‘Project Hail Mary’ Review: Could Ryan Gosling be our savior?

PHOENIX (AZFamily) — Take the long shot home.

Synopsis

Project Hail Mary follows Dr. Ryland Grace (Ryan Gosling), a middle school science teacher who wakes up on a spacecraft in the Tau Ceti star system. With his two astronaut crew members dead and no memory of how he got there, Grace pieces together that he’s on a mission to save the Earth from a dimming sun.

He then encounters an alien ship with a single lifeform onboard: a stony, spider-like alien that Grace dubs “Rocky” (James Ortiz). Rocky’s planet is also dying due to the dimming sun, and after learning to communicate, the two species work together to save both of their worlds.

My thoughts

Phil Lord and Christopher Miller are two filmmakers I’m a huge fan of, with works like The LEGO Movie and the Jump Street movies, but looking at their filmography, it’s rare that they actually direct anything. The last movie they directed was 22 Jump Street in 2014, mostly working as writers and producers on several projects since then. They’ve been heavily involved in some modern animated classics like the Spider-Verse franchise and The Mitchells vs. the Machines, but I’ve been eager for a new film with them in the director’s chair for 12 years now.

We almost got a directorial effort from them in 2018 in the form of their Han Solo spin-off movie, but Disney and Lucasfilm cheated them and the entire world out of that. Well, nearly a decade later, Lord and Miller finally get to realize their spacefaring dreams, but this time with harder sci-fi that’s more thought-provoking than fantastical. Adapting Project Hail Mary, the 2021 novel written by Andy Weir of The Martian fame, their next project appeared to be their most ambitious yet.

Let the sunshine in

The major works of Lord and Miller aren’t what I would call “serious”. They’re definitely well-made movies with a surprising amount of heart and depth, but they wear their irreverence and sarcasm on their sleeves. Not exactly the first filmmakers I think of when I think of “apocalyptic hard sci-fi”, so I was curious how Project Hail Mary would turn out. I’ve never read Andy Weir’s novel, and while his last adaptation, The Martian, had some comedy in it, I wouldn’t consider it all that funny (despite what the Golden Globes thought).

Despite The Martian not being a comedy, it’s a solid movie, mostly due to Andy Weir’s original source material and how well screenwriter Drew Goddard adapted it for the screen. It was intriguing, tense, and exciting, explaining the intricate scientific concepts in a way to the audience that felt palatable, but not dumbed down. Goddard also serves as the screenwriter here, adapting Project Hail Mary with the same goal of wanting the audience to be entertained while also having their thoughts provoked.

Just like The Martian, we follow a guy stranded from Earth with no real means of survival, so he has to rely on his education, ingenuity, and wit to figure out the solution. Where Matt Damon was trying to get back home in The Martian, Grace is trying to save his; he, his crew, and team of scientists are fully aware that Project Hail Mary is essentially a suicide mission. For the first act, Grace is all alone in outer space until he comes across another spacecraft from the 40 Eridani star system.

The Eridian aliens on the spacecraft have the same goal as the Earthlings: to save their planet from the dimming sun. Through the power of science, Grace can communicate with the last Eridian on the ship, learning that the rest of his crew died due to radiation poisoning. The Eridians have access to a super-material known as xenonite, which allows them to construct almost anything you can imagine. After dubbing his new alien friend “Rocky” due to his rock-like appearance, the two get to work to figure out a solution.

The camaraderie Grace and Rocky develop over the course of the story is the heart and soul of Project Hail Mary, telling a classic sci-fi story about how different alien species can learn to work together to achieve a common goal. Their partnership is immediately endearing from the moment they make first contact with each other by mirroring each other’s movements to establish communication, which then leads to some great dialogue that’s equal parts enlightening, heartwarming, and humorous.

It helps that Rocky is a very enjoyable character. Brought to life through the art of puppetry enhanced by visual effects in post-production, he looks fantastic. It’s a simple design that’s clearly alien, as the Eridians are essentially sentient rocks that look like spiders, but also have an innocuous presence. With lead puppeteer James Ortiz providing the movements and voice of Rocky, he’s a character audiences will instantly love, especially when he banters back and forth with Grace. Impressive how much the entire team made me emotionally connected to a spider-rock.

Lost in space

Project Hail Mary is still very much a Phil Lord and Christopher Miller endeavor with loads of humor and an eagerness to make the audience have fun. The comedy here is far less “wink-wink” than their prior work, relying more on earnest character interactions to get laughs. Some of the humor gets a bit too cheeky with how jovial the characters act at times, but it mostly works. Certainly, never reaching the levels of cringe as Matt Damon’s, “I’m gonna science the s--- out of this!”

