Although Project Hail Mary may look on the surface to be a run-of-the-mill story of one man desperately trying to save the entire world, it ultimately transcends that narrow description to become perhaps one of the more arresting and engaging science fiction yarns in recent memory.
Ryan Gosling plays a science teacher named Ryland Grace who is recruited to help prevent an extinction-level event form destroying the Earth. This mission finds him at the beginning of the film aboard a spaceship light years away from home with no memory of his identity or why he is in space. As the film unfolds, the intrepid astronaut searches for clues as to his mission and flashbacks are triggered that reveal the particulars of just why and what he needs to do before he can return home.
As he struggles to find the answers to these questions, Ryland comes across another spaceship – far superior to his own – that appears capable of supporting life, perhaps even another astronaut on a quest similar to his own.
Working from a script by Drew Goddard (who previously penned 2015’s The Martian), co-directors Phil Lord and Christopher Miller craft an elegant and quite beautiful tale of one man’s survival in the direst of circumstances.
Echoing films such as Douglas Trumbull’s Silent Running (1972), this is a film that carries an important message; that existence is finite and needs to be cherished and fought for. As was the case in The Martian, Goddard’s emphasis on the psyche of Grace and the connecting of him to the audience by allowing the particulars of his predicament to unfold to both parties simultaneously makes for a more suspenseful story and emotionally invests the viewer in the character and his survival.
This becomes even more apparent when Grace explores what he believes to be a derelict spaceship only to find a survivor he christens Rocky (voiced by James Ortiz) and the two gradually form an unusually tight emotional bond that sustains them through more than a few hard times and difficult situations.
In this way, Project Hail Mary echoes the isolation an character development apparent in something like Robert Zemeckis’ Cast Away. As a tale of wonder and exploration or even possibly a treatise on the nature of existence it manages to conjure up memories of Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey.
Ryan Gosling in “Project Hail Mary.” Photo by Jonathan Olley – © 2025 Amazon Content Services LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Essentially a one-man piece, save for flashbacks involving establishing the Earth’s predicament and the subsequent planning of the mission, Project Hail Mary showcases Gosling’s ability to produce empathy and concern for someone the viewer has no tangible reason to trust at the onset, other than his function as a stand-in for said viewer. The subsequent relationship that develops between Grace and Rocky becomes the anchor of the film and sustains the emotional weight that the film’s second half ultimately delivers.
Amidst a swirling story of the possible apocalypse of Earth, Project Hail Mary manages to produce an uplifting tale of friendship and a harrowing tale of survival combined into what may possibly be, one of the most inspiring and crowd-pleasing movies of the year before all is said and done.
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| Producer: | Amy Pascal, p.g.a., Ryan Gosling, Phil Lord, p.g.a., Christopher Miller, p.g.a., Aditya Sood, p.g.a., Rachel O’Connor, p.g.a., Andy Weir |
| Release Date: | March 20, 2026 |
| Running Time: | 156 minutes |
| Starring: | Ryan Gosling, Sandra Hüller, James Ortiz, Lionel Boyce, Milana Vayntrub, Ken Leung |
| Writer: | Drew Goodard |
| MPAA Rating: | PG-13 (for some thematic material and suggestive references) |
| Director: | Phil Lord & Christopher Miller |
| Distributor: | Amazon MGM Studios |
| External Info: | Official Website / Facebook / Instagram / TikTok / X (TWITTER) / #ProjectHailMary |
