Project Hail Mary ~ Review

By: [email protected] on Thu, 04/02/2026 - 08:53

I generally find the phrase, “the movie we need right now,” to be a reductive, hacky, cliché. However, when a film comes along that is a thrilling, hilarious, and heartfelt exploration of empathy, heroism, and sacrifice… well, it’s hard not to say, “Project Hail Mary is the movie we need right now.”

Mild spoilers follow. Dr. Ryland Grace (Ryan Gosling) wakes up to a problem; he is on a spaceship eleven light-years from Earth. Furthermore, he can’t remember who he is, what he’s supposed to be doing, and the other two crew members died in transit. Slowly but surely, Dr. Grace pieces together his fractured memories. You see, back on Earth, he was a molecular biologist recruited to be part of Project Hail Mary. A microbe dubbed an “astrophage” is consuming the sun, and if left unchecked, the sun will die out in roughly 30 years. The scientists on this project have discovered that the astrophage has been consuming suns across the universe, except for one planet, which happens to be 11 light-years away.

So, following this discovery, Eva Stratt (Sandra Huller) has assembled a team (including Grace) to travel to the planet and discover what’s stopping the astrophage from consuming the planet’s sun. The mission is to then send back their findings to Earth in a probe. It’s a one-way 11-year trip. Now, Grace is all alone orbiting the planet and desperately trying to find a way to stop the microbe. But there’s something else out there – another alien species is apparently on the same mission.

What makes Project Hail Mary special is its tone. You would think a movie about the sun slowly dying and the death of Earth would be a somber, portentous affair. However, the film is lively, fun, and funny. The script, by Drew Goddard (based on Andy Weir’s 2021 novel), is extremely comedic, which keeps things from getting too depressing. However, the film never forgets the inherent sadness of a dying Earth. This is carried along by Gosling’s performance, who gives Dr. Grace the same combination of pathos and humor that he brought to his character in The Nice Guys. This is a movie where the stakes are impossibly high, but the tension never comes from violence. Instead, the tension comes if Grace can communicate and get along with the alien rock creature, dubbed Rocky.

Directors Phil Lord and Christopher Miller deploy a Spielbergian level of tension during the various spacewalk sequences. That’s not the only connection to Spielberg, particularly in the scenes with Rocky, where Lord and Miller showcase a depth of emotion resembling E.T. The fact that the relationship between Grace and Rocky doesn’t fall into mawkish sentimentality is also a testament to Lord, Miller, and Goddard’s mastery of tone.

The film is gorgeous to behold, and Greig Fraser’s cinematography is top-notch. A sequence late in the film where Dr. Grace has to get a sample out in space, and there’s a flash of color, and the visuals took my breath away.

The late, great Roger Ebert once said that movies are empathy machines. Project Hail Mary is a movie about how empathy is humanity’s greatest strength. It made me think about what sacrifice, bravery, and friendship mean.

Three and a half out of four stars.