Dry and wry and suited to the talents of all involved, Project Hail Mary’s gets a serious attack of the cutes midway through. That apart, it’s a rip-roaring space adventure of the old school whose good bits are so good that its tweeness can be overlooked. I think.
It’s an adaptation of an Andy Weir book, the guy who did The Martian, and is again deeply procedural. This time, instead of Matt Damon growing potatoes in human shit after being accidentally left behind on Mars, we have Ryan Gosling waking up on board a space ship light years away from Earth. His job is not to save his own skin but to work out what is eating Planet Earth’s sun, by looking closely at a distant star that doesn’t seem to be suffering the same way.
Astrophages are, we learn early on, the problem, an organism that can live off the sun’s energy and is gradually consuming it. As things stand the Earth has about 30 years left. The Hail Mary (though Project Doom would work) mission of Ryland Grace (Gosling) is to solve the problem and transmit the solution back home. He himself is toast whether he succeeds or not. There just isn’t enough fuel to get him back home.
What if another life form’s home planet was also being threatened by the extinction of its sun? Wouldn’t it also send a mission to examine the same, seemingly immune sun? Indeed it would, and that’s how Grace comes into contact with a funny little creature he calls Rocky… because he’s shaped like a rock. After some exploratory how-do-you-dos, the pair of them – using AI as a crutch – learn to communicate with each other. Team work makes the dream work, etc etc.
As said, procedural. Intensely so. The directors are Phil Lord and Christopher Miller, who haven’t actually directed a film since 22 Jump Street 12 years ago, but bring their offbeat talents to a screenplay written by Drew Goddard, who also adapted Weir’s The Martian for the big screen. Goddard is still best known for The Cabin in the Woods, having earned his spurs on Buffy the Vampire Slayer, where Joss Whedon was very much the mentor.
Together, Lord and Miller, Weir and Goddard (with the spirit of Whedon hovering somewhere) give us light-hearted quippery and sprinklings of pop-culture, delivered by Gosling with a raised eyebrow and a metaphorical wink to camera. Of course he’s good at this. Also amusing is the casting of Sandra Hüller as the humourless scientist running the planet-saving operation from back on Earth. Associated with grimness – from 2006’s Requiem through 2016’s Toni Erdmann to 2023’s The Zone of Interest and Anatomy of a Fall (both Oscar winners) – she provides comic relief. That is: relief from the comic, not relief with. She’s excellent and clearly in on the joke casting.
Ryland Grace’s name is also partly joke – Hail Mary full of Grace – but also part character arc. He starts off the unwilling though capable scientist who has been pressganged into the mission, but by dint of application and his own re-assessment of the course of his life and its failings, achieves an elevated state of spirituality – the heroic.
Gosling is very good at all this internal external stuff and his performance is a real one full of shading and characterisation. In a film that often feels like it’s been assembled from bits of other sci-fi movies – 2001 and Alien, Arrival and Contact, Close Encounters and Star Trek, and (thanks to the Rocky character) ET and Muppets from Space – Gosling makes it different.
Project Hail Mary ends up being to sci-fi what Slow Horses is to the spy thriller. There’s humour but not so much that the thrill dissolves. It’s also a hopeful and joyous film affirming the importance of retaining a sense of wonder about life. Considering it’s about the potential end of the world, that’s welcome.
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© Steve Morrissey 2026
