Amazing Grace

At a time when everything here on Earth is just a little too much, the new movie Project Hail Mary arrives as pure, unapologetic escapism. 

And not the empty kind, either. The smart kind. 

The kind where the stakes are enormous, the science is weirdly fascinating (though not always accurate), and the jokes land hard enough that you forget for two-and-a-half hours that the news exists. 

The kind that’s literally and figuratively out of this world.

Based on the novel by Andy Weir (the same guy who wrote The Martian, the basis for the Matt Damon movie), Project Hail Mary follows Ryland Grace (Ryan Gosling), a middle-school science teacher who wakes up alone on a spaceship with no memory of who he is or why he’s there. 

Slowly, the memories return: He was recruited by Eva Stratt (Sandra Hüller, who was so good in Anatomy of a Fall, one of the best movies of 2023), the head of a global team tackling an escalating crisis. It seems the sun is dimming due to a mysterious microorganism, and Grace may be the planet’s best chance of figuring out how to stop it. 

The problem? Grace is not an astronaut. As he himself says, “I put the ‘not’ in astronaut.” He’s just a science nerd who’s not afraid of challenging the status quo, who got dragged into saving the planet, and who wound up in outer space on a ship called the Hail Mary (natch), with his crewmates both dead, who’s gonna have to figure everything out all by himself. Kind of like Sandra Bullock in Gravity.

Or so he thinks. As Grace nears his destination, he encounters another ship from another solar system. This other ship also has a sole survivor trying to save its planet — a strange, five-legged alien creature who, for obvious reasons, Grace names “Rocky.”

Before long, the movie turns into something delightfully unexpected: a full-blown space buddy comedy. Yes, Project Hail Mary deals with the fate of the galaxy hanging in the balance, but more importantly, at its heart, it’s a film about friendship, curiosity, and two very different beings trying to solve an impossible problem together.

Gosling is perfectly cast here. He plays Grace as a slightly overwhelmed, but deeply enthusiastic, explorer — the kind of guy who gets genuinely excited about chemical reactions and orbital mechanics. And who, somehow, never runs out of fun t-shirts. Gosling’s easygoing charm and comedic timing carry the movie.

(For the record, he’s played a teacher and a space traveler before — in Half Nelson and First Man, respectively — so this is somewhat familiar territory.)

If The Martian was about one man surviving through sheer ingenuity (and a lot of potatoes and poop), Project Hail Mary takes the same kind of science-forward storytelling and expands it into something warmer and funnier. Sure, this movie is full of sequences where Grace scribbles equations and facts on a whiteboard, and challenges that get resolved just in the nick of time, but the emotional core hits differently. This isn’t just about survival — it’s about collaboration. 

To that end, it helps that Rocky is an actual being, brought to life through puppetry and practical effects, and the voice work of James Ortiz, instead of by digital effects. Grace and Rocky share many of the same emotions, and Ortiz’s live portrayal allows Gosling to make the most of playful opportunities for humor and more poignant interactions at other points. Grace and Rocky’s sweet chemistry makes both characters endearing. “Fist my bump” to both of them.

That the spacecraft interiors are equally tactile and real, rather than green-screen digital effects, also helps. Likewise, the sense of scale — of being impossibly far from Earth — is beautifully rendered, making Project Hail Mary the kind of movie you must see on a big screen. All the better if it’s IMAX or 70mm (or both). 

But what really makes Project Hail Mary work is its tone. It’s smart without being smug, funny without undercutting the stakes, and sincere in a way that big studio sci-fi rarely is. Credit for much of that starts with screenwriter Drew Goddard, who also adapted Weir’s The Martian for Ridley Scott, and clearly gets the author’s work.

The film was directed by Phil Lord and Chris Miller, the team behind 21 Jump Street and its sequel, The LEGO Movie, and other films. (They produced the Spider-Verse films, too.) They were also the original directors of Solo, and watching Project Hail Mary, you can’t help but wonder how much better that Star Wars prequel would have been if they hadn’t been fired during its production, given how comfortable they seem to be with outer space–set adventure movies.

Lord, Miller, and their production team infuse the movie with real emotion, capturing both the thrill of discovery and the pain of loneliness and abandonment. There’s a lovely sequence early on where Grace tries to eulogize the crew members who didn’t survive the trip, who he barely knows. There’s also joy, wonder, and genuine amazement whenever Grace floats out of his ship or in those initial scenes when he and Rocky are getting to know each other — all underpinned by Daniel Pemberton’s beautiful score and some surprising (but welcome) needle drops. The directors let these scenes take their time, not rushing us to the next big thing.

Sure, that means the movie goes on a little bit longer than it probably needs to — especially towards the conclusion, when the film seems to end multiple times. If you’re enjoying yourself, as I was, you won’t mind all that much. But it’s noticeable.

In a year that’s been a lot, to say the least, this is the first movie that feels like a genuine crowd-pleaser, one we’ll still be talking about in December. It’s got big ideas, big laughs, and most of all: big heart.

The Martian was one of the best movies of 2015. Eleven years later, Project Hail Mary already earns a similar distinction.

I’m giving it an A–.