2026 | PG-13 | starring Ryan Gosling and Sandra Huller | directed by Phil Lord and Chris Miller | 2 hrs 23 mins | 4 out of 5 |
School teacher Grace (Ryan Gosling) is recruited to be part of a mission to the farthest reaches of space to save the world from a mysterious energy that threaten to de-power the sun and kill all life on Earth. After one calamity after another the novice astronaut finds friendship in an alien on a similar mission to save his planet and the two unlikely partners team up to save their species.
Despite a string of successes and a proven track record of imagination and rock-solid filmmaking, Phil Lord and Chris Miller always find a way to put themselves in a new situation to be underestimated. Whether it’s adapting a picture book about food falling from the sky, the initially head-slapping decision to make a movie based on Legos or an R-rated adaptation of 21 Jump Street, they have a knack for taking properties with no inherit creative juice in them and remolding them into gold. While Andy Weir’s book does have the makings of a good movie adaptation, Project Hail Mary functions as yet another radical genre shift for the duo, one that was supposed to happen years ago and was cut short when Kathleen Kennedy fired them from Solo: A Star Wars Story for injecting this kind of life into that movie, which was intended to be as lifeless and by-the-numbers as the Ron Howard version we were given (#ReleasetheLordandMillerCut). Project Hail Mary is classically solid storytelling, infused with passion and heart, where just about every note of suspense and comedy hits. It’s also sweet Sci-Fi revenge on the Star Wars machine.
This is the kind of movie Amblin Entertainment used to make in the 80s and 90s, with Lord and Miller and writer Drew Goddard (The Cabin in the Woods) replacing the Speilberg, Kennedy and Frank Marshall crew. It’s long, but almost perfectly paced, allowing each set piece to breathe and be fully realized before the next layer unfolds. The flashback structure works better than it does in most movies. Instead of a trick designed to obscure the obvious, it threads the past and present storylines to drop plot points (some dense, sci-fi ideas as well) when they will have the most impact the other story. Often, the flashback story involving Grace being recruited by NASA’s Eva Stratt (Sandra Huller, Anatomy of a Fall) and working the problem with boxes on the ground, that is just as compelling as the space story. Like Andy Weir’s The Martian before it, Project Hail Mary is a great procedural that moves at a good clip.
While The Martian still had footing in reality, Mary is firmly planted in science fiction – though dialed between a procedural like Apollo 13 and full-blown Star Wars fantasy. The difference is the Lord, Miller and Goddard injections of humor. The humor in their movies always lands or me, but this one has a different-by-design tone. Gone is the sarcasm, satire and meta irony that usually punches up their films, replaced instead of … just jokes. Honest, observational and character-driven humor that doesn’t try to be edgy and doesn’t feel forced. While a film of this story scope feels big, the majority of it is a one-man show carried by the charm and charism of Ryan Gosling, who plays a very good dumb-smart guy and plays the budding bromance between Grace and an alien rock he names Rocky feel entirely believable, even touching. It’s also to the credit of the pitch-perfect editing that it never feels small or claustrophobic.
While Project Hail Mary isn’t going to change your life, it is an incredibly entertaining piece of filmmaking where every aspect of the production is firing on all cylinders. It’s great stuff. It’s the kind of movie we used to get every summer about 20 years ago, but now feels like a refreshing glass of water. As is Lord and Miller’s MO, they rise to the challenge and make us care (a lot) about an alien rock. Rocky is a full-blown character and the breakout star of this movie. It’s the kind of character someone like Disney could have made a lot of money turning into toys.
Ops. Oh, well.