Project Hail Mary

OVERVIEW

Set in a future where the sun is slowly dying, Project Hail Mary follows Ryland Grace (Ryan Gosling), a former teacher turned reluctant astronaut, sent on a last-chance mission to find a way to stop humanity’s extinction. Based on Andy Weir’s novel, the film is directed by Phil Lord and Christopher Miller, the duo behind 21 Jump Street and The Lego Movie. It arrives very much in the vein of the prestige sci-fi wave that was so present in the 2010s, with titles like The Martian, Interstellar, Gravity, and Arrival.

BACKGROUND

While these films never reached superhero-level box office, they were still great bets for studios competing with that phenomenon, attracting adult audiences by making big ideas accessible. The Martian was one of the best examples of that model, turning science-heavy storytelling into broadly entertaining cinema through a smart problem-solving core, Matt Damon’s charisma, a killer soundtrack, and awe-inspiring visuals.

That cycle eventually lost momentum. More serious entries like First Man and Ad Astra saw diminishing returns, while streaming and, later, the pandemic made this kind of theatrical sci-fi a harder sell. Ironically, Amazon, one of the companies that helped fuel the streaming wars and indirectly push this subgenre into dormancy, is now one of the studios trying to bring it back. Since merging with MGM, Amazon’s theatrical results have been respectable but not quite spectacular, with even its biggest titles finding a stronger afterlife on Prime Video. In that context, Project Hail Mary looked like a real shot at reviving crowd-pleasing prestige sci-fi while also giving the studio its first undeniable box-office hit.

THE REVIEW

That intention is clear in every frame of Project Hail Mary. It is a movie that, throughout its runtime, tries to replicate what made those films endearing and successful. In some areas, it achieves that, or at least comes close enough. In others, not so much. In general, it feels like the younger brother of those films: recognizable in the family resemblance, likable in its own way, but too often reminding you of what its predecessors achieved.

Where it works best is in Ryan Gosling’s lead performance, which brings out the actor’s charisma and comic timing in ways more present in films like The Nice Guys and Barbie, while also carrying some of the melancholy seen in First Man. The result is a character who, like Matt Damon in The Martian or Sam Rockwell in Moon, remains highly watchable and funny, all while never making us doubt the intelligence underneath. A huge part of the film is spent watching Gosling alone, recording video logs or thinking out loud, and he carries us through it admirably.

It gets even better once Ryland gains a companion, Rocky, an alien dealing with the same problem. The rock-like figure has an interesting design that recalls one of Interstellar’s droids and also delivers some of the film’s best comedy. Some of his behavior feels like a mix of Baymax and the Star Wars sequel trilogy droids, but James Ortiz’s work as puppeteer and voice actor brings him to life and keeps him from feeling merely derivative. Rocky and Ryland provide such a strong backbone that it is surprising Lord and Miller, along with writer Drew Goddard, do not trust that dynamic enough to carry the movie on its own.

Faithfully adapting the book, Goddard’s script uses flashbacks to show the state of the planet and how Ryland ended up where he is. The problem is that the Earth sequences are much less interesting and add very little to what the film is already communicating in the present.

They also fail in two pivotal areas: making Ryland’s mission feel urgent and giving the character more depth. This is where it becomes clearest that Lord and Miller are not operating on the level of filmmakers like Christopher Nolan, Ridley Scott, or Denis Villeneuve. Compare how Arrival builds tension around the reveal of the spacecraft and gives the crisis a real presence in everyday life with the comparable scenes here, and it becomes obvious that something is missing. There are attempts to create that larger feeling, including a karaoke sequence that works well on its own (I never thought I needed to hear Sandra Hüller singing “Sign of the Times”), but the film never fully convinces us that humanity is facing imminent extinction.

Ryland’s development in the Earth sequences is equally underwhelming. The movie spends long stretches on conversations between him and Eva, only for the key reveal to overexplain ideas the film had already conveyed through Ryland’s contrast with Rocky and what Rocky’s selflessness teaches him. Instead of trusting the audience to connect those ideas on its own, the film spells them out, and as a result, falls short of the effortless impact Arrival achieved.

That is ultimately the case with Project Hail Mary as a whole. Much of what it proposes was already explored more fully by the great prestige sci-fi films of the 2010s, and it never quite trusts its own ideas enough to stand apart. That extends to the technical side as well. Greig Fraser’s cinematography offers some evocative images, but they often feel Interstellar-adjacent. Daniel Pemberton’s score, and even some of the needle drops, recall The Martian. These familiar traits would be easier to overlook if the directors kept the mission’s urgency front and center, but the constant interruptions from the flashbacks keep cutting into the stakes, leaving the film charming and polished, yet strangely aimless.

FINAL THOUGHTS

Project Hail Mary remains a worthy theatrical watch, if only for delivering the basics of a well-executed prestige sci-fi. It is clever, well-acted, funny, and competently made, especially in an era of increasingly ugly blockbusters, there is real pleasure in seeing visuals this polished on an IMAX screen. The film is at its best in the space sequences, particularly when it focuses on Ryland solving problems on his own, or finding ways to communicate with the other ship. Yet its largely inconsequential flashbacks, combined with a lack of real urgency, make it clearly inferior to the great sci-fi films of the 2010s, and more likely to leave you wanting to revisit those instead.

At a glance

3/5

Worth your time

Where to watch

Prime VideoPrime Video

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