Project Hail Mary
- 4 minutes ago
- 4 min read
A feast for the eyes and the ears in Dolby Cinema, PROJECT HAIL MARY aims for the stars and beautifully blows past them by every measure.
Adapting Andy Weir's best selling novel, Oscar winning Directors Phil Lord and Christopher Miller have created a science fiction film for the ages.
If you're old enough (like me) to have seen "2001" and "Close Encounters of the Third Kind" on the big screen when they were released, get ready to have that same sense of wonder again in the theater.
The last time that Ryan Gosling played an astronaut, he was the emotionally closed off space pioneer Neil Armstrong in 2018's "First Man". Here, his man in space, Ryland Grace is the polar opposite. He's a science teacher who wakes up as the sole survivor of a deep space mission, light years from Earth without a clue as to why he's there.
As memories begin to emerge, we experience them alongside him.
As we know from the trailers, the sun seems to be dying. Our planet has sent a mission to explore the only apparent sun in the universe that has not been affected.
The brilliance of the film's structure in the screenplay by Drew Goddard, who also adapted Weir's previous novel, "The Martian" for the big screen, is that the flashbacks are as exciting and informative as Grace's dilemma on the ship.
Luckily for us, the folks back on Earth are also an incredibly well cast lot.
Sandra Huller (Anatomy of a Fall, The Zone of Interest) is reliably stunning in her first American film as Eva Stratt, a high level government official who targets Ryland for the worldwide scientific effort to find out what's happening to the stars.
Gosling and Huller's interactions are so well written and acted that you hang on every word the entire film. It's a fascinating and unpredictable relationship.
Lionel Boyce (The Bear) is great as Carl, a secret service agent assigned to Ryland and Ken Leung (Lost) is terrific as Yao, one of the astronauts on the mission who's not too sure how to take Ryland from their first meeting onward.
The film's first half is a mystery informed by it's flashbacks.
At about the midway point, Grace arrives at his destination in a very distant universe to observe the unaffected sun. Almost immediately another massive ship arrives and pulls up directly next to him, setting up a laugh out loud sequence in which Riley, definitely NOT a pilot, attempts to maneuver the ship away from the intimidating alien craft.
But soon, the alien craft is reaching out to make contact and what follows for the last hour+ of the film is a carefully crafted, beautifully told sci-fi/human adventure that blew me away.
It would be easy to say it had elements of "ET", "Contact","2010" and the previously mentioned "Close Encounters". I also saw a bit of "Silent Running", "Denis Villeneuve's "Arrival" and "The Andromeda Strain" within the story.
But PROJECT HAIL MARY isn't a ripoff, a remake or a direct homage to any of those films. It's a unique story that inspires the same emotions of visual wonder that those films did in their day.
I'm going to intentionally say very little about the astronaut that Grace meets on that other ship, even though the trailers, to me, give away far too much. The trailer that I attached below is my favorite, as it keeps that astronaut pretty hidden. But don't worry, even the longest trailer barely scratches the surface of what happens when two astronauts from different worlds are faced with the same threat to their respective home planets.
It's important to note that practical effects, not CGI were used to create the other astronaut. It makes a HUGE difference on screen. Derek Arnold (Rogue One) creates real magic with the character.
The visual effects team is top notch, creating spaceships, planets and space scenarios that I've never seen on film.
Daniel Pemberton (Spider-Man: Across the Universe, The Materialists) creates a massive score that's at times playful and often awe inspiring in some of the film's most jaw dropping moments. It's as diverse in tone as the film itself, covering every range of emotions perfectly.
Above all, the movie is a fun, suspenseful, fast-paced blast of humor, heartfelt drama and WOW moments that amaze.
Lord and Miller have created something special here alongside Gosling, creating a single human character that you spend the majority of the film with, one-on-one. Gosling's always been likeable, but he takes that to another universe as a man discovering exactly who he is a very, very long way from home.
A summer movie blockbuster that's arrived two months early, this is sure to be a blockbuster. I'm predicting a $100 million opening weekend, even WITH March Madness in play.
An irresistible, perfect blend of heart and laughs, PROJECT HAIL MARY executes a perfect landing that I can't wait to see again.
Fist my bump, it gets an A+ and sits alongside "Crime 101" as the best film of 2026, so far.
Amazon/MGM is on a roll.
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