Project Hail Mary Review: Ryan Gosling's Stunning Space Adventure Will Give You Hope

It might not feel like it, given their numerous writing and producing credits including the "Spider-Verse" movies, but "Project Hail Mary" is the first movie Phil Lord and Christopher Miller have actually directed since the one-two punch of "The LEGO Movie" and "22 Jump Street" in 2014. The Andy Weir novel it adapts came out in 2021, but something I instantly noted when watching "Project Hail Mary" is how much of its appeal feels like a throwback to the time when Lord and Miller last had films in theaters.

Think about the comparisons that must have been used in the pitch. "The Martian," also a Drew Goddard-scripted adaptation of a Weir book, is the most obvious, but there's also the isolation and disaster thrills of "Gravity," the first-contact communication drama of "Arrival," and multiple visual and narrative parallels to "Interstellar." Non-franchise, mostly-realistic standalone hard-science fiction blockbusters beloved by both critics and general audiences were an annual event in the second Obama administration. Then Hollywood more or less stopped making them; the few attempts at such in the Trump era ("Ad Astra," "Mickey 17") have been more cynical and less widely appealing.

"Project Hail Mary" seems to have time-traveled straight from this era of "Yes we can," back when the culture believed that scientific expertise and global cooperation could save us from any oncoming disaster. It's sad this sort of idealism no longer plays like a believable near-future scenario, but taken as "Star Trek"-style aspirational fantasy, it's the movie many of us are needing. Deeply hopeful, spectacularly produced, and equally adept at laughter and tears, "Project Hail Mary" is the best new movie to hit theaters so far this year.

"Project Hail Mary" opens with astronaut Dr. Ryland Grace (Ryan Gosling) awakening from cryostatis aboard the Hail Mary spaceship nearly 12 light years away from home. His crewmates (Ken Leung and Milana Vayntrub) are dead, and he has amnesia regarding who he is and what he's supposed to be doing. The film involves two timelines: Grace solves problems aboard the ship in the present, while his gradually-recovered memories of his past on Earth — as a school teacher dragged into investigating a mysterious phenomenon dimming the light of the sun and other stars — play out in flashbacks. Cinematographer Greig Fraser shoots the latter in widescreen and the former in full IMAX, and it's worth shelling out the extra cash to see in the largest format.

The story is faithful to Andy Weir's book, but already the movie's first act reveals one clear advantage over the source material. Weir's prose is a limited instrument — it gets the job done for his books' scientifically-accurate action, but all his main characters speak in the exact same voice. Book Dr. Grace reads just like a slightly less confident version of Mark Watney from "The Martian." Ryan Gosling's Dr. Grace, however, could never be mistaken for Matt Damon's Mark Watney.

For that matter, Gosling's Grace could never be mistaken for the last time the star played an astronaut: Neil Armstrong in the biopic "First Man." This film takes full advantage of the softer comedic side the actor unleashed in "Barbie" and "The Fall Guy." Physical performance replaces endless technical exposition — it turns out Gosling excels at zero-G clowning. The present day half of the film's first act is a one-man show, while the flashbacks allow him to play off another brilliant performer with Sandra Hüller as Hail Mary mastermind Eva Stratt. He's excellent in both scenarios.

Gosling benefits from having a full spaceship set to interact with and play around in. "Project Hail Mary" was shot with as many practical effects as possible, reportedly avoiding any traditional green screen (space exteriors used black and shifting hue backgrounds to get the in-camera lighting just right). It not only looks great, but befits Phil Lord and Christopher Miller's desire to iterate and improvise while still seeing a finished-looking image — a style that's a source of frustration for some working on their animated films and led to their firing from "Solo: A Star Wars Story." And that's before we get into the film's most important semi-practical effect ...

The first big twist of "Project Hail Mary" has already been thoroughly spoiled by the film's marketing, so let's talk about it: some time after Grace recovers enough memories to understand his mission, he encounters an alien ship arriving in the Tau Ceti system on the same star-saving mission. The alien, a faceless five-limbed stone creature that Grace nicknames "Rocky," communicates with the human through scientific models and puppet shows — its great technological gift is the ability to craft anything from solid Xenon. Their non-verbal communication allows Grace to start translating Rocky's language via a computer database. After cycling through a few possible options, Grace gives Rocky's computer translation the voice of James Ortiz — the actor who happens to be Rocky's lead puppeteer.

While I couldn't tell you what percentage of Rocky's actual on-screen appearance is puppetry vs. CGI, the fact a puppet was present throughout the shoot contributes to the sense of spontaneity and reality. Rocky looks different (less spider-like) than I imagined while reading the book, but he's still the same lovable guy. Rocky and Grace's interspecies collaboration and friendship becomes the heart of the movie, a source of playful humor and shocking emotional resonance. I don't want to say much more for those who haven't read the book, but "Project Hail Mary" joins "Everything Everywhere All at Once" and "Steven Universe: The Movie" on the short list of movies where rocks will make you cry. Daniel Pemberton's score deserves significant credit for the emotional impact; it's next-level work I want to listen to again as soon as possible.

As the space adventure picks up in excitement, the flashbacks do start to drag a little. They're still entertaining — Sandra Hüller's karaoke performance is a highlight — but there's a structural issue with this narrative: because we've seen who Grace is on this mission, and because the film's not as locked into his "Who am I?" questioning as the book was, any twist reveals about who he was before the mission don't hit as hard as they want to. This issue doesn't really hurt the film, exactly, but it's one thing holding a great movie back from being a perfect one. But you know what is perfect? Its ending. No spoilers, just go see it.

"Project Hail Mary" opens in theaters March 20.