Science fiction has always been, in my eyes, one of the pinnacles of human storytelling. The ability to craft worlds beyond imagination and showcase them through fantastic settings and plots is a phenomenon that more genre-savvy people than I have written about for decades. But even against a backdrop of incredible films, there occasionally comes a movie that is so new, different and just plain fun to watch that it shakes the established conventions to their core. In my view, “Project Hail Mary” is one of these films.
The film is based on the 2021 novel of the same name by Andy Weir, a name many will recognize from his book “The Martian” and its 2015 film adaptation. For those who enjoyed either work, you’ll find many similar elements in “Project Hail Mary.” Weir’s trademark style, hard sci-fi with fantastic yet believable elements, is on full display, and helps to immerse you in a world with sun-eating bacteria and stony alien buddies.
Apart from its writing, the movie itself is just beautiful to watch. Shots range from close-ups of Ryan Gosling’s portrayal of Ryland Grace and his shipboard escapades to expansive, breathtaking shots of the stars, planets and other phenomena gorgeously depicted. Without getting too deep into spoiler territory, light is a central plot point in “Project Hail Mary,” and the film’s cinematography uses it to its advantage. The movie is, in no uncertain terms, a spectacle, and you’d be hard-pressed to find shots that beat the most well-constructed moments here.
But the centerpiece of excellence for “Project Hail Mary” is, without question, its characters. Ryan Gosling puts on an incredible performance as Ryland Grace, ditching his previous typecast of the stoic, quiet protagonist a la “Blade Runner 2049,” “Taxi Driver” and “The Grey Man” for an expressive, emotive and ultimately human character thrust into a harrowing situation and rising to meet it. A majority of the film is spent with Gosling as the only human character, and his sheer dominance of the screentime he’s given makes this a strength rather than a weakness.
If you had told me six months ago that I would spend nearly two and a half hours watching Ryan Gosling befriend a rock, voiced and puppeted by James Ortiz, on screen, and that I would be more invested in that rock than I have been in almost any human characters, I would have laughed. But the relationship between Grace and Rocky is the single most incredible part of an already incredible film. Gosling and Ortiz have a natural chemistry that can leave you doubled over in laughter, bring you to tears and eventually bring you back to smiling.
It’s rare for a film to combine the natural chemistry and comedy of a buddy cop film with the awe-inspiring visuals and score of a space epic, and rarer still for a film to do so well. But “Project Hail Mary” is an extraordinary film in both these respects, and proof that science fiction is, despite its fantastical initial impression, capable of producing films that are nothing less than the finest that Hollywood has to offer.
