Project Hail Mary is a masterclass in adaptation and one of the most exciting adventure films ever made.
For nearly three hours, directors Phil Lord and Chris Miller, star Ryan Gosling, and writer Drew Goddard take the audience on a whirlwind ride across the universe without ever sacrificing character for spectacle. It is an incredible magic trick rarely seen outside the works of Steven Spielberg.
Based on the novel by Andy Weir, Project Hail Mary is the story of Ryland Grace (Ryan Gosling), an amiable but cowardly scientist hiding away as an elementary school teacher in an unnamed suburb. He once published an acrimonious paper suggesting life does not require oxygen or water to survive, and quickly found himself a laughing stock in his community. As a result, Grace now avoids all confrontation, no matter how minute.
But the universe does not care about his worries. A celestial event called The Petrova Line appears in the galaxy, sucking away the energy of our sun. In a few decades, Earth's temperature will fall, slowly killing everything on the planet. It is here that Eva Stratt (Sandra Hüller) walks into Grace's life.
She has a plan, one that will take the collective power of all nations on the planet to put in motion. For that, she needs people willing to do and say things others might find insane. People like Grace.
The trailers for Project Hail Mary already reveal quite a bit, which is why I will say no more. It is enough to know that this is an adventure story, but it's also a surprisingly thoughtful exploration of the ways we can be brave. Like other timeless fables about courage, it places ordinary people (and not-so-ordinary creatures) against immense odds and reminds us of our great capacity for goodness.
As an adaptation, Project Hail Mary is spectacular. It strips away the things that only work on the page and emphasizes the elements fit for the big screen. That sounds obvious, but think hard on other book-to-film adaptations of recent years. Many are too slavish to the source material, while others depart so heavily that you have to wonder why they even adapted the property in the first place.
Goddard turns to the characters to enrich the material. The little nuances from the book still exist in the film, but watch how the script and performances from Gosling and Hüller enrich these textured, complicated people further. The film works because both parts, those on Earth and in space, work equally well. Each one feeds into the mystery of the other.
Hüller, who is remarkable in every part she plays, brings my favorite character from the book to life beyond expectations. Someone else would play Stratt as humorless and icy, even at times when she declares herself as both. But Hüller knows better: Stratt is a powerful character because she negotiates compromises between her own wants and the greater good at every minute. She recognizes in Grace the qualities and shortcomings that mirror her own. He just hasn't caught up with her just yet.
When Stratt joins a karaoke show to sing the achingly beautiful "Sign of the Times," Hüller delivers one of the most heartbreaking moments of the film as she sings every emotion she refuses to say elsewhere. It's one of those tender beats that other films would gloss over in a hurry to blow up a planet. Instead, Miller, Lord, and Goddard linger on the song, and it makes the film soar.
Gosling is tremendous as Grace, even in the big, universe-spanning sequences that could destabilize a lesser performance. At every moment, he is the most interesting thing on-screen, and directors Lord and Miller make the most of his engaging performance. Many before him have gone to space for films like this, but only a few can say they've stood out against the vastness of interstellar travel.
Then there's Rocky, who is pure movie magic from start to finish. Like Wilson, the ball in Cast Away, he isn't strictly speaking real, yet you wouldn't know it from watching the film. Gosling sells the fantasy with immediacy and honesty, but it's also the impeccable puppetry and seamless artistry with CGI that seal the deal.
Project Hail Mary is a big film that spans decades and infinite distances between star systems. Yet it never mistakes effects for character. In an early sequence, Grace builds a model for his students to indicate the distance between our sun and the Earth. As the story progresses, that distance grows until it reaches a point we cannot comprehend. But we understand the emotion of it, even if the logic escapes us. Project Hail Mary is full of these small touches that keep us grounded.
This is a film I expected to like because I enjoyed the novel. I'm also a sucker for films about space exploration. I would have been happy with a mediocre experience. Unsurprised, maybe, but also content. Instead, Project Hail Mary is a timeless classic in the making. It made me feel the same wonder and amazement that I felt when I saw dinosaurs on the big screen for the first time.
Project Hail Mary works because it is profoundly curious and moved by the enormity of existence. Every minute of its near three-hour runtime, it presents us with something incredible, and then asks us to consider why it makes us feel that way. It offers the same limitless perspective of wonder found in the works of Carl Sagan and the film Contact.
It's the kind of film you want to see over and over again, from one year to the next, and then generationally into the far future.
