Project Hail Mary

A science teacher wakes up alone on a spaceship with no memory of how he got there. Over time, he remembers that he was sent into deep space in order to find a way to stop a mysterious substance from killing Earth's sun. But it is only through an unexpected friendship that he has any hope at all of accomplishing his mission.

Project Hail Mary is an epic science fiction comedy film produced and directed by Phil Lord and Christopher Miller, who were responsible for the Lego Movie and for the Spiderverse films, of course. The movie was written by Drew Goddard, who not only directed and co-wrote Cabin In The Woods, he also wrote several episodes of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Angel, Alias, and Lost, as well as the films Cloverfield and The Martian, the latter being the reason for his nomination for a best adapted screenplay Oscar. The Martian, of course, is a film that was based off of a novel by the same name by the author Andy Weir, who also wrote the novel that this film is based off of.

Becoming both a critical and a commercial success, Project Hail Mary grossed around $684 million worldwide, and it is currently the sixth highest-grossing film of 2026 in the U.S. and Canada. I won't be surprised to see it nominated for a few Oscars this coming year either.

In short... it's a very well-done crowd-pleaser.

So...

In 2032 (the future!), and an American middle school teacher, and a former molecular biologist, Ryland Grace (a name only a novelist could love) wakes with a start on the interstellar spacecraft Hail Mary, suffering from amnesia. In a panic to figure out what the hell happened to him, especially after he finds two dead bodies in sleeping areas and uniforms similar to his own, Grace discovers that he is part of a three-person crew on the way to the Tau Ceti system, to a planet circling that star 11.9 light years from Earth. He and his crewmates had been an induced coma for the majority of the journey, but unfortunately, they died along the way. Now, Ryland Grace is farther away from the Earth than any human being has ever been, and he is all alone.

Through a series of flashbacks, Grace slowly recalls that scientists on Earth had discovered a line of infrared light stretching from the the Sun to Venus, which they dubbed the "Petrova line" after the astronomer who discovered it. Within that line of infrared light, they found that there was a substance, dubbed "astrophage", that was basically feeding on the Sun, enough to cause a catastrophic return to a global ice age within thirty years. The head of the Petrova Taskforce, Eva Stratt, recruits Grace to study the astrophage due to his background in speculative astrobiology, having once written a paper that got him laughed out of academia, but in light of these recent events, he may have been right about.

Given a lab and some resources, soon enough, Grace discovers that astrophage are organisms that can absorb electromagnetic radiation from the Sun, and then expel it as a means of propulsion. In the process, he accidentally discovers how to breed the astrophage on Earth. Due to this, Grace is fully brought on to the actual intent of Stratt's project, an international effort known as Project Hail Mary. Here, it is explained to Grace that every star in Earth's immediate solar neighborhood also has a Petrova Line, and are also all suffering from an infestation of astrophage, all except for one star, a star that has a Petrova Line, but it isn't dimming...

Tau Ceti.

The central idea of Project Hail Mary is a "long-shot" mission that intends to send a crewed spacecraft to Tau Ceti, to try to figure out why this is. Grace helps breed astrophage, which will be used as fuel for the ship. Still, the flight to Tau Ceti will be a suicide mission, as the ship can only carry enough fuel for a one-way trip, and any of their findings will have to be returned to Earth via deep-space probes.

Meanwhile, in the present, Grace encounters an alien spacecraft.

He panics and tries to run from the craft, but whoever it is on baord patiently attempts to communicate with Grace using small models made from a solid form of xenon, that Grace dubs as xenonite. Eventually the two ships dock, and Grace discovers that the ship's occupant is a rock-like, spider-looking, five-legged alien from Erid, a planet in the 40 Eridani, a system that is a similar distance away from Tau Ceti as Earth is.

Grace names the alien "Rocky"

Separated by a transluscent wall, as the two species are not able to survive in the other's atmosphere, after some initial hesitiant attempts to directly communicate, Grace figures out that the Eridians "see" via echolocation. Eventually, he is able to cobble together a machine that can translate Rocky's musical language to English and back again.

