‘Project Hail Mary’ Review: A miracle of modern cinema

Project Hail Mary features a career-best Ryan Gosling in Phil Lord and Christopher Miller’s most surprising and accomplished film yet.

Phil Lord and Christopher Miller have built their careers on the art of the unexpected — taking properties nobody asked for (The LEGO Movie, 21 Jump Street) and turning them into something genuinely brilliant. So when their names appeared attached to Project Hail Mary, the natural response was to wonder what the angle was, what the wink would be. Turns out, there is no wink. What Lord and Miller have delivered here is their most mature, most restrained, and arguably most accomplished work to date — proof that the duo’s secret weapon was never irreverence, it was instinct. And their instincts led them straight to one of the most unexpectedly moving films in recent memory.

Project Hail Mary arrives quietly and leaves you wrecked in the best possible way. It sneaks up on you. You think you’re watching a space movie and then suddenly you’re blindsided by one of the most sincerely moving stories in years. By the time the credits roll, you’ll have laughed, gasped, wept, and sat completely still in a dark theater not wanting to leave. That’s not a sequence of events. That happens all at once. This is what going to the movies is for.

We start with Ryland Grace (Ryan Gosling) jolting to life on a spaceship light years away from Earth. He doesn’t remember a lot, which is a shame because he’s there for a big reason: saving the planet. Something is poisoning the sun (and other suns throughout the universe) and it could lead to the end of human existence. With that, a group of scientists recruits Grace, a middle school science teacher with skills in molecular biology, to jet into the stars and find a way to save the world.

Ryan Gosling was always the answer.

Casting is everything in a film like this, and Gosling is so perfectly suited to this role that it’s hard to imagine it ever belonging to anyone else. He has a rare ability to be simultaneously magnetic and unassuming — you watch him the way you watch someone you trust completely. His physical comedy lands without being broad, his emotional beats hit without being telegraphed, and his quiet moments carry more weight than most actors can generate with a monologue.

What makes his performance here so extraordinary is the specificity of it. This isn’t “Ryan Gosling in space.” This is a fully-realized character: disoriented, curious, occasionally ridiculous, and ultimately heroic in the most understated way. There’s a scene early in the film — I won’t say more — where Gosling communicates about six different emotions across thirty seconds of silence. It’s the kind of work that reminds you what the medium is actually capable of. His chemistry with the entire cast is undeniable. Every interaction feels lived-in and real. But it’s his dynamic with his puppet co-star that is, without exaggeration, the beating heart of this film.

I won’t spoil the nature of this relationship for anyone going in fresh, because part of the magic of Project Hail Mary is how organically it develops. What I will say is this: the chemistry between Gosling and his non-human scene partner is out of this world. The filmmakers have created something that shouldn’t work as well as it does, and Gosling meets it with such openness and earnestness that you forget, repeatedly, that you’re watching something entirely constructed. It’s the rare on-screen pairing that makes you feel something you can’t quite name — not friendship, not kinship, but something that lands somewhere more profound than either. By the film’s final act, you are completely, helplessly invested in this relationship in a way that will catch you completely off guard. Bring tissues. Seriously.

Andy Weir + Drew Goddard = success.

Andy Weir has quietly become one of Hollywood’s most reliable source material providers. The Martian proved that his brand of scientific rigor laced with self-deprecating humor could translate beautifully to the screen courtesy of Drew Goddard‘s refreshing adaptation. Project Hail Mary is proof that combo wasn’t a fluke; it’s a gift. What Weir and Goddard do better than any other science fiction writers working today is ground the impossible in the intimate. Weir’s protagonists aren’t superheroes, they’re problem-solvers who are terrified and figure it out anyway. That specificity, the sweaty, unglamorous, painfully relatable process of working through something impossible, is what makes their stories so irresistible to filmmakers and audiences alike.

Where The Martian gave us a man surviving against the odds, Project Hail Mary gives us something even more ambitious: a man surviving against the odds while also discovering that the universe is a little less lonely than he thought. Getting that onto screen without losing its soul is no small feat. Goddard’s screenplay earns every emotion it asks of you.

A little bit of everything and all of it works.

The remarkable thing about Project Hail Mary is how completely it refuses to be just one thing. It is, at various points, a nail-biting thriller, a laugh-out-loud comedy, a tender drama, a mystery, and a full-blown science fiction epic. In lesser hands that list would be a warning sign. Here it’s a promise the film keeps at every turn.

The humor is legitimately funny — not “charming” in the soft, hedge-everything way of awards-bait comedies, but actually funny. There are moments in this film where the audience will erupt, and those moments exist right next to scenes of real emotional consequence. The film trusts you to hold both at once, and that trust is what elevates it from very good to something special.

It is also, without question, a film for every generation. Younger audiences will be swept up in the adventure and the wonder. Older audiences will feel the weight of the stakes and the tenderness of the relationships. Anyone who has ever cared about another living thing will find something here that speaks to them directly.

See it in IMAX. Non-Negotiable.

Project Hail Mary was shot for IMAX, and it shows in the most breathtaking way. The visual scope of this film has no reference point. It doesn’t borrow the language of other space movies, it builds its own. There are shots in this film that will lodge themselves in your memory permanently: the texture of deep space rendered with a quiet, almost meditative beauty; the claustrophobic intimacy of the spacecraft; the alien geometries that make the universe feel genuinely vast and genuinely alive.

If you have access to an IMAX screen, that is where this film belongs. The format doesn’t just enhance the experience, it completes it. Some films shrink when the credits roll. Project Hail Mary expands. You will feel the size of it for days.

The bottom line.

Project Hail Mary is the rare film that does everything right and makes it look effortless. Gosling anchors a story that hits harder than you expect, wrapped in imagery that stops you cold. Andy Weir has again proven that the best science fiction isn’t about space at all — it’s about what we’re capable of when everything is on the line and we have to figure it out anyway.

I went in knowing nothing. I came out wanting to read the book, call everyone I know, and sit in the dark for another two and a half hours. That doesn’t happen often. Don’t miss it.

Project Hail Mary hits theaters and IMAX March 20th. Watch the trailer here.

Images courtesy of Jonathan Olley. Read more articles by Alyshia Kelly here.