Project Hail Mary

There is a moment about an hour into Project Hail Mary where Ryland Grace, alone on a spaceship roughly a hundred trillion miles from home, discovers he is not alone. Something is knocking on his hull. The creature that enters his life – five-legged, rock-skinned, communicating through musical chords – should not work as a movie character. It works better than almost anything in recent science fiction. By the time Grace and Rocky are problem-solving together, arguing in broken cross-species grammar, and making each other laugh in ways neither species knew was possible, the film has quietly become one of the best buddy movies in years. It just happens to be set in interstellar space.

Ryan Gosling plays Grace as a man who was never supposed to be here. Not metaphorically – literally. He is a junior high school science teacher who was recruited onto a suicide mission to save the sun because he stumbled onto the right answer at the wrong time. Gosling builds the performance from small realisations, nervous humour, and the slow, reluctant acceptance of responsibility. There is no square-jawed heroism. Grace figures things out by doing math on whiteboards, panicking, and then doing more math. It is the most human Gosling has been on screen since Half Nelson.

Drew Goddard, who adapted Andy Weir’s The Martian with similar dexterity, takes Weir’s science-dense novel and finds the beating heart inside the equations. The screenplay alternates between Grace’s present-tense mission aboard the Hail Mary and flashbacks to Earth, where the real tension lives. Sandra Hüller is extraordinary as Eva Stratt, the head of the international task force who assembles the mission with the calm ruthlessness of someone who knows exactly how little time humanity has left. There is a scene where Stratt sings karaoke to Harry Styles’ “Sign of the Times” that was not in the script. It is one of the most quietly devastating moments in the film.

Phil Lord and Christopher Miller direct with an assurance that seems almost effortless. They understand something most blockbuster filmmakers don’t – that spectacle means nothing without someone to care about. The visual effects are stunning, the Tau Ceti system rendered with scientific plausibility and visual poetry, but they never overshadow the relationship at the center. Rocky, brought to life through practical puppetry by James Ortiz and creature design by the legendary Neal Scanlan, is the film’s secret weapon. When Rocky speaks – a series of musical notes that Grace slowly learns to interpret – you believe in the friendship completely.

The film is not perfect. The third act simplifies some of the novel’s thornier science, and a handful of Earth-side characters feel underwritten. But these are small complaints against a film that achieves something increasingly rare: it makes you feel genuine wonder. Not the manufactured wonder of a trailer designed to give you goosebumps, but the real thing – the feeling of watching two beings from opposite ends of the galaxy choose trust over fear.

Project Hail Mary opened on March 20 and has grossed over $320 million worldwide. It holds a 95% on Rotten Tomatoes and an A CinemaScore. It is the kind of film that reminds you why movie theaters exist. Go see it on the biggest screen you can find.