make you love it,” Dumon said.