Project Hail Mary Is a Delightful, Optimistic Sci-Fi Adventure - Reactor

I’m not a person who cries. Not during turbulent life events, not when I’m scared, not during weddings, not on election nights, not during religious ceremonies, not during movies.

I’m not saying this to brag any more than I am when I say that horror films never scare me—it’s just what I am.

(I blame Artax? I cried so much the first time I watched The Neverending Story, and every subsequent time after that, for years, that by the time I got to about 4^th grade my tear ducts unionized and went on strike.)

The thing that does get me, sometimes, very occasionally, is when I see two entities cross a great distance to reunite when they thought they’d be apart forever, or communicate when they thought understanding was impossible.

I open with this because I feel like I have to say, in the interest of honesty, that while I didn’t exactly cry during Project Hail Mary, I did tear up. I’ve gotten to see the film twice now, at early screenings, and it’s possible that I teared up… both times. In different places.

Possible! I admit nothing!

It caught me off guard. I read and enjoyed the book—it’s an involving and often very funny book, like all of Weir’s work—but it didn’t hit me like, say, Kaveh Akhbar’s Martyr, or George Saunders’ Lincoln in the Bardo, both of which made me tear up for the reason I just mentioned above. Reading Project Hail Mary, there were points when I turned the pages as fast as I could because Weir made me care about his characters, but I certainly never cried.

However, the movie adaptation takes the heart of the book, the core story about friendship and the nature of bravery, opens it up, and reaches out into the audience to invite us all in.

My guess is that different people will find that invitation in different moments, but when it really got to me, I found it extremely moving.

What’s good about the movie is what was good about the book: the question at its center. When exactly did we all decide there’s no future? When did we give in to the inevitability of our collapse? Why are we ceding our human creativity to AI, our hard-won scientific breakthroughs to under-educated magical thinkers? Shouldn’t we try to fight for our home’s survival and health, as long as even one of us is still breathing?

How dare we give up?

Maybe this sounds a little aggro—but that question is the base note thumping along under what is very much an exhilarating, heartwarming space adventure.

Because I got to go to a press screening, and because the movie doesn’t actually hit theaters until March 19^th, I’ll be as non-spoiler as I can. The important thing to say is that I think this movie is great—a really strong adaptation of the book, for people who loved the book, and a fun standalone sci-fi movie for everyone else.

If you liked the book but had some quibbles, as I did, I think the movie fixes a lot of them. (Just casting the excellent Sandra Hüller as a key character fixed a lot of mine.)

If you don’t know the book but like sci-fi, I think you’ll dig it—and if you like Ryan Gosling, you’ll definitely dig it. Project Hail Mary is also extremely family friendly. There are some existentially frightening moments, but this is a hopeful movie about working for a better future and building friendship, and I think kids will really enjoy it, too.

Here is the absolute stripped down logline of the film:

A mysterious substance has infected our sun, causing it to dim—which jeopardizes all life on Earth. When Ryland Grace (Ryan Gosling) wakes up alone on an interstellar ship, he does at least remember the whole “our sun is dying???” thing—but he can’t remember who he is, why he would have been chosen to go to space, or even what he’s supposed to do about the dying sun problem. The movie follows him as he pieces his memories together, remembers his mission, and tries to brainstorm ways to save his home. I’ll get into a little more detail below, but if you want to go in completely cold, that’s really all you need to know.

The movie was produced and directed by Phil Lord and Christopher Miller, who, among a lot of projects, previously directed the Jump Street movies and The LEGO Movie, co-wrote the Spider-verse films, and produced the stone cold masterpiece that is Cocaine Bear. Drew Goddard adapted the screenplay from Weir’s book, just as he adapted The Martian back in 2015. And that makes for an interesting contrast, actually—Ridley Scott’s take on the story of a lone astronaut in space is bleak and intense, shot through with moments of human triumph and gallows humor. Lord and Miller take a story about a different lone astronaut, written by the same two people, and fill it with wonder, beauty, and a kind of joy in the face of impossible odds.

