‘Project Hail Mary’ Is a Gorgeous, Funny Ride Through the Cosmos

Outside of spoofs, there’s surprisingly little comedy within sci-fi. On screen, science is serious business, and while you can have jokes in the realm of space fantasy, when it comes to big questions posed by sci-fi, movies typically dodge humor in favor of letting the audience sit with the vastness of the universe. But for filmmakers Phil Lord and Christopher Miller, humor is integral to any inspirational story. While many tales center on underdogs, Lord and Miller lean heavily into comic absurdity to create connection, showing how there’s no shame in rising to the occasion. Consider how Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse’s most exhilarating scene, the leap-of-faith/rising, is payoff to a scene where Miles nopes out of jumping off a building. Project Hail Mary is another story about bravery, tapping into your insecurities, and finding your strength because of fellowship. Yes, that’s serious business, but for these directors, the cosmos is no impediment to having a laugh.  

The sun is dying, and humanity’s last, best chance to save it is an intergalactic expedition to figure out how to save the Earth. At the center of this strategy is Dr. Ryland Grace (Ryan Gosling), a mild-mannered middle-school teacher who happened to write a wildly unpopular paper proving he may have the expertise necessary to save the day. While Grace doesn’t believe in himself too much and is comfortable teaching science to kids, he has the confidence of Eve Stratt (Sandra Hüller), a deadpan bureaucrat marshalling the world’s resources for Project Hail Mary. That means sending Grace on this desperate mission where he deeply doubts if he can get the job done.

I’ll get into a major plot development in a bit since it’s the center of the movie, but since it could be considered a spoiler, I wanted to first touch on how the film compares to Andy Weir’s novel. This is the second time that screenwriter Drew Goddard has adapted a Weir book, the prior being 2015’s The Martian. While the plots are similar—endearing scientist is pretty much on his own in an extraterrestrial situation—The Martian is more about problem-solving, and it’s clear that Lord & Miller didn’t want to make Grace just another version of The Martian’s Mark Watney. For me, I found Weir’s novels a bit too similar, and thankfully, the filmmakers retain the plotting but deepen the characters and their relationships. There are a few times where they’re speeding past scientific explanations that would be clarifying, but not so overt as to leave massive plot holes in their wake.

The complication in translating Weir to screen is that his novels read a bit like science and math word problems, and while you want to celebrate scientists, it’s a bit tougher to visualize science in a fascinating way. Project Hail Mary doesn’t ditch the problem-solving, but it puts another aspect of its narrative at the forefront, which gives it a personality distinctive from The Martian. But to explain that, I now need to dip into spoilers.

[SPOILER AHEAD – although if you’ve seen any of the trailers, you’ve seen what I’m going to talk about]

After the first act, where Ryland tries to figure out how to proceed on the Hail Mary spacecraft, he finds…another spaceship. Aboard that spaceship is an alien from a neighboring star, 40 Eridani. He’s a spider-like creature in a hard carapace, and his sun is also dying. He’s come to the same place as Grace because they’re trying to solve the same problem. Grace dubs the alien “Rocky” because of his appearance, and Rocky, a highly intelligent engineer, works together with Grace to find a solution. From this point forward, Project Hail Mary is firmly a buddy hang-out movie that happens to have a massive, intergalactic canvas like 2001: A Space Odyssey. 

These two tastes rarely go together, but Lord & Miller make it appear effortless. Rocky (voiced by James Ortiz once Grace gets a translator program working) is a unique figure because sometimes his attitude is like that of a pet, and other times, he’s a full-fledged person, thanks to the fact that he’s smarter (at least as an engineer) than Grace. But this only makes the character more endearing, and the friendship between the two is what gives Project Hail Maryits unique spark. As stunning as the visuals are here (cinematographer Greig Fraser should be a lock for another Oscar nomination, and I highly encourage you to seek out the film in IMAX if possible), the directors never forget that our investment comes from characters. We can’t conceive of humanity in the abstract. What we do understand are personal relationships, and those, more than anything, are what power our choices. The heart of Project Hail Mary, wisely, isn’t simply “man must do science to save planet,” but how his unexpected friendship encourages him to be brave in ways he didn’t think he could be.

That level of earnestness is what helps the comedy sing because it shows how Lord & Miller aren’t trying to undercut the drama but demonstrating how comic absurdity provides an endearing angle the film requires. It’s why you need an actor like Gosling who fully commits to looking ridiculous despite his looks and charisma. He doesn’t drench his comedy in ironic detachment; he commits to playing the goof while still holding our sympathies. From there, it’s easy for the directors to use their brilliant comic timing (no one knows how to cut for a laugh quite like Lord & Miller) to make Project Hail Mary hilarious without being irreverent.

[END SPOILERS]

Project Hail Mary appears at a very different time than The Martian. While the previous Weir adaptation still works because we’ll always need to come together to solve problems, Project Hail Mary arrives when it feels like our divisions are deeper and our institutions are abandoning science because they’re run by lunatics. So if science itself isn’t enough, what’s left? The film offers an encouraging, uplifting answer where scientific communication and fellowship reach further than we thought. There’s no formula for heart and humor, but as Lord & Miller show, they’re some of the most powerful resources we have when we put them to good use.

Project Hail Mary opens in theaters on March 20^th.