FILM REVIEW: ‘Project Hail Mary’ Sends Hearts Soaring

Imagine waking up in space and not knowing how you got there. In Project Hail Mary, Ryland Grace (Ryan Gosling) emerges from a coma 12 light-years from our solar system, with no recollection of who he is or why he is in space. 

This may sound like your personal nightmare, but Project Hail Mary, based on Andy Weir’s 2021 novel of the same name, is surprisingly light in tone, leaning into Grace’s characteristic humor to keep viewers from being totally bummed out. Christopher Nolan’s Interstellar may have you crying from beginning to end, but Project Hail Mary will at least give you a side of laughter with your tears. 

Pretty quickly, Grace realizes that he has been sent on a mission to save Earth’s sun, which is being eaten by single-celled organisms dubbed astrophage. All of the other stars near Earth’s sun are also infected, except for Tau Ceti. Grace must find out why Tau Ceti isn’t dying to devise a solution to save Earth’s sun (and therefore the human race) from destruction. From the opening scene, Gosling immediately wins the audience over Grace, combining physical comedy and his classic charm even as the situation is dire. 

On his mission to Tau Ceti, Grace encounters Rocky, an alien from planet 40 Eridani, whose sun is also dying from the astrophage. Together, Grace and Rocky work together to save their planets. If you’ve ever thought Gosling was so charming that he would have chemistry with a rock, you’d be absolutely correct. Each scene with Grace and Rocky (voiced by James Ortiz) is packed with emotion, and their relationship is the heart of the film, which justifies Rocky’s presence in the film’s trailers, rather than giving audiences a surprise reveal like in the book.

Project Hail Mary is a film told in parallel, with Grace’s current adventures in the Tau Ceti solar system depicted alongside the events on Earth that lead to his boarding the Hail Mary spaceship. Fans who see Project Hail Mary in IMAX will be treated to gorgeous IMAX visuals during space sequences and standard aspect ratio during Grace’s Earth flashbacks. 

The best use of sweeping IMAX imagery comes at the end of the second act of the film, when Grace and Rocky are in orbit above the planet Adrian. The sparkling red of the Petrovascope combined with the swirling green clouds of the planet below quite literally takes your breath away, especially in combination with the ethereal, awe-inspiring score composed by Daniel Pemberton (who is also known for the scores behind Lord and Miller’s Spider-Verse films). 

This is not Weir’s first film adaptation. The Martian, which starred Matt Damon as astronaut Mark Watney who gets stranded on Mars (Weir clearly has a niche for guys stuck in space), came out in 2015. Drew Goddard, who penned the screenplay for Project Hail Mary, also wrote The Martian, but Project Hail Mary’s screenplay is leagues better, mostly thanks to better source material. 

Fans of the book will be pleased to know that Project Hail Mary is a truly faithful adaptation, with only a few changes made to serve the story, including an iconic (and surprisingly touching) scene with Sandra Hüller’s Eva Stratt singing a karaoke version of Harry Styles’ “Sign of the Times.” 

The only aspect of the book that could have been better fleshed out is Grace’s relationships with Commander Yao and Engineer Ilyukhina (Ken Leung and Milana Vayntrub), who Grace finds dead in the Hail Mary when he wakes up from his coma. In the book, Grace was close with his team members, but it’s not well reflected in the flashback scenes, likely due to the film’s already impressive runtime of two hours and 36 minutes. 

If you are headed to theaters this weekend to see Project Hail Mary, you should try to see it in a premium format. The breathtaking visuals and vibrant colors look amazing in IMAX and Dolby formats, and you don’t want to miss out on that. 

While Project Hail Mary is hitting screens in March, Sinners’ success at the Oscars last weekend, despite an April release last year, gives me hope that Project Hail Mary will get lots of love on the awards circuit next year, particularly in the visual effects and screenplay categories (Goddard’s The Martian screenplay picked up a nomination for Best Adapted Screenplay in 2016). 

Project Hail Mary is directed by Phil Lord and Christopher Miller, written by Drew Goddard, and stars Ryan Gosling, Sandra Hüller, James Ortiz, and Lionel Boyce. 

4.5/5 stars.