(Blows the dust off the review template, coughs melodramatically)
I don’t know if it’s my age, movies these days, the cost of moviegoing, or the overall movie experience, but I have haven’t been looking forward to seeing a movie like this in a long time (probably 2019 with Avengers: Endgame). But after reading Andy Weir’s book, and the subsequent announcement of the movie, I’ve been quite excited for this one.
I did not reread the book before watching the movie, so I might have some stuff wrong from the book. This was intentional. I didn’t want to spend a lot of brainpower comparing the two. I will be rereading it shortly.
Spoiler-free takeaway: Go see it. If The Martian was your jam, this will be as well. It’s worth seeing on the big screen. I have a few minor quibbles with the adaptation from the book, but I understand them and they didn’t bother me in the moment.
Warning: Here be spoilers. I won’t divulge anything that isn’t in the trailers and I won’t spoil the new material that’s movie-only (three or four scenes by my reckoning).
Title: Project Hail Mary
Cast and Crew
Directed by Phil Lord and Christopher Miller
Ryan Gosling as Ryland Grace
Sandra Hüller as Eva Stratt
James Ortiz as Rocky (voice)
Written by Drew Goddard & Andy Weir (based on the latter’s book)
Premise
The sun is dying and the Earth’s temperature is starting to drop. In a few decades, the 1/3 of the population will starve. A few more decades and all life will be extinct. The cause? A microscopic alien organism, called Astrophage, is going back and forth between the Sun and Venus while consuming the Sun. Project Hail Mary is created to find the source of the Astrophage and to find a way to stop it. Ryland Grace (Gosling), is a disgraced scientist turned school teacher that is recruited into the project when his unorthodox theories suddenly become interesting.
Low Points
I had braced myself for this, but I knew the “crunchy” science was going to get left out. The results are still there, we just skip the fun problem solving stuff that makes Weir’s books so nerdy. But, they would get boring for “average” audiences and would slow down the pace (it’s all stuff in his head). A lot of Grace’s waking up and early amnesia is fast forwarded. Again, I get it. They needed to get to “hey, you’re in space” without the moving being five hours long*. There are other shortcuts when heavy science is involved. Maybe there’s a bunch of deleted scenes out there. We’ll see come home release.
There is an unnecessarily loud jump scare (if you’ve read the book or seen the trailer, you can probably guess where it happens). I knew the surprise was coming, but it was exceptionally loud. My concern is that this movie could work for older kids, but that moment might put them off the rest of the movie.
High Points
The dynamic of Grace and Rocky (the heart of the book) is here and it works. Rocky is mostly practical and it pays off in the performance.
The visuals are stunning. Seriously. Tau Ceti E was gorgeous. The Petrova Line looked beautiful. There are shots that are absolute works of art on the big screen. I feel like some movies lean into “hey, look how cool this is” without a story to service it. These are effects in service to the story.
The Scores
Originality: It’s an adaptation of a book, so it’s going to lose a point there. But the overall story is so much fun and feels fresh and inventive. We need more of this and less “Dances with Wolves in space”. 5/6
Effects: These are top-notch. There are shots that make you remember why we love space so much. Space is vast and scary and beautiful all at once. Rocky’s ship was truly alien. They claim no green screens were used in the film. I’m guessing they used the AR wall like they’ve been using for the new Star Trek and Star Wars shows. The upside is that the actors (or actor) can “see” where they are and use it in their performance. 6/6
Production: Rocky is adorable. I wanted to take him home (or go home with him). The Hail Mary looked like the ISS, if it were built tomorrow. Seeing the Astrophage drives in action was very cool. My son commented that the interior of the Hail Mary looked bigger than he expected, but this is a conceit we have to live with when filming. Much like The Expanse, you can’t film in a tight space. You can’t see everyone or everything. 6/6
Acting: Gosling is on his own for most of the movie and does great with self-banter. There’s a joke that Weir writes books so that he rarely has to write a conversation with more than two people. Rocky is wonderful (voice and puppetry). Hüller as Stratt was almost book-perfect. She’s a touch softer, but not by much. I wish the supporting cast had more screen time, especially Yáo and Ilyukhina. It would have given more retrospective weight to the beginning of the film. 6/6
Story: This is peak Sci-Fi for me. Asking big questions and then sciencing the shit out of them. Smart people being smart. But they’re still people. I wondered if they’d shy away from Grace’s “cowardice” but they leaned into it. And well they should, it’s the core theme of the story. I wonder if people that aren’t familiar with the book will get that the flashbacks are coming to Grace at those moments. That he’s slowly recalling these memories over time. It doesn’t come across that way in the movie. 5/6
Emotional Response: There are laughs aplenty but it never detracts from the tension (please take note Star Wars and Marvel movie writers). There are genuinely touching moments at various parts. 6/6
Overall: Amaze! Amaze! Amaze! This movie is wonderful. There’s a reason it’s currently sitting at 95% on Rotten Tomatoes. 6/6
Notes
*Note to studio: I would happily watch a five-hour version of PHM.
**Anyone curious, the carrier used was the USS Carl Vinson. For a moment I thought the hull number was 80 not 70, which would have been the currently under construction Enterprise.