Movies are back. Last weekend, I went to see “Project Hail Mary,” for which I was very excited for several reasons. One: Ryan Gosling. Two: Cool real puppetry. Three: It was going to fix me. And, great news… it did.
Just to establish right off the bat: I had not read the book before going into the film. Honestly, I think that was the way to go (although I recognize I am advocating for what was most definitely a passive unintentional decision that I am now retroactively perceiving to have worked out for me). The book, written by Andy Weir—a man notable to me for claiming that he never ascribes allegorical meaning to anything he creates and is against interpretations thereof—was simply not on my radar before the film came out. I have heard tell that the book is #different enough from the movie to color the viewing experience, but I have no firsthand opinion to offer on that front yet.
The movie was, in a word, superawesome. Ryan Gosling is the sole actor in a given scene for a significant chunk of the runtime, and I honestly didn’t even realize until later. His interactions with the alien creature (puppet, animatronic, at times animation augmented) Rocky are natural, charming and heartwrenching. “Project Hail Mary” effortlessly made me attached to a rock, before putting it in mortal danger and me in related levels of emotional distress. Without going too much into spoiler-y detail—though if you pick up an article about “Project Hail Mary” and then get offended at spoilers about it, I think you need to reevaluate your approach—I can say with confidence that this is a movie that leaves the viewer with capital h Hope in a way I personally hadn’t cinematically felt since “Superman (2025).” The earth-bound figures are dastardly, but they also represent a compelling spirit of determination in pursuit of humanity’s survival. Rotating Eva Stratt in my mind and considering the narrative’s (I would argue) support of her ruthlessness has kept me occupied for many hours. I love a woman in STEM (Slaying, Treachery, Execution, Manipulation).
Of course, Ryan Gosling’s Ryland Grace is the heart and soul of the film. Grace is a middle school science teacher who overtly resists the call to heroism. He wakes up in space, several lightyears from home, with no memory of who he is. Because he believes himself to have chosen the journey (up until recovering the memory of being put in a coma on the ship against his will), he believes he is brave, and acts accordingly… and that choice of bravery ends up saving the world.
He is also kind, and smart, and honest, and very silly. Part of the (if not the) reason why humanity is saved is because Grace represents the best of it: he reaches out to befriend the alien Rocky, goes to great lengths to communicate and collaborate, risks himself to save Rocky, and forges such a meaningful connection that he is ultimately willing to sacrifice any hope of returning to Earth on the off chance he can help his friend.
I laughed with many moments of “Project Hail Mary.” Grace’s video logs at the beginning of the film, where he explains how he and Rocky are communicating (“He puts on a little puppet show for me and my tiny brain, and you know what? I don’t mind it”), were very earnest and funny without being forced. Moments of “first contact,” from the initial posing silhouette we see of Rocky to the scene where he builds himself a hamster ball of his alien atmosphere and rolls around rooms in Grace’s ship yelling “DIRTY! DIRTY! WHY ROOM SO MESSY! IS THIS ROOM FOR GARBAGE???”, were heartwarming and at times a little too relatable (I cleaned my room when I got back from the theatre).
I also teared up many times at appropriate moments. One of the most notable was a scene where Grace, floating in space and tethered to his ship by a single cable, gives himself “a moment,” and the audience is submerged in a stunning visual as the screen snaps to show thousands of small, twinkling red “astrophages.” Perhaps the scene (shot practically, with LEDs on chicken wire that refracted light when filmed through a camera setup with the infrared filter removed) got to me because of its visual beauty, or perhaps it was a combination of that and the heightened emotionality of the context. Whatever it was, I felt in that moment the smallness of myself as an individual, and the huge presence of what we as people need to be living for. Other scenes in the movie got me, too— Rocky’s efforts to save Grace, Grace’s acceptance of never returning home, Grace’s efforts to save Rocky, Grace and Rocky’s friendship saving each other, Grace learning to understand Rocky without his translator, etc. These were isolated events scattered throughout the runtime, but when the lights came up and the credits rolled, I found myself to be weeping for no single pinpointable reason. I think, all at once, each of those moments rolled into a greater cinematic whole, and I felt in my chest just how badly I need to live on purpose.
Paradoxically, “Project Hail Mary” is incredibly grounding. From a production perspective the film feels that much more real for its usage of sets, puppetry and physical lighting tricks instead of the overdone CGI and green screens of recent years. As a linguistics guy, I appreciated the actually probable alien language system (points to t-shirt that says “ASK ME ABOUT TONE-BASED LANGUAGE LEARNING”). Narratively, as I touched on earlier, the film expertly balances humor, thrills and hope. It depicts a concrete idea of humanity: what we are, what we could be, what we should be. Andy Weir may not have set out to say anything meaningful, but this reimagining of the novel’s source material expertly frames the best of humanity against the worst, and shows us how to work with all of it. In short, I highly recommend. Everybody go pour one out for the Hail Mary, full of Grace.
