Project Hail Mary

4/5

Did summer come early? Because we have our first blockbuster of 2026 on our hands.

Project Hail Mary (based on the novel by Andy Weir, author of The Martian) is a stunningly heartfelt space odyssey — Interstellar meets Disney (in a good way, I promise). Ryan Gosling plays Ryland Grace, an amnesiac astronaut tasked with saving humanity (and maybe more) from a somewhat incomprehensible threat called the Astrophage. He has some help along the way, including the wonderful Rocky (disappointing that the trailers gave this away, but what can you do), puppeted perfectly by James Ortiz, and a foil in Sandra Hüller’s Eva Stratt — the leader of the Hail Mary project, who seems to be the only one who really bears the weight of everything at stake.

It’s this small cast that taps into what made The Martian so special. This is a movie with big ideas, but it never gets dragged down by them. We are experiencing this story through a narrow lens, and it’s all the better for it. We get to know these characters on a deep level, fully understand their relationships with one another, and that’s the best recipe for a tense film that takes big swings and manages to hit most of them. Kudos to the creative team for knowing what to cut to translate this book to the silver screen.

And while I do have a few criticisms (I’ll get to that), I find myself enamored with what this film does so well. Gosling reminds us all why he’s a leading man, and the character of Ryland Grace is surprisingly complicated and likely would not have worked nearly as well with someone else in the role. Without spoiling too much, this is more than just your reluctant hero who steps up and becomes the savior we all need.

On the flip side, we have Sandra Hüller’s Eva Stratt. She’s nothing but business. She understands exactly what is at stake and will go to any lengths to achieve it. She delicately balances this mission that she wholly embodies with the empathetic side that so often seems to be in tension with her goals. She exudes control for the sake of others, and even her warm moments seem strategically calculated — at great cost to her own humanity.

What I loved so much is that these are not the usual characters you root for. Lord and Miller (and Goddard) have made one hell of a crowd-pleasing film, but they didn’t shy away from our morally gray protagonists, and it makes the film all the richer for it.

Then there is the star of the show: Rocky. Our delightful alien friend, the true companion to Grace as they team up to achieve the same mission. The film has a hard time balancing when to double down on the science and when to wave it away, and that’s most apparent as Rocky and Grace figure out ways to communicate with one another. The film needs you to suspend your disbelief, but it seems to have a hard time figuring out how to do that effectively.

This can be forgiven, though, considering the sheer ambition of the production. Rocky is a puppet. Our actors are on real sets. Of course, there is CGI, but the subdued use of green screen is such a welcome relief after years of Marvel films that feel weightless and Disney’s effusive use of the “Volume,” which feels more akin to a video game skybox than a real-life location.

For a 2.5-hour movie, the pacing is never quite right. The beginning feels clunky (which may be by design, given our protagonist’s memory loss), but it ends up hampering the experience more than helping it. Then the third act feels overstuffed, trying to capture the emotional beats of a novel but not translating them quite as effectively as it could. There are multiple plot points that end up stealing from one another’s emotional impact because they are crammed so closely together. It’s not a dealbreaker, but it has to be said given how close this film gets to being a masterpiece.

All told, this is a glorious ride that is easily recommendable to almost anyone. Worth seeing on the big screen as you, Grace, and Rocky are transported to Tau Ceti to accomplish mankind’s most important mission yet.