Movie Review – Project Hail Mary
Principal Cast : Ryan Gosling, Sandra Huller, James Ortiz, Lionel Boyce, Ken Leung, Milana Vayntrub, Priuya Kansara, Malachi Kirby, Liz Kingsman, Mia Soteriou, Ray Porter.
Synopsis: A science teacher wakes up alone on a spaceship. As his memory returns, he uncovers a mission to stop a mysterious substance killing Earth’s sun and that an unexpected friendship may be the key.
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This review contains spoilers for Project Hail Mary.
An early contender for 2026’s film of the year, the Lord/Miller-directed Project Hail Mary, based on Andy Weir’s 2121 novel, boasts a superb lead performance from Ryan Gosling and one of the most astonishing depictions of outer space we’ve seen for a very long time. Weir, best known for penning The Martian, which itself was turned into a feature film by Ridley Scott, crafts another story of singularly human isolation and hope, set against a backdrop of the harshness of interstellar travel; Weir’s novel was again adapted by The Martian screenwriter Drew Goddard, and directed by Phil Lord and Christopher Miller, the brains behind the successful 21 Jump Street reboot and the incredibly popular Spider-Verse animated films. The pedigree for Project Hail Mary is off the charts, leading to an astounding expectation that most films could never hope to realise. And yet, in a triumph of dramatic narrative storytelling, Project Hail Mary is a film that doesn’t just meet those expectations, it exceeds them.
The Earth’s sun is dying; mysterious microscopic creatures known as astrophage are devouring the sun’s energy, cooling it dramatically to the point where scientists, who have discovered a star way off in interstellar space that isn’t affected, decide to send a spacecraft on a kind of rescue-science mission to understand why, and hopefully bring this information back to Earth so humanity can be saved. The craft is occupied by three personnel, including high-school teacher and molecular biologist Ryland Grace (Gosling), who wakes after an extended period in an induced coma to find he’s light-years from Earth and, thanks to the unseen death of his crewmates, alone. Through flashback, we learn about Grace’s involvement with mankind’s race to find answers, led by a highly secretive team under control of Eva Stratt (Sandra Huller), and this is intercut between scenes of isolation and gradual realisation that Grace is not quite as alone as he thinks – a nearby alien craft also waits, upon which a singular lifeform remains, one that also hopes to find out how to defeat the astrophage problem.
Few films I’ve seen could be categorised as transcendent, and even fewer of those would have what industry boffins might call wide audience appeal: Project Hail Mary is both of these things. A film with no sex, little violence and almost no thematic material of controversy other than a desperate race to save humanity, the film’s cosmic appeal lays squarely in the tremendous Ryan Gosling turn and his co-star, an instantly lovable alien creature named Rocky. As much as it should be left to audiences to discover the joy of Rocky for themselves, and his inclusion in this review does constitute a significant spoiler of sorts for the film’s crucial mid-point, I can’t review the film in its entirety without at least mentioning the little rock-shaped dude’s presence, and exhort my belief that he’s the best sidekick character since Wilson in Cast Away. Project Hail Mary owes a lot of its timbre and tonality to films of that exceptionally small subgenre – it’s been compared most favourably to the likes of not just that Robert Zemeckis movie, but also Denis Villeneuve’s Arrival, Christopher Nolan’s Interstellar, and, yes, Ridley Scott’s The Martian, but also thematic similarities to Duncan Jones’ Moon and Alfonso Cuaron’s Gravity, among others. That it could compare to this list of what is arguably the strongest human-alone-in-space movies isn’t me trying to subvert just how good Project Hail Mary is: if anything, it’s me augmenting its status as an all-time classic.
