Project Hail Mary

A crowd-pleaser to be hailed

Despite the success of Andy Weir's novel “The Martian” on the big screen with the Ridley Scott and Matt Damon film of the same name, it has taken more than a decade for another of Weir's novels to be adapted. This one, again featuring a solitary and witty astronaut in space, is the crowd-pleaser Project Hail Mary (2026).

Project Hail Mary opens on Ryland Grace (Ryan Gosling), a man waking up from a coma with memory loss, who finds himself the sole surviving member of a spaceship crew. Through flashbacks, Ryland remembers he is a microbiologist and middle school teacher who gets roped into a planet-saving mission by the stern Eva Stratt (Sandra Hüller) after alien microbes start eating the sun. Ryland finds himself on a mission to discover where these microbes come from and how to stop them.

Project Hail Mary marks the directorial reemergence of Phil Lord and Chris Miller, who, while remaining active as producers, had not directed a film since The Lego Movie (2014). While their films have been mainstream hits before, Project Hail Mary is the biggest budget and canvas the duo has ever worked on, at over $200 million. Yet the jump in scale has not fazed them, but rather unlocked greater bounds of their creativity.

Project Hail Mary is a perfectly calibrated crowd-pleaser of the type that seems to have disappeared as algorithms have increasingly segmented audiences into ever smaller, devoted niches. Even the vaunted comic book movies of the past few decades aimed more at a young male audience than at all four quadrants. As such, Project Hail Mary is a refreshing return to wide appeal. Yet calling something a "crowd-pleaser" can appear derisive, as if it were a project dumbed down for the masses. That is the genius of Weir's books: they trust their audience. While the book certainly goes into more depth and detail, Project Hail Mary doesn't hold back from anchoring its story on microbiological plot points and trusting viewers to grasp basic scientific facts. As a result, the film doesn't lose the signature selling point of Weir's stories, which is their commitment to scientific accuracy and plausibility. It makes the depictions of alien life and the challenges undergone all the more immersive and intimate.

As with The Martian (2015), much of the narrative is told through the protagonist's inner monologue, which for a film necessitates someone talking to themselves in a charming manner. Damon did this to great effect in The Martian, and Gosling is more than up to the task in Project Hail Mary, oozing with charisma and likeability. Appearing as an everyman is a difficult skill for movie stars to pull off, and Gosling doesn't necessarily come to mind when casting for it, yet the Canadian actor proves so adept in his comedic timing that it's impossible not to fall for Ryland within the first ten minutes. It proves key as he carries us through all the scientific jargon and emotional beats, largely by himself. There is, however, a key companion I won't go into too much due to spoilers, which captures the hearts of viewers and proves a crucial foil to Ryland's quips.

Phil Lord and Chris Miller have shown themselves to be incredibly colorful, quite literally, in their filmmaking, mixing their winning humor with a visual palette that makes their films pop. This is taken to the next level with Project Hail Mary. Alongside cinematographer Greig Fraser (Dune, 2021; Zero Dark Thirty, 2012), the film is an absolute marvel to behold, using color in enlivening ways: from red space suits to a planet with a swirling green aurora. Even more mundane elements, like the red lighting inside the spaceship or its warning flashes, are deployed in ways that are quietly breathtaking.

In the end, Project Hail Mary feels like the savior that cinemas had long been awaiting: a popular, inspiring, and entertaining film about kindness and bravery that never preaches, enveloping you so warmly that you leave the theater with a smile on your face and a spring in your step. Who says crowd-pleasers should be looked down upon?

8.2/10