The sun is dying.  It is slowly being consumed by Astrophage, an algae that travels along the Petrova Line from the sun to Venus.  It is a phenomenon observed across various galaxies in various solar systems.  Eva Stratt (Sandra Hüller) assembles a worldwide team of experts to help understand and combat this slow death sentence with Project Hail Mary, a manned space mission to collect samples and send them back to Earth.  When the station reaches its destination, however, only Dr. Ryland Grace (Ryan Gosling), a middle school science teacher, awakes from cryogenics. 

Writer Drew Goddard returns to the tomes of Andy Weir, adapting his 2021 novel Project Hail Mary into a 156-minute film of the same name.  Phil Lord and Christopher Miller take over as directors, blending the heady science fiction with a heavy dose of humor and charm.  Amazon Studios and MGM launched the title wide on 4,000 screens after a buzzy marketing campaign that did tip their hand reveling an alien life form – Rocky (voiced by James Ortiz) – which Grace meets on his intergalactic journey, far from home.  While a major surprise for those not familiar with the text had been spoiled, this reveal and shift in the marketing did help to set the tonal expectations apart from the Ridley Scott-helmed and Matt Damon/Jessica Chastain-led The Martian (2015). 

This time, it is Gosling who is stranded in space, and while we do split our time back on Earth, it is in flashbacks that help to fill in the gaps of Grace’s memory loss about how he ended up some twelve light-years away from his classroom.  The two sides of this story could not be more tonally different, with the Earth-set plot much more dramatic and bluntly poignant, with a streak of will they/won’t they chemistry shared between Gosling and Hüller, while the space-set scenes are much wilder and more fantastic and deliver an ornate emotional dressing onto the brick-and-mortar framework laid back on Earth. 

Turning first to the groundwork of the terrestrial story, these sections are calibrated with enough levity that Lord and Miller can still work in their penchant for comic relief and allow for Gosling to charm his way through the scenes as the daffy scientist in room after room of straight-laced character types.  It is Lord and Miller priming the audience to loosen up, relax, and have a little fun, even if the action of the scenes revolve around impending climate disaster; a very real threat outside of the cinema, but the particular brand presented on screen has enough elements of sci-fi as to not totally distress audiences who may be watching the story unfold and wondering if it is a silver screen or a mirror they are gazing into.   

Expanding the frame from 2.39:1 to 1.43:1, cinematographer Greig Fraser transports us to the Cetus constellation, where the film, for much of the first act, finds Gosling carrying the weight of the narrative on his shoulders.  We do split our time back on Earth for a lot of this first hour, but even still, as the sole survivor of Project Hail Mary, the script affords the actor plenty of leeway to trifle through both his dramatic and comedic toolbox.  Notably, these two facets of his performance blend quite well as he brings balance to a script that could have easily gotten away from a lesser performer.  There is an inherent gratingness, though, to the humor that at times undercuts some of the emotionality of the scene, but for much of the first half – specifically an improvised eulogy for his shipmates – Gosling is able to serve both masters well. 

It is not until Rocky becomes more of an equal character to Grace that the script begins to level out in its tone.  The individual scenes can still ricochet back and forth from serious to comedic in a way that can still rub audiences looking for something more unified the wrong way, but the film stops asking Gosling to carry both tones at the same time, and it also allows Goddard to focus his efforts more singularly on the page.   

Revealed in the second round of marketing for the title, Rocky came as quite a surprise to people who were familiar with Weir’s work only through the silver screen and not from the page.  His presence also helped to answer some of those pre-screening questions on how the duo behind 21 Jump Street (2012) and The Lego Movie (2014) picked up the mantle from Scott.  Those initial hesitations quickly subside, and Rocky is an absolute delight on screen, and opting to use a physical puppet adds wonders to both performances while also making the dark scenes in the crystalline tunnelway which connects both Grace and Rocky’s ships feel much more alive than they would have had Gosling simply been placed in front of a green screen. 

As the two space travelers find mutual understanding and unity of purpose in their missions to save their respective planets, the film allows them to reach deeper into the universe, closing in on Tau Ceti, Rocky’s sun, which is similarly being consumed by the astrophage traveling along a Petrova line.  This is where the filmmaking hits an all-time high as Fraser places his lens in such a way to witness the most of the visual effects team’s work at creating the galaxy where colors alternate wildly from vibrant pinks to neon greens; though to call it neon seems too dull a word.  Fully exploiting the wide frame afforded by IMAX as well as dual laser technology, the visuals become all-encompassing, and we feel ourselves falling into the majesty of the infinite along with Grace and Rocky.   

Despite the awe and wonder, Project Hail Mary is at its most captivating back home on Earth. There is some will they/won’t they tension simmering between Grace and Stratt that can further derail the pacing at times simply because it seems underbaked, and while these impulses are never truly acted on in the script, given the tonal imbalance of our time in space, it is understandable that audiences may feel awkward watching these two scientists interacting with each other with potentially simmering intentions. Gosling is the on-screen star of the film – occasionally upstaged by Rocky – but it is Hüller who grounds Project Hail Mary and gives a gravity to what is otherwise an interesting science fiction thought experiment. In an age where science and facts are being questioned by any “expert” with a TikTok account or a Facebook following, her exasperation and passion – all while facing an extinction event head-on – are admirable qualities that make her such a sympathetic character. The performances recalls the demeanor wielded by Deborah Birx during the near-daily COVID-19 press conferences during the height of the US Lockdown; however, the antics performed by Grace in Project Hail Mary still effuse far more competence and understanding of the situation at hand than Birx was afforded. Blend this with Hüller’s magnetism, and she commandeers every scene she is in, making the more procedural aspects of the film the real hook for an audience and proving that there can still be excitement in drama, no flashing colors needed.

In a way, Project Hail Mary is an all-quadrants film, but it achieves that across its wide spectrum of tones that can leave audiences feeling alienated by the material at various points across the narrative. Its saving grace – ha! – is that each of these various tones are still fully developed in their own vacuum. Lord and Miller have clearly conceived of this adaptation as a juggling act instead of a magic trick in that they have all of these elements precisely defined; each one an individual ball in the air that we are required to see so that we are amazed at the skill of the juggler. They are not interested in subterfuge or misdirection as a magician might be to trick the audience into thinking they are seeing something they are not, or blurring the lines and creating a cohesive illusion, even if it is one based on sleight of hand. Even with its valleys – which by all accounts could be a lesser director’s peaks – Project Hail Mary remains an enjoyable experience and one that scratches at a spectacle that has become rare in today’s market of homogenized storytelling.