u/SayFuzzyPickles42

At least with how the movie is edited as-is, every place I can think to put it would either be tonal whiplash, or would leave it competing for energy with another major emotional high/low point.

The reveal would be an even bigger punch to the emotional face in the movie given how, compared to the book, the movie puts a lot more emphasis on how mind-and-soul-destroying it is to be completely socially isolated, so it would need to be given a proportionate amount of emotional weight. Anybody have any ideas while we (hopefully) wait for the director's cut?

Eridians are obligate carnivores, and there are billions of them. And they don't eat, like, plankton - Grace describes Rocky's food as looking the same as meat back on Earth, so it's definitely animal meat. Feels sad to say, but there's no way a population that big could come into existence without an overwhelmingly vast and complicated factory farm industry.

And then this hungry alien dude shows up with a whole bunch of new technology, and after a few years of playing with it, the team in charge of keeping him alive figure out how to grow meat in a lab. The process likely isn't efficient enough to happen on a large scale, but it's going to get better - technology always does.

It might be nigh-impossible for us to imagine how dramatic of a game-changer this would be for Erid; every single level of their society, economy, and infrastructure is going to be turned completely and totally upside down and inside out. There's going to be a pre-lab meat and post-lab meat paradigm in Eridian history, the same way that there's a pre-industrial and post-industrial paradigm in our own, and all because Grace really really wanted a borgor.

It isn't that much of a problem here, thankfully, but I see it all the time with hundreds to thousands of upvotes on other social media platforms. And they always present it as heartwarming and a sign of how much he loves Grace.

Like... do you think he's stupid? Do you think he has a mind that just can't handle complicated or difficult information? Do you think his perception of reality would shatter the moment something that isn't starkly black and white enters it?

Rocky has access to every single piece of media the human race ever produced, a complete and unabridged record of our entire history; every single thing we've ever said on record is at his fingertips. There isn't just a few of our vices in there - all of our evils are in there, and there's nothing stopping him from learning about all of it.

One of the big reasons we love him so much is because he's insatiably curious and finds so much joy in learning, right? So it stands to reason that he's going to spend years and years poring through as much of that information as he possibly can; do you think he's going to just plug his ears and look away from all the things in there that aren't so pretty? Or think all of it is fake? How stupid or naive would he need to be for that to be true? Is it so hard to imagine that he simply loves the human race and the world they call home warts and all?

Rocky isn't a child, but that isn't even the half of it - Rocky's not even an Average Joe. He's one of only twenty-three people chosen from his entire global population (several billion more than us, mind) for the most dangerous and unlikely mission in history. He isn't just one of the smartest people in the world, he's one of the bravest, strongest, and most emotionally battle-hardened. He's been trained extensively for the position that he's in, not just in terms of skill but in terms of duty - when Grace brings up how sad it is that Adrian might have moved on in his absence he immediately shuts him down with "Yes, it's sad, but this mission is far more important than me and my feelings; if losing the love of my life is what it will take to save the world then so be it."

Furthermore, he is horrified when he finds out how privileged of a position Erid is in compared to Earth in terms of time and resources, and just how desperate of a race against the clock the Hail Mary Project was. He immediately switches to Grace's timescale to accommodate, and stresses about its safety just as much as Grace. Fourteen years is absolutely nothing from his point of view - that's shorter than the time it takes a human baby takes to grow into an adult, just imagine that from his point of view for a second - and here's a species literally setting their atmosphere on fire over the poles in order to incrementally survive just a few more years.

This might be an unpopular opinion, but I think Rocky would actually be more cognitively-braced to handle the truth about what Stratt did to Grace than any other person on Erid or Earth, and internalize it with objectivity and full regard to context - it was horrific, but it wasn't done for fun or out of malice or apathy, it was done because literally every other less-horrific option had gone up in smoke.

He would be extremely angry and indignant on behalf of his friend, of course, and extend whatever sympathy and support he would need, and probably have a lot more to say than just "mean stuff" if she was ever unlucky enough to meet him - but to portray him as someone who'd just go "Wow never mind your entire species sucks because of what this one bitch did to you", like a fifteen-year-old getting broken up with for the first time, is to grossly disregard his mettle and strength of character.

I hate this take on principle but I'll set aside those feelings and just focus on the logic of it.

Yes, it's obviously true, humans have a very bloody history of invading and exploiting other people's land once they find out it has resources, but even if you set aside the fact that that idea has fallen dramatically out of favor in the eyes of most people - all of those invasions happened on the same human-survivable planet, and generally between cultures that had a significant technology gap.

The conditions of Erid annihilate the human body instantly. Yes, they have xenonite now, but Eridians have been using it for far longer and know their way around it overwhelmingly better. Xenonite is a brand new toy for humans, but it's very old and very well understood technology for Eridians. There's no way they wouldn't know how to obliterate whatever suits, weapons, or ships humans made out of it.

Yes, humans have superior technology at the beginning of the story, but Eridians have had sixteen years to learn from it by the end of it, and they'd have sixteen more years to learn even more by the time a hypothetical human invasion showed up. That invasion wouldn't be stealthy either - this is hard sci-fi, getting through space is overwhelmingly slow and difficult.

Also, even with Astrophage in the equation, interstellar travel isn't something you can do impulsively. Any shitty, greedy people who have a knee-jerk plan to invade the planet will have years and years to realize how bad of an idea it is, and how much more profitable it would be to handle relations peacefully.

It doesn't matter if you view Erid in the most cynical, greedy, reductive way possible - a place full of resources that would make you rich - it still makes overwhelmingly more sense to set up a trade route instead of trying to take those resources by force.

Absolutely not a doctor, could be totally wrong, but I realized this out of nowhere.

Scurvy causes the collagen in your scar tissue to be re-absorbed by your body and all wounds they cover to open back up. So like, all the skin on his arm would just eat away at itself, and he's not getting any skin grafts on Erid - at minimum, that should have cost him his arm, right?

But he definitely has both in the epilogue still, since he can play his Eridian-ese organ.