Project Hail Mary (2026)

 

Everything is figure-outable. And in times like these days where the world is on fire and minute-to-minute news feels like we're past the brink of losing it all, it's refreshing to watch a film jettisoning us to space in the hope of saving humanity and holding into our future. Its star and my forever bae Ryan Gosling spent six years bringing the mammoth novel by Andy Weir to life, and a lot of that love shines on screen from the incredible production design and score, to the essential element of the film - his character's friendship with an alien Rocky, whose own planet is also being slowly eaten away by alien bacteria called Astrophage. 

I wish there was something more worth mentioning here about the astrophage, but contrary to the 500+page novel where every problem to be solved introduces another (and the problems are just biology, astrophysics, relativity, to say the least), the movie deals with the conflict of what Ryland and Rocky are working against a little too subtly. Having read the book last summer in a sprint / binge to return it to the library on time with its million holds waiting behind me, I wondered how was the film going to deliver a crash course in so many convoluted scenes to life. For the most part, the film kinda riddles it down to cliff notes, a few sentences in passing here and there. It almost feels like even if you came across the book before it wasn't essential reading material to understand what was going on here. And for that reason, there's a lot missing out with the script when the plot doesn't pertain to Ryland and Rocky's camaraderie - which is 85%-ish of the movie.

Comparatively to another adaptation of Andy Weir's The Martian, the film doesn't merely assume its audiences has a basic knowledge of Mars and skims over all the nitty-grittiness of Matt Damon's Mark Watney trying to get home to Earth. The script considers how to bring you along on the journey of why life is not hospitable; how he'll grow enough potatoes until NASA can save him; how NASA at home is building shuttles to get to him before anything more dire happens; every detail is defined in a way that is both digestible and essential to the characters mission, and it doesn't feel like one long boring science class -at least to me. 

With Project Hail Mary, the story condenses or moves past a lot of rich details so quickly, I missed it - like how Ryland is able to transfer Rocky's natural voice to a human one is because it's made up of music; the complexity of astrophage is as a species and why it's so impenetrable in its trek from the sun to Venus; how Grace learns that Earth survives and his sacrifice was worth it. I kept waiting to feel the fuller weight of Ryland's mission, and to understand what it is he's trying to figure out - not step by step like I'm five and need to be explained like a child. But more like, going back to the beginning, everything is figureoutable. For that to feel more real, in a sense, it's not that everything is figureoutable simply because it eventually gets solved but with the whys and hows too. No matter how gorgeous, adventurous and heartfelt the "showing" is, sometimes a little more telling goes a long way.

Sometimes a movie comes along that re-awakens us about what we're yearning for. At the height of the COVID pandemic where we were losing our minds and collective souls in lockdown, Chloe Zhao's Oscar winning Nomadland reset our nervous system with its atmospheric, natural setting reminded us of the singular isolation we burdened ourselves with and collective connection to our environment and each other we were sorely missing. The cinematography and production design, and the ability to produce an IMAX sci-fi film to this scale with 99% practical effects will have all of us scratching our heads for years to come, and probably every re-watch, just as much as our hearts will swell watching Ryland and Rocky's friendship. But at the same time, directors Phil Lord and Christopher Miller's pacing to be equally parts going through the motions story-wise and visually immersive. 

As Ryan Gosling has said during the promo tour it is more of Hollywood's responsibility to deliver films that helps audiences go to the theaters. Alas, this crew is providing a great escape and giving a much-needed sign of hope that things are not too far gone both in movies, and life at large. That in itself, is AMAZE AMAZE AMAZE.

Rating: ★★★1/2☆☆