{"id":13535,"date":"2026-03-22T21:48:49","date_gmt":"2026-03-23T04:48:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/moviecuriosities.fmuk.org.uk\/?p=13535"},"modified":"2026-03-22T21:48:52","modified_gmt":"2026-03-23T04:48:52","slug":"project-hail-mary","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/moviecuriosities.fmuk.org.uk\/?p=13535","title":{"rendered":"Project Hail Mary"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Gotta be honest, I was wary about Project Hail Mary<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Yes, the Andy Weir novel is fantastic. Yes, the last time writer Drew Goddard adapted an Andy Weir novel, we got the instant classic that was The Martian<\/em>. And it’s under the direction of proven cinematic geniuses Phil Lord and Christopher Miller. (Weir, Lord, and Miller are all credited producers here, by the way. And Goddard’s an exec producer.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Looking further down the credits, I see the film was shot by cinematographer Greig Fraser, late of the Denis Villeneuve Dune duology (they got someone else to shoot the upcoming third chapter, apparently). Daniel Pemberton came along to score the film, after scoring both of the Spider-Verse films. And in the editing booth is Joel Negron, a seasoned journeyman editor who worked with Lord and Miller on 21 Jump Street<\/em>. All respectable and worthy talents.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So, what was my problem? Star\/producer Ryan Gosling. Freaking Ken. The lead from Drive<\/em>, Blade Runner 2049<\/em>, and The Fall Guy<\/em>. Sure, Gosling is an expert at what he does, and what he does is play stoic, stone-cold, larger-than-life, impossibly handsome men of action. Exactly the opposite of the nebbish misfit academic that Ryland Grace is supposed to be. (“Hail Mary, full of grace,” get it?)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Right up front in the trailer, our lead character repeatedly and emphatically insists that he’s not an astronaut. Indeed, the character is the unlikeliest astronaut ever. But the actor was Neil Fucking Armstrong!!!<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Half the book is about a man stuck out in space, totally alone except for his new alien friend. Which in turn means that most of the dialogue is in an alien language. I had serious doubts and questions as to how and whether this book even could be adapted, especially if this was the casting they were going with. But the reviews were all stellar and the pedigree is proven, so let’s see what we’ve got.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The premise centers around astrophage, a single-celled extraterrestrial life form that feeds on carbon dioxide and radiation, internally storing both as huge stockpiles of energy. So the good news is, we’ve got a clean renewable energy source powerful enough to propel space vehicles across interstellar distances at near-lightspeed. The bad news is, it’s feeding off the sun’s radiation, enough to cool down the solar system’s temperature to the point where plant growth on Earth will be disrupted and all life as we know it will be dead anyway within a few decades. And colonizing another planet isn’t an option, because every observable star is also showing signs of astrophage contamination. Except one.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For whatever reason, Tau Ceti isn’t fading like the other stars are. Thus we have Project Hail Mary, an effort to investigate Tau Ceti and see if a solution can be found and sent back to Earth. The plan is to send three astronauts on a one-way suicide mission to Tau Ceti, spending most of that time in a medically-induced coma. Upon arrival, they’ll investigate and send back whatever they can on four unmanned drones.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And if anything goes wrong, humanity will be no less fucked.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Indeed, things immediately go wrong, as two of the three crew members didn’t survive their comas. That leaves Dr. Ryland Grace, who started out as a disgraced molecular biologist, then became a middle school science teacher, and fell ass-backwards into becoming the world’s foremost authority on astrophages. (It’s a long story.) Hard as it is to save the galaxy on his own, the mission is further complicated by the arrival of another sentient alien. Yes, seriously.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“Rocky” (puppeted and voiced by James Ortiz) is an engineer from the planet Eridani (40 Eridani a b, to be precise). Turns out that planet is also home to sentient life, and it’s also facing existential danger from the astrophages, so they had the same idea the humans did. Trouble is, they’re significantly less practiced at space flight, so Rocky was the only survivor.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Bottom line: Two different scientists from two different planets have to find a way of communicating and cooperating to find a solution to the astrophage problem and save the galaxy. Hilarity ensues.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I’m glossing over a lot of details here. As you’d expect from an Andy Weir work, there’s a shit-ton of math and science and granular detail that goes into exploring the plot and premise and making it all work. Luckily, the filmmakers were remarkably savvy in knowing which parts to cut — all the essential stuff is there and faithfully adapted.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