Through this, Grace is able to discern that Rocky is a mechanical engineer, and that they are also the sole survivor of a mission to save their star from astrophage infection, using the same technique of harnessing the propulsive of the astrophage as fuel, after dumb luck shielded Rocky from the radiation the astrophage fuel puts out. Grace and Rocky agree to work together, and Rocky moves into the Hail Mary, but as neither can survive in the other's atmosphere, Rocky stays in a pressurized ball of xenonite.

Rocky and Grace are both a pair of cut-ups, and they quickly become close friends, but in a very Odd Couple kind of way, learning that, despite coming from different worlds, they really aren't so different from each other after all.

Together, they study the Petrova Line of the fifth planet around Tau Ceti, its official designation being Tau Ceti e, but which Grace names "Adrian," because he had designated the translation of the name of Rocky's mate as Adrian, because of Adrian and Rocky, so that. Anyway, soon enough, they discover Adrian's Pterova line also hosts a microbial biosphere besides the astrophage. Rocky theorizes that these microbial organisms in Adrian's atmosphere are consuming the astrophage, which is what is keeping the population in check. They have no other option but to attempt to harvest some of those microbial organisms, a very risky proposition.

As they prepare, Rocky learns that Grace cannot return home, so they offer to share some of his own ship's astrophage fuel with the Hail Mary. In a flashback, Grace remembers how an astrophage explosion killed the astronauts who were originally supposed to be the science officers on the crew, and how, with no time to train replacements, Eva Stratt had asked Grace to join the suicide mission, but he chickened out, so they drugged him and put him on board.

With the fear that he is not up to the task in the forefront of his mind, Grace must perform a spacewalk while Rocky pilots the ship, in the hope of gathering a sample of the microbial astrophage-predator from Adrian's atmosphere.

Shit goes badly...

I won't spoil the rest, but the whole point of this film is basically the same as any movie where a dog features prominently in the story... "will the dog die? Oh god, oh god, please don't let the dog die."

Rocky is the dog.

So, Project Hail Mary is definitely a crowd-pleaser.

And Ryan Gosling is the perfect choice for the film. He is an imminently likable actor, and he is very good at playing the kinds of characters who are not just really relatable, but perhaps most importantly here, ones who are also very, very human. Project Hail Mary is definitely sappy, sure. It's definitely a wish-fulfillment story, it's definitely straight-forward, simple in its intent, and yeah, it's a bit obvious, but it's because of Gosling, and also Rocky–who is an incredible mix of 50% CGI and 50% puppet, which is controlled by five puppeteers, dubbed the "Rockyteers," one of whom provided Rocky’s artificial voice–and Grace's relationship, that the film’s obviousness never bothered me at all. They are the heart and sole of the film.

Simply put, I really enjoyed this film.

It's a classic feel-good family sci-fi adventure, one that, much like The Sheep Detectives, may have some very tense moments, and may deal wih some dark themes at times, but I feel like these are the kinds of films provide a safe place for children to confront scary ideas, and for parents to be able to initiate the kinds of conversations that might be a little difficult, and all while being rooted in an exciting adventure of science and wonder.

Project Hail Mary is an inoffensively fun and charming film.

Although, to be fair, I did hear that apparently there’s an unbalanced centrifuge shown during parts of the film, which really upset some nerds out there, which I get, but your own mileage may vary on how you feel about that...

In the end, it’s just a good film. Project Hail Mary is a heartwarming adventure movie in the classic vein of 80s Spielberg/Amblin type filmmaking. And like E.T., it’s the kind of film that will make kids wish they had an alien best friend. Does it do anything except exactly what you expect (and want) it to do? No, but like I said, who cares? It’s charming. It’s tense. It’s exciting. It’s pro-science. And best of all, it has a good message centered on the importance of listening, on communication, on working together, on selflessness and self-sacrifice, and of course, the strength that comes from community. Most of all, this is a film about how we’re all in it together, and that working for the betterment of all is the highest calling anyone can accept, it is the most brave and the most worthy thing a person can do.

And of course, to not judge a book by its cover.