Project Hail Mary

Two thumbs way way way down for Project Hail Mary…

*PLEASE BE AWARE THERE ARE SPOILERS HERE*

This is a really weird one for me, on the one hand I’m not a fan of Ryan Gosling, on the other hand, he was perfect for this role. He is the right kind of funny and chaotic to play Grace, the scientist turned teacher turned astronaut. I thought Grace was a really compelling character that a lot of us could relate to. I mean, he was teaching elementary school and then not even a year later he is asked to agree to a suicide mission in space, obviously he’s not gonna do that???

Alongside Grace we have his trusty rock friend he names Rocky. I know it is all animation and CG trickery, but Rocky steals the show. He’s funny and goofy while also being a very clearly skilled engineer who can build literally anything. Rocky is the perfect accidental assistant to Grace on their mission once they encounter each other on different spaceships.

The Mission

Oh right, the mission! The sun is dying due to weird space organisms, but it isn’t just our sun, tons of stars have this problem. In fact, so many are dying that it seems hopeless to save ours, except one star in particular has the telltale signs of the organism eating it but isn’t dying. Why isn’t it dying? We don’t know, so let’s spend all of Earth’s money and send people on a one-way trip there to maybe find out why and we will call it Project Hail Mary (get it?)! An absolutely preposterous (yet somehow quite human) plan that only works due to Grace and Rocky’s unexpected alliance in outer space.

At the end they figure out that the organisms killing the stars have a predator on a nearby planet to the star that is surviving. Grace and Rocky speed over, collect a sample, both nearly die, and then figure out a way to instead of sending back probes to Earth send Grace with the samples back. Unfortunately, the predator organisms escape and eat the fuel (the spaceship fuel is also the organism eating the sun, so the predators had a gourmet feast on their hands). Once he realizes this, Grace has a tough choice, go home or let Rocky die in space unable to figure out why his ship stopped as he isn’t a scientist like Grace is. Grace ends up sending probes back to Earth and going to save Rocky. Grace and Rocky then live happily on Rocky’s home planet where Grace goes back to being a teacher.

I Can’t Explain Why I Love Project Hail Mary

The reason this movie is hard for me is because I cannot explain what I loved about it, but it is easily a contender for movie of the year. Everything about it was fun and exciting, but I really struggle to explain why. I guess you’ll just have to go experience it in all its 2.5-hour cinematic glory to find out what makes this movie so great.