This is a movie about saving the Earth from destruction after all, so there’s really only so much comedy you can have before it deflates the gravity of the situation. We have all the Earth flashbacks for the more serious scenes, detailing the inception of Project Hail Mary with how Grace is brought into the fold and discovers “Astrophage,” single-celled organisms feeding on the sun’s electromagnetic radiation. There’s always something scientific being explored or discussed, yet it never gets dull or tiresome thanks to the clever writing, even if the side characters are a bit flat.

Project Hail Mary is at its best when it focuses on the relationship between Grace and Rocky because it’s not only the heart of the story, but also when it’s at its most engaging. Whenever it would flashback to Grace and the rest of the Project Hail Mary team on Earth leading up to the mission, I just kept wanting it to get back to the real task at hand: Grace and Rocky figuring this problem out. Don’t get me wrong, seeing all the nitty-gritty minutia on the background of the project and just how detailed the science in the writing was interesting, but it was emotionally inert compared to the scenes between Grace and Rocky.

Grace’s interactions with these characters simply don’t provide the same level of fascination as his interactions with Rocky. However, I appreciated Sandra Hüller’s performance as the cold, steely bureaucrat who just may have a heart of gold underneath it all. These scenes on Earth are meant to fill in the blanks of Grace’s amnesia, but there’s really not much to fill in. Part of me wonders if this would have worked better as a chronological narrative, because the back-and-forth nature really didn’t work for me, because we generally know how it’s all going to get to the point we’re at.

You couldn’t have picked a better actor to lead this than Ryan Gosling.

He’s one of the experts at playing dumb guys, but the little twist here is that his character, Dr. Ryland Grace, is incredibly intelligent, albeit a bit goofy. Like one of those science teachers who knows how to actually make learning fun, Gosling makes all the scientific jargon go down easily with his affable charm. While he’s the right guy for the Project Hail Mary job because of his intellect, he lacks the courage that he’ll need to discover. Gosling has to carry much of this movie all on his own, acting only against a puppet for a majority of the film, never losing step the entire time.

IMAX 70mm: The Final Frontier

We’re treated to copious gorgeous visuals through Grace’s journey across the cosmos. This is a marvelous movie on a technical level, with Lord, Miller, cinematographer Greig Fraser, and their entire effects team relying as much as they can on practical effects. I already mentioned how great Rocky looks, but the entire Hail Mary spacecraft set is immaculately detailed.

Whenever Grace is tethered to the outside of the ship, we get a good sense of the vastness of space as we see his tiny silhouette floating in front of a bright celestial object. With their alleged non-use of green screens, it all helps in giving Project Hail Mary a feeling of a movie that came out in the 90s.

Project Hail Mary is an exciting spacefaring adventure, but I couldn’t help but notice similarities to other sci-fi films, mostly Christopher Nolan’s Interstellar, in regard to the general premise and visual aesthetic. Some shots appeared heavily inspired by Nolan’s visual language, particularly any time we were treated to a shot of a vast spacecraft silently traversing through space. It’s all great-looking stuff, but it never quite reached awe-inspiring levels for me. Perhaps it’s because these big epic scenes come and go too quickly without much proper build-up to let the excitement truly develop.

Much to my disappointment, the screening I attended was not in IMAX 70mm, so I wasn’t able to take in these space scenes in all their glory. At least 3/4 of the 156-minute runtime of the film is presented in the full IMAX 70mm 1:43 aspect ratio, the most ever for a movie (at least for a few months until Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey comes out). That sounds so insanely awesome to me that I feel like I’m genuinely missing out by not getting the full IMAX 70mm experience, where I bet these cosmic scenes receive extra oomph. I guess I’ll just have to watch it again.

Final verdict

While Project Hail Mary doesn’t quite boldly go where no epic space science fiction film has gone before, it’s definitely Phil Lord and Christopher Miller propelling themselves to new filmmaking territory. Along with Andy Weir and Drew Goddard, they’ve crafted a solid piece of entertainment that treats its audience with respect and intelligence.

Project Hail Mary is a smart piece of sci-fi filmmaking anchored by a reliably charismatic Ryan Gosling becoming best buds with an alien spider-rock. If that doesn’t sum up exactly the kind of space mission a guy like Ryan Gosling should go on, I don’t know what else to say.

My rating: 7.5/10

Project Hail Mary will be released in theaters nationwide on Thursday, March 20, with early IMAX 70mm screenings at Harkins Arizona Mills from Friday, March 13-Sunday, March 15.

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