Project Hail Mary
Director: Phil Lord, Christopher Miller
Writer: Drew Goddard
Based on: Andy Weir’s novel
Cast: Ryan Gosling, Sandra Hüller, James Ortiz, Lionel Boyce, Milana Vayntrub, Ken Leung
Seen on: 1.4.2026

Plot:  
An astronaut (Ryan Gosling) wakes up on a spaceship, disoriented and alone. His memories only return slowly to him as he figures out what his name is, how the spaceship works and what the hell he is doing hurtling through space in the first place. It soon becomes clear that it is up to him to find out how to protect earth from a catastrophic failure of its sun. But maybe he doesn’t have to find a solution all on his own.

Project Hail Mary is an entertaining, emotional film that had me completely invested, despite knowing (from reading the book) where the story would go. Good work all around.

It is surely not easy to adapt this novel into a film. On the surface, it should be simple because most of it is one guy on a spaceship with a bunch of SFX, but there is so much infodumping and sciencing in the book that any attempt to include all oft hat would grind the movie to a halt, and would probably overwhelm the audience.

Wisely, they left most of that out of the film, even if it meant that some things might only make sense if you have the background info from the book. I only thought that towards the end, when it comes to the nitrogen immunity (if you know, you know) it went way too fast for me, and I thought that it was a pity that at this point Ryland was on his own.

Other than that, though, I really have no complaints about the film. Sandra Hüller is perfect and I wanted to see more of her, but the heart of the film is certainly Ryland and Rocky (James Ortiz) and their relationship. Gosling carries the brunt of that, of course, but Rocky definitely has enough character all on his own to be the necessary counterpart.

The film is funny, and warm, and hopeful, and it has so much to say about how we tell our stories about who we are and what we are capable of, generally the importance of stories and working together and finding kinship wherever you can. And we can all hear more about this.

Summarizing: this is what popcorn cinema is supposed to be like.