Project Hail Mary will be released in theaters on March 20.
When Phil Lord and Chris Miller departed Solo: A Star Wars Story mid-production in 2017 due to “creative differences,” it left a lot of people imagining just what a space epic from the directors of 21 Jump Street and The Lego Movie would have felt like, and whether the duo were up to the task of levelling up the scale of their filmmaking to that degree in the first place. In that sense, Project Hail Mary, their first live-action directing effort since 2014’s 22 Jump Street, feels like vindication for Lord and Miller. The pair and star Ryan Gosling prove perfectly suited to each other’s sensibilities, opening the door to an exciting interstellar adventure that, even through some occasional pacing hiccups, remains emotionally engaging throughout thanks to the crackling chemistry between Gosling and the most wonderful little rock person you’ve ever met.
Waking out of a coma in a plastic bag with a feeding tube down your gullet, a ZZ Top hairstyle, amnesia, surrounded by dead crewmates and also, you’re in space… it’s a tough way to start a day. Indeed, Ryland Grace (Ryan Gosling) gets off to an inauspicious start aboard the Hail Mary as he struggles to remember why he’s there in the first place. Project Hail Mary uses Grace’s amnesia to motivate flashbacks to Earth that explain how and why a middle school teacher gets recruited as humanity’s last hope on a mission to nearby star Tau Ceti to save not just our Sun, but every star in the galaxy from being snuffed out by an extraterrestrial microorganism called Astrophage. For the first hour of the movie or so, these breaks from the Hail Mary go a long way to shaking up Grace’s isolation as he gets his footing aboard the ship, while also introducing us to the project’s steely administrator Eva Stratt (Sandra Hüller) and the rest of the ill-fated Hail Mary crew.
Even with the stakes as high as they are, it should come as no surprise with Phil Lord and Chris Miller at the helm that Project Hail Mary is hilarious. Drew Goddard’s script, based on the book by Andy Weir, maintains the affable snark of Weir’s writing well, and Lord and Miller delight in taking the air out of tense moments with a laugh – Grace’s discovery of what looks to be an alien ship may be terrifying for him, but the straight-up cartoonish sight gag that follows really sets Project Hail Mary apart from other similarly-budgeted sci-fi epics.
That tone works so well here thanks in no small part to Lord and Miller’s choice of leading man. Ryan Gosling’s mug may dominate the vast majority of Project Hail Mary’s screentime, but he’s a proven ego-free performer – some say his shrieks from the arm break scene of The Nice Guys ring out over the San Fernando Valley to this day – and Lord and Miller latch onto that sensibility and ride it to the stars. Things don’t always go right for Grace, and Lord and Miller go out of their way in how they shoot and cut Gosling’s performance to embellish Grace’s frustration to consistently funny effect. Gosling is just as strong in Grace’s low moments, whether that’s communicated through silent tears or anguish, like when he moans that he’s “wrong about everything, and everything’s wrong” after discovering the belief he staked his academic career on was completely off-base, or when he has to impart a eulogy to crewmmates he can’t remember based only on details gleaned from their personal effects. Not only does this double as a nice illustration of Grace’s problem-solving instincts but these shades of Grace are given equal weight in Gosling’s performance. They’re near to the surface throughout, so that when things go wrong (or right), all of Grace’s big reactions feel natural and easy to connect to.
Project Hail Mary’s plot may be focused on stopping every star in the galaxy from going out, but it’s also squarely about something that, for Grace, is just as daunting: making friends. Gosling’s Grace is only half of Project Hail Mary’s team of heroes, and he’s matched wonderfully at every turn by the other spacefarer he meets on his way to Tau Ceti: Rocky, voiced and principally performed by lead puppeteer James Ortiz. The Eridean mechanic mirrors Grace in being the surviving member of his own crew as well as the one least-suited to his plight, and likewise in his enthusiasm for creative problem-solving. Ortiz is an acclaimed puppeteer, and channels the magic of that art form into an expressive and dynamic performance that demonstrates the range of emotion puppet performers can evoke through even the most subtle movements.
Lord and Miller’s choice to maintain Ortiz’s voice for Rocky’s computer-translated vocalizations pays off, too, creating even more parity between Ortiz’s on-set work and the final performance. Grace and Rocky’s respect and affection for one another constantly reinforces the benefit of honoring the perspectives and abilities of others different than yourself, and Project Hail Mary is at its most joyous when building out their relationship, first through the trial-and-error early days of their partnership and later through how comfortable they are being blunt and cutting with each other… moreso on Rocky’s part. That little guy’s a hell of a trashmouth for not having a mouth.
The connection theme bears out all across Project Hail Mary, with Lord and Miller establishing it early on in the Earth storyline through Grace’s ability to befriend his surly government handler Carl (Lionel Boyce), leading to a pretty delightful montage of the two going to Home Depot to stock up for a DIY xenobiology experiment. But things are much more complicated between Grace and Stratt, whose inscrutable demeanor and seemingly infinite authority to marshal the world’s resources how she sees fit makes her a good foil to the comparatively hapless Grace. Sandra Hüller embodies the strength of someone capable of shouldering that responsibility and the weight of the resultant hard choices very well, but Project Hail Mary doesn’t invest quite enough in the character to make later moments like her melancholic karaoke performance of Harry Styles’ “Sign of the Times” resonate as clearly or feel as earned as moments where Grace is letting his guard down.
For most of its considerable 156-minute runtime, Project Hail Mary roars ahead, but the third act does suffer from some structural issues which keep it from ending as strong as it could’ve. On its own merits, the final leg of Grace and Rocky’s mission is a thrilling set piece which sees every aspect of the production at its most impressive… but by the time it’s tailed off, there’s still a lot of Project Hail Mary left to go, leaving the rest feeling a little anticlimactic, even if the film does land on its feet in how it pays off Grace and Rocky’s relationship.
These pacing problems are significantly compounded by the flashback structure, which remains consistent throughout Project Hail Mary and really starts to lose its luster by the end. The initial jumps back to Earth feel like they’re giving what’s to follow a thematic bedrock to pay off down the line, once Grace has to decide how to relate to the idea of self-sacrifice, but the late ones feel a little more focused on tying up plot threads which by that point have little relevance to the most critical part of Grace and Rocky’s mission. We do get some of the more interesting work between Gosling and Hüller in their later scenes, but similar to how Project Hail Mary rushes in some characterization for Yao (Ken Leung) and Ilyukniha (Milana Vayntrub), the final pieces of the puzzle falling into place for Grace feel a little less impactful when what’s going on in present day has such huge ramifications.
But even through third act sputters, Project Hail Mary looks incredible, boasting top-notch production design and some truly stunning cinematography from Greig Fraser, who brings the rich sense of texture from his Oscar-winning work in the Dune franchise to bear here with work that consistently elevates Lord and Miller’s film. With the outsized emphasis on light in the story – Astrophage is discovered on a beam of infrared light in space – Fraser finds all kinds of ways to refract and bend it to create incredible depth in the frame, highlighting dazzling spacescapes and engrossing human moments alike. Fraser’s work hits its spectacular apex when Grace and Rocky reach their destination, as both the planet itself and the swarming Astrophage as seen through the Hail Mary’s IR scopes create a majestic sense of beauty and terrible danger right when the movie needs it most.
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