Ticketworthy! - Project Hail Mary

In the long history of science fiction films, some movies simply stand out as important. 2001: A Space Odyssey, Alien, Blade Runner—the list could go on. Now I believe that the list has another entry. Project Hail Mary deserves its place among the best of the genre. What directors Phil Lord and Christopher Miller have crafted is an energetic, heartwarming, gorgeous adventure that manages to tell an emotional and tense story without ever forsaking humor or hopefulness. I can heartily recommend it to absolutely everyone.

The film opens on schoolteacher Ryland Grace (Ryan Gosling) waking up from a coma inside of a spaceship, alone and light years from Earth. He is the sole survivor of a mission to find the only planet in the universe not being killed by star-devouring microscopic organisms known as Astrophage. With the rest of his crew dead and his ship too far out to communicate with Earth, Grace may be the only being alive that can save his planet. Or so he believes, until he meets an alien just as alone and desperate to save its people as he is.

The relationship between Grace and the alien, which he calls Rocky (James Ortiz), is the heart and soul of the film. Both are trapped and alone, and the friendship that they develop is genuinely wonderful to watch. It takes only a few moments to forget that Rocky isn’t real, and that Ryan Gosling isn’t his best friend.

Part of the reason the illusion works so well is Gosling. This is him at his absolute best. He is funny, charming, vulnerable, and draws you in effortlessly. He even makes the science engaging, which is good because it’s vital to the story and I think a weaker actor may have been less convincing. As the only human on screen most of the time, the movie was always only going to be as good as his performance. Luckily, he is spectacular.

The visuals also deserve plenty of credit for making the entire film feel real. While there are a few moments and backdrops that were obviously made digitally, as much of the film as possible was shot practically and it shows. The dedication to practical effects, including full sets and a puppet of Rocky controlled by Ortiz and his team, creates a sense of authenticity and weight that you don’t often see in modern science fiction. When digital effects are needed, like for the various scenes in space, they are just as beautifully realized. The whole movie is a feast for the eyes.

If I had to complain about something, perhaps the pacing struggles a bit to keep up with the length of the film. It’s a very long movie, and there are a few times during flashbacks that it drags. That said, each of those scenes adds to the overall story—they aren’t meaningless. I wouldn’t cut them. There’s really nothing that I would cut. It’s long because it has to be, and the story earns every minute.

If there was one movie so far this year that I would tell people to see in the theater, it would be this one. Project Hail Mary is fantastic in nearly every possible way, and it should be experienced on the big screen if at all possible. It’s the very definition of an instant classic, and no amount of Astrophage is going to dim its star.