More importantly, the filmmakers were impressively clever in finding ways to dispense the exposition in a quick and compact manner. I was particularly impressed with using Grace’s background as a middle school teacher, so he would literally have to explain the premise to the audience as if we were children. And the scene gave the apocalyptic stakes some personal heft, which is a nice bonus.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But of course that’s only the first act. Through the rest of the picture, the necessary science is quickly and concisely explained because… well, the world is ending. Time is a factor, there’s a lot to do, everyone’s under pressure to get on the same page, and all these military types are used to working quickly under pressure. So the terse presentation works.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And of course we’ve got the video journals, the whiteboard calculations, and other such tried-and-true methods for Grace to explain what’s going on in his head. I still don’t buy Gosling as the neurotic cowardly loser that Grace is supposed to be, but he beautifully sells the intelligence and humor of the film. And those are easily the most important aspects of an Andy Weir story.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Of course the other major factor here is Rocky. It was always a tall order, making a sentient pile of rocks into something that could plausibly be alive and sympathetic to a human audience. Much as I love the mix of live-action puppetry and CGI that went into crafting Rocky, I’m not a fan of the design. He literally looks too much like a pile of rocks held together by suspension of disbelief. That worked well enough in Galaxy Quest<\/em>, sure, but this is a very different movie made two decades later, built to deliver science fiction of a higher and harder standard.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I would like to have seen more attention paid to the joints, or something else to give the distinct impression that Rocky is truly alive. Because as it is, all we’ve got are his dialogue quirks and movement tics, which are admittedly enough to get by. Speaking of which, I genuinely enjoyed watching Grace and Rocky develop the voice translator they used in the movie, that was handled serviceably well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Put together, Gosling and Rocky both do a stellar job selling the themes of bravery, sacrifice, overcoming differences, solving problems through science, etc. That’s all well and good. I might add that everything out in space looks amazing, with top-notch production design and a show-stopping action sequence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But then we have the flashback scenes in which we learn about what Grace was doing back on Earth before the mission. This is where we start running into problems with Gosling’s other screen partners.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The most prominent case in point is of course Eva Stratt (Sandra Huller), director of Project Hail Mary. I’m sorry to report that the filmmakers tried to sell the character as plausibly human. The problem is that in the book, Stratt is cold and ruthless efficiency, single-mindedly dead-set on the task of saving humanity. This is a woman who all but literally cut out her own soul, locked it away somewhere and melted down the key. She’s got no problem pissing everyone off and breaking every rule because if the astrophage problem isn’t solved and the world ends, none of it matters anyway. Stratt is perfectly fine with going to Hell because she knows that Hell is coming for her and the rest of humanity regardless.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And the filmmakers tried to keep all of this… while also giving the character some shred of vulnerability and sympathy. These two objectives are at odds with each other and the character’s depiction is inevitably muddled as a direct result. It doesn’t work.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Oh, and we’ve also got Ken Leung and Milana Vayntraub on hand to play the other crew members. They barely leave any impression. Not that they had much more to do in the book, but it still feels like a waste all the same.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

On a final note, I’d be remiss not to mention the shaky-cam that ruins otherwise perfectly wonderful shots. And the strobe lighting used as a cheap and easy way to ramp up the tension more than necessary. These are the shots that make me glad I couldn’t make it to an IMAX screening.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I have my gripes with Project Hail Mary<\/em>, and I definitely wouldn’t put it above or even on par with The Martian<\/em>. That said, the film succeeds in every way that matters. Everything important was faithfully adapted, the central themes are elegantly articulated, and the film is so much fun to watch. The filmmakers — most especially Gosling — deserve tremendous credit for delivering Weir’s trademark smartass sense of humor with heart and intelligence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It’s no substitute for reading the book, but I’m happy to recommend it all the same.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Mission complete<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":734,"featured_media":13551,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[5099,5101,5102,800,5100],"class_list":["post-13535","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-james-ortiz","tag-lionel-boyce","tag-project-hail-mary","tag-ryan-gosling","tag-sandra-huller"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/moviecuriosities.fmuk.org.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/PXL_20260323_044119855-scaled-e1774241311491.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3uOb3-3wj","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/moviecuriosities.fmuk.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13535","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/moviecuriosities.fmuk.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/moviecuriosities.fmuk.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/moviecuriosities.fmuk.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/734"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/moviecuriosities.fmuk.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=13535"}],"version-history":[{"count":12,"href":"https:\/\/moviecuriosities.fmuk.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13535\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13552,"href":"https:\/\/moviecuriosities.fmuk.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13535\/revisions\/13552"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/moviecuriosities.fmuk.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/13551"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/moviecuriosities.fmuk.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=13535"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/moviecuriosities.fmuk.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=13535"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/moviecuriosities.fmuk.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=13535"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}