Project Hail Mary (2026)

Andy Weir's novels are seemingly ripe for adaptation. Ridley Scott was the first to transfer Weir's source material to the big screen with 2015's The Martian, and now we have Phil Lord and Chris Miller doing the same thing for Weir's 2021 novel Project Hail Mary. Lord and Miller are a safe pair of hands having helmed The Lego Movie (2014) and both 21 Jump Street (2012) and its 2014 sequel 22 Jump Street, with huge success. They inject the same humour into Weir's sci-fi world building for Project Hail Mary, a tale of a lone scientist Dr Ryland Grace who wakes up from an induced coma aboard the Hail Mary, alone in space with the two astronauts who were travelling with him having died en route. En route to where exactly, is the question Grace must figure out- he has no memory of why he's in space, and nor do we; but the film spends its time flicking back and forth between the present and how Grace got to where he is now. It turns out that Grace is the only person capable of saving all of humanity- no real surprise. Grace is rather charmingly portrayed by Ryan Gosling, for whom Project Hail Mary is something of a passion project with his name also appearing on producing credits. It's also Gosling who keeps the whole film together, even when it occasionally threatens to spill over into silliness. He's not the only one on fine form here though; Sandra Huller is on hand as German technocrat Eva Stratt who initially insists on Grace's help and cements her place as one of the finest actresses working today. She and Grace work together on Project Hail Mary, a last hope for mankind. The sun is dying along with many others in the universe- all of them it seems, except one which is several light years away. Stratt and co must send a ship to find out why this star isn't being affected by this phenomenon, and somehow with that information, save Earth. Circumstances conspire that Grace ends up being the scientist that goes on the mission, in the knowledge that it's a one way ticket- but the alternative is an ultimately doomed Earth anyway. When the Hail Mary eventually reaches the star, there's an alien ship there for the exact same reason as Grace, but only one rock like alien creature has survived of the initial twenty three from the crew. Grace and 'Rocky' must work together to figure this whole mess out, so both of them can save their home planets. Lord and Miller nod to every conceivable science fiction peer with Project Hail Mary, but as is their wont, it's all done very well. There's a bit of Alien (1979), Gravity (2013), Intersteller (2014) and certainly Danny Boyle's underrated Sunshine (2007) to name but a few, but perhaps two of the most prescient touchpoints are Silent Running (1972) and Moon (2009). Both are tales of loneliness and the idea of belonging to somewhere that isn't your original home, and Project Hail Mary channels this idea through Gosling's Grace, a man who Stratt qualifies for the mission by reminding him he's a teacher (because his scientific ideas were too radical for his peers) with no next of kin and essentially not much of a life. But the film needs its bromance to work, and thankfully the relationship between Grace and Rocky is funny, charming, and thoroughly enjoyable. Indeed that sentence probably sums up the film in one fell swoop. The pair of them must repeatedly work through and solve problems together, similar in many ways to Matt Damon's lone astronaut in The Martian although of course, he only had his own brain on Mars, there was no rock creature to help him out. There's no doubting the film is flawed; it would have been interesting to see this helmed by Scott, Spielberg or even James Cameron (he of course is too busy in other galaxies right now) without the humour. It's not that the tone doesn't work, more that there never feels like there's any real jeopardy; we're never worried about a disastrous outcome. Despite the fact that Daniel Espinosa's Life (2017), for example, was an absolutely by the books perfunctory sci-fi feature, it toyed with the idea of real terror in terms of intergalactic life forms reaching Earth in an interesting way. With Project Hail Mary despite the stakes being technically very high, you're never concerned. But does that matter? In terms of Lord and Miller's film, not really. Gosling pulls you in from the very beginning in what is an excellent performance, his character matching every tonal note that the film offers up. He's a truly engrossing presence here, and you want to be the one sitting with him in the middle of space. Or rather you want to be alongside both him and Rocky, potentially going to your doom and being perfectly happy about it- that's how enduring this friendship is. Project Hail Mary is too long at two and a half hours, there's sequences that could have been shaved yet it's never boring or indulgent; far from it in fact. It might be an incidental feature in terms of sci-fi classics, yet like The Martian before it there's much to enjoy, and you'll have a smile on your face for the duration- even when it's not making sense. 7.8/10