Ryan Gosling is fantastic as Ryland Grace. It’s honestly hard to overstate this—the whole movie rises and falls on his ability to make you care about him while he’s alone in a ship, yes, but more than that he has to veer between being a scientist who gets to see space up close, and make discoveries no one’s ever made before, while also being terrified and alone all the time. I don’t think there was a single moment that felt false to me. Sandra Hüller has to be the hard-ass who’s fighting certain doom by any means necessary, but she gives mission leader Eva Stratt a wry, fatalistic humor that makes her a real person rather than a plot device. Lionel Boyce is hilarious as Carl, the guard who essentially becomes Grace’s lab assistant for a while—again, a character that could have just been “stoic straight man comic relief” becomes a real person by the end of his arc. And I also have to mention James Ortiz, who is fantastic, and absolutely integral to this film’s success in a role that I’ll talk about in the very very light spoiler-if-you-want-to-go-in-totally-cold section below.

I also want to mention: Ryan Gosling has spoken in interviews about taking inspiration from Val Kilmer in Real Genius for Grace’s t-shirt collection, and what I love is that it makes sense that Grace would have watched that movie as a kid, and that he’s consciously emulating Chris Knight as an adult, as part of being the Cool Teacher at his middle school. Throughout the film, his knowledge of pop culture, references to ‘90s hip-hop, the Rocky/Creed series, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, all feel organic and unforced. The filmmakers aren’t peppering references in for nerd cred; Grace is a Millennial processing his fear through references to movies that bring him comfort.

The special effects are largely practical. Grace’s ship is a set, and any time he does anything difficult in zero-g that means Gosling actually did those things, on wires. There’s also some amazing puppetry work. In addition to everything else it does well, Project Hail Mary is a reminder of how much better a movie looks and feels when it’s made on a real set, with props that have real heft, instead of in front of a green screen.

Another thing: This movie is resolutely, joyously, pro-science. Just like the book, it shows a lot of its work. Grace uses science and math constantly as he solves the problems that pop up during space travel, and works out theories and possible solutions to send home to Earth. The movie makes this process fun and exciting without ever pretending that it’s easy—and I think that’s key. A lot of us are living in places where the people who think they’re in charge have rejected science in favor of magical thinking, and, well, we’re all dealing with the fact that none of us are actually in charge. Nature has always been, and will always be, more powerful than us. We will always be part of nature, not above it or apart from it. And we can deny that as much as we want, but we’re gonna pay for that.

Or, well. Our children will.

Now, if you don’t want to know any more than that, skedaddle! Very light spoilers follow, but if you’ve seen a trailer, you’ve already been spoiled for this particular plot detail…

Project Hail Mary’s is an exploration of friendship—specifically a cross-species friendship that Grace forms with an alien. He names the alien Rocky (he can’t pronounce Rocky’s actual name) and Rocky is THE BEST. Easily my favorite film character of 2026 so far, and I don’t expect anyone to usurp the title any time soon. Rocky’s sun has also been hit by the infection that’s dimming ours, and the two of them have to figure out how to talk to each other and form a partnership to try to save both their planets.

This is where the film’s optimism comes through the most. Grace is afraid of Rocky, naturally, but overcomes that fear to try to figure out how to communicate. Again and again the movie chooses empathy—and again and again that’s rewarded with true friendship and the kind of solutions that can only come from brainstorming with another person.

But the thing that I really appreciate is that this movie feels like watching two kids on either end of a seesaw trying to balance so all four of their feet are off the ground. The heart of the film is Grace’s internal struggle between terror and curiosity, despair and hope—and the movie shows us this struggle. It never makes the science look easy. It never makes choosing hope and empathy look easy. It just makes it clear, over and over again, that the hard work is worth it.

I don’t want to hammer on this too hard, because as I’ve said this movie is mostly a fun space adventure. But given the acid bath of reality that’s raining down on all of us outside of the movie theater, I think celebrating a film that chooses compassion, optimism, and hard work is important. I hope a lot of people see Project Hail Mary, and take its message to heart.