Jonah Naplan March 16, 2026
Throughout “Project Hail Mary,” the newest adaptation of an Andy Weir novel following the excellent 2015 “The Martian,” directors Phil Lord and Christopher Miller are clearly considering the star power of their leading man, the impossibly charming Ryan Gosling. Across this film’s 156 minutes, Gosling plays to what he does best—he quips, he smirks, he physicalizes the every-man. It works for the type of guy he’s playing for most of the movie, which mines humor from his character Ryland Grace, an awkward but brilliant schoolteacher, not exactly being the right fit for a space exploration mission that could determine the future of life on Earth as we know it. But once “Project Hail Mary” departs from its lightly funny irony, Gosling and the movie can’t quite grasp the poignancy it needs to transform into a truly essential science-fiction adventure, not just a raucous crowd-pleaser.
Flashing back and forth between the mission itself and the persuasion and networking that led up to it, “Project Hail Mary” opens with a disheveled Gosling awaking from hypersleep only to realize that his fellow crewmates died while he was in a coma. With no contact to home, let alone a way back to it, the early sections of the adapted screenplay by Drew Goddard play around with the trapped claustrophobia of the spacecraft and the panic that comes with realizing there may be no way out. Originally intended as a joint operation, Grace discovered a belt of single-celled “Astrophage” organisms, linking Venus to the Sun, also known as the volatile Petrova line. If scientists can manage to extract the fueling capacities of the chemical, then we’ll be able to travel to Tau Ceti, a nearby star that may be a safe haven for humanity once the Sun cools down enough that Earth becomes uninhabitable.
Contesting with the hostile face of Eva Stratt (Sandra Hüller), Grace is essentially tasked with saving the world on his own, and this is an intelligent movie that doesn’t need big explosions or giant monsters to prove it. Grace, like Matt Damon’s protagonist in “The Martian,” learns to make the most of his surroundings with time, and thrives on manipulating gravity and exploiting all the devices and gadgets at his disposal to survive. Unlike the bleakness of a lot of your typical end-of-the-world fare, “Project Hail Mary” maintains an endearing optimism throughout that can be infectious in moments when Gosling is really going for the gold.
The way Lord & Miller explore isolation, an extreme disconnect from the rest of humanity while using video logging as a form of self-preservation, feels hauntingly reminiscent of the melancholy a lot of us experienced during the COVID lockdown, shut off from the world and left to reflect on ourselves and our relationship with others through technology. The cinematography by Greig Fraser (both “Dune” movies, “The Creator”) is similarly evocative of science fiction classics like “Gravity,” “Interstellar,” and, inevitably, “2001: A Space Odyssey,” essential films that also touched on existential loneliness set against the grandiose backdrop of outer space.
Grace soon finds an unlikely pal in Rocky (the benign voice of James Ortiz), an Eridian alien who only communicates in a series of grunts and clicks until this technology pundit manages to give the extraterrestrial a voice via computer translator. For a little while, “Project Hail Mary” turns into an offbeat buddy comedy that’s adorable as much as it is hilarious. One of screenwriter Goddard’s biggest triumphs here is how well he’s able to thread the needle between crisp comic timing that strikes the right balance of silly and smart, and a meaningful allegory for the ways that the most precarious situations can compel human beings to reach out and forge connections with those foreign to them.
Like Tom Hanks confiding in “Wilson” in “Cast Away,” Grace’s isolation makes him desperate to talk to anyone he can. Then the void calls back. Turns out, he’s got quite a bit in common with Rocky, who also lost his peers in a cosmic accident and is now reckoning with being on his own. The camaraderie between the two will make for some of the best popcorn entertainment of the whole year; Gosling naturally excels at one-ups and clapbacks, but what’s likely to go underrated here is the masterclass in voice acting that Ortiz is performing from his first scene. With just a few key tics and subtle vocal choices, the former playwright quickly creates one of the most lovable aliens ever. Naturally, the audience gets so invested in this duo, all before their trajectory blows up in their faces.
The shortcomings of “Project Hail Mary” are particularly disappointing because they directly undermine everything that really works. While most of the movie thrives at letting the adventure breathe, the last half hour unspools a pathos firehose and relentlessly sprays the viewer with it, telegraphing exactly what we’re supposed to feel and when. As the score by Daniel Pemberton pounds on, the emotions don’t come organically; they’re forced onto us. In a pivotal moment of either resolution or sacrifice, the ultimate coda ends up slightly lackluster, whether you’re a fan of the book or not. Where a potential ending for these characters could have been necessarily heartbreaking, the real conclusion wraps up all too neat and polished, and probably read better in a novel than in a movie, where visuals are front and center and melancholia is more apropos. Like another Gosling star vehicle “The Fall Guy,” this film gets so wrapped up in the idea of pleasing its audience that it loses the effortless subtleties that can propel superior movies to the next level.
Still, so much is to be admired here, between the gorgeous visuals that make this film a must-see in IMAX, and the truly fabulous solo work that Gosling is doing; “Project Hail Mary” is largely a one-man show (sans Rocky) and he absolutely hits the nail on the head, turning in his most vulnerable performance yet. And the movie is so entertaining for so long that the nearly three hour runtime completely flies by until the very end, when the script can’t seem to decide where it wants to end up. Regardless, if there’s any indication that the film is making waves, the preview screening success would be it. Weekends before its “official” release, early showings have been selling out across the country in arthouses and multiplexes alike. For a movie that is not a sequel, prequel, or reboot of any kind, I suppose that makes it Hollywood’s own kind of hail mary.
"Project Hail Mary" opens in theaters on March 20th.