Project Hail Mary
Writer: Drew Goddard
Directors: Phil Lord, Christopher Miller
Cast: Ryan Gosling, Sandra Hüller, James Ortiz, Lionel Boyce
Ryan Gosling is the ideal modern movie star. He's handsome and charming, yes, but it's his versatility that stands out for me the most. He can be a romantic lead, an action hero, a physical comedian, a misanthrope and so much more, sometimes all at the same time. We've seen this showcased over and over in everything from The Nice Guys to Barbie, but with Project Hail Mary, Gosling may have found his greatest star vehicle yet.
Big, bombastic, and remarkably sincere, Project Hail Mary is one of those movies I feel like I'll be watching forever. Directed by Phil Lord and Chris Miller and adapted by Drew Goddard from Andy Weir's (The Martian) novel of the same name, it's somehow simultaneously a sci-fi epic, a hangout movie, a comedy of manners, a disaster movie, and much more, and all of it is tied together by Gosling's extraordinary performance as a man pushed (literally) to the edge of the universe.
Gosling is Dr. Ryland Grace, a disgraced molecular biologist turned middle school science teacher who wakes up, alone, on a spaceship, with no memory of how he got there or what he's supposed to be doing. As Grace tries to piece his fate together, flashbacks show us what went down. Because of his expertise in a particular kind of molecular life, Grace was pulled out of the classroom and drafted to work on a top-secret, global operation known as Project Hail Mary. You see, the Sun is dying, humanity has just decades of survival left under current conditions, and the only answers lie 11 light years away around a faraway star. Under guidance from the project's enigmatic director (Sandra Huller), Grace is given a problem-solving mandate with the fate not just of Earth, but of the entire universe on the line, and he's in way over his head.
Fortunately, he's not alone. Grace has barely gotten his bearings when he realizes that an alien craft is shadowing him, on a near-identical mission from its own homeworld. With his back to the wall, the human scientist has no choice but to team up with a precocious stone creature he calls "Rocky" (voiced by James Ortiz) to solve the problem of the dying stars, setting up a kind of buddy movie on top of everything else that's already going on in this film.
It's a lot to take in, and with a runtime of just over 150 minutes, Project Hail Mary does not gloss over much on the road to setting the stakes and then paying them off. Like The Martian before it, this is an info-dense sci-fi blockbuster with very little time to help the audience play catch-up, so it has to work the first time. That's where Lord and Miller, who gave us stuff like The LEGO Movie and 21 Jump Street, come in. Through their brisk direction, and Goddard's elegantly structured script, there is not a moment wasted, and every scene is suffused with more than one purpose. Even the silliest moments (and there are quite a few) of goofy comedy in the film are carrying something extra with them, a sense of weight and power and pure emotional energy. The visuals, which range from bright green gaseous planets to infrared light shows that'll drop your jaw, only add to the sense of weight, of gravity (even if it's artificial because Space) to the film. It's nothing revolutionary, but in the hands of these filmmakers, Project Hail Mary joins the great sci-fi blockbusters that came before it as an essential popcorn flick.
But none of this works without Gosling, who honestly feels like he's operating at the peak of his powers with his performance as Grace. This is a movie about a man going a little crazy while he's trying to save his planet by himself, which means every scene is a balance between a bit of madness and a lot of expectation, and Gosling handles both with a grace (pun intended) that makes it look easy. He sinks so completely into this narrative, into the world of this man filled with doubt, that you barely remember one of the most recognizable faces on the planet is actually embodying the role. The artifice melts away, leaving us with a guy who's just trying his best and slowly gaining the confidence to just maybe pull this whole thing off. It's a remarkably naturalistic, nimble, tear-jerking performance, and it's proof that Gosling can do just about anything.
You've probably already heard that Project Hail Mary is good, and it is, but whether it was the performances or the script or the stunning visuals, it also became something more for me. Every once in a while we need a theatrical experience that jolts us up and out of our seat, gives us a reason to be excited about blockbusters again, about the transportive power of a tub of popcorn and a big swing up on that screen. Project Hail Mary was that movie for me, and I can't wait to go back.
Project Hail Mary is in theaters now.
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