The film is near perfect, down to the nuts and bolts of its astounding visual effects. Key to this is the film’s practical design work and sheer functionality, placing the viewer well and truly into the deep vacuum of space and making sure we’re buckled up tight. Lord and Miller’s direction is sublime throughout, their ability to craft pitch-perfect moments within each performance and arc, within each scene, and throughout the overall film, and as a dramatic piece it’s one of their strongest works to date. Goddard’s screenplay cuts between the present and the copious flashbacks superbly well; this kind of storytelling is often difficult, as usually flashbacks are designed to flesh out the past at the expense of dramatic tension in the present, but with Project Hail Mary it works beautifully. The film’s soaring themes of hope and salvation, of personal growth and expectation, are woven within the fabric of the film’s delightful dialogue, most of which is some brilliant verbal sequences between Ryland and Rocky – there’s also some terrific humour here too, which offsets the tension of a given scene.
The dynamic between Rocky and Ryland Grace is the film’s success. Gosling, acting opposite a practical puppet for most scenes with Rocky – or, in some cases, a completely CG version – is superb in the role; as a broken man sent on this mission, he forms the zenith of mankind’s frailty, fear, sense of purpose and eventual catharsis in the role. At times laugh-out-loud funny, in others a tear-jerking mess, and at others a man bereft of feeling, Gosling shoulders the film’s emotional core with strength and profundity and turns what could have been a fairly lightweight role into something worthy of awards. It should also be noted that his co-star, Rocky, will absolutely steal your heart and melt your soul, so moving and affecting is the work by James Ortiz and the puppeteers who brought the character to life. Exactly how a sentient piece of gravel could capture your imagination quite like Rocky is a feat unto itself.
The wonderful Sandra Huller is charming and forceful as Eva Stratt, the leader of the task force behind the project, and her character’s strength and determination is what holds a lot of the backstory together. Lionel Boyce has a minor but effective supporting role as Carl, a security officer who befriends Ryland while he’s on Earth. There’s a gaggle of supporting turns here but the film hinges largely on the Grace/Rocky dynamic for large portions, and a great deal of the film’s runtime is handed over to Gosling and his driveway-mix companion. Again, Lord and Miller do a lot with giving Ryland Grace a significant portion of fragility and sadness, a man suffering an extraordinary lack of self-worth and self-belief, and this forms the crux of the character’s arc throughout the film as he comes to terms not only with his hail mary role as saviour of mankind, but also as a friend to an extra-terrestrial species. If I had to nitpick the film, it might be to suggest that I didn’t find Ryland Grace’s motivation for his inward lack of belief to be strong enough early on – like, dude, get over yourself already – but by the end of the film I guess one might argue he wasn’t really given the option to grow out of it naturally. I found the continued talking himself down to be tiresome after a while, so yeah, there’s that. But it’s a very, very minor criticism of an otherwise near-perfect movie. I fully expect Gosling to find himself nominated for Best Actor for his work here – it’s affecting, sad, humorous, light and dark and every shade in between: a perfect performance.
I mentioned earlier that Project Hail Mary evokes similar thematic movies of the past, and while from a structural or narrative perspective this is true, the film’s overall tone goes off in altogether different directions. Greig Fraser’s cinematography is absolutely out of this world – pun strongly intended. Filmed for IMAX and utilising shifting aspect ratios, Project Hail Mary is a wondrous visual spectacle even if you don’t immediately latch onto the humanist narrative. Coupled with a thunderous sound mix, and one of the best needle-drop musical soundtracks since James Gunn’s original Guardians of the Galaxy, the film’s gorgeous aesthetic feels gritty, lived-in and bespoke, while simultaneously giving off vibes of Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey, only without the monkeys or the murderous computer. The visual effects, both practical but especially the computer-generated, are breathtaking at times, as absorbing and enveloping a cinematic experience as it’s possible to have; Project Hail Mary demands to be seen on the biggest screen you can find.
Project Hail Mary has the hallmarks of becoming an instant classic of the genre, mentioned in the same breath as films I listed earlier – The Martian, Interstellar, Arrival et al; you can add this one to the small list of films that transcend the human experience in the genre of science fiction. Deeply moving, it even managed to draw a tear from this hard-bitten film cynic, and that’s about as high praise as I can give it. Lord and Miller have crafted a brilliant, beautiful work of art, and one I suspect will be analysed, dissected and thesis-driven for decades to come. A monumental achievement, this is an essential entry into the canon. Amaze! Amaze! Amaze!
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