A tremendous amount of heart went into Project Hail Mary, and a ton of heart and sentimentality bleeds through the final product. Whether that’s a detriment for any given audience member will only be up to them. I’ve seen a few reviews note they felt they were being overworked or sold a specific tone to the point of exhaustion. But for my money, if I could have any director or pair of directors trying this sort of pop-culture-riffing, winking blockbuster with a constant tongue-in-cheek tone, I’d pick Phil Lord and Christopher Miller every single time.
In part because I think the acclaimed duo behind the 21 Jump Street and Spider-Verse franchises build to worthwhile emotional swells here better than most of their contemporaries. There’s a lot of what James Gunn does in what Lord and Miller do, and vice versa, and the duo are so obviously built to work inside the franchise system the way the Russo brothers are, but with a bigger budget and a more reliable instinct for what an audience actually craves. I appreciate the commitment to practical effects as much as physically possible and the ability to pull great performances from great actors.
Ryan Gosling is truly tremendous here, likable and believable as public school science teacher and former molecular biologist Ryland Grace, who as we learn over time is forced into space as the individual most in tune with the astrophage material causing the sun to dim at an alarming rate. The film is told in chunks crosscut between expository scenes on Earth between Grace and Project Hail Mary task force leader Eva Stratt (Sandra Hüller) deciphering the astrophage and conceiving of the all-or-nothing plan to send a crew of scientists toward for vital research purposes, and the mission itself. But the mission hasn’t gone as planned. When Grace awakens at the beginning of the film, he’s the only one left alive on the ship. What was once meant to be a collective effort to save the world is now down to just him. Or at least we think, until a massive, stringy ship built of who-knows-what rolls up next to him, and inside it, another lost individual trying to save their own planet as well. A rock-like figure that Grace aptly names Rocky.
The two develop quite the bond, and with that the moments that Lord and Miller work best in and seem most comfortable with. The hijinks and jokes almost write themselves as Grace and Rocky learn each other’s languages and home worlds and what led both of them to be sent out here to save their planets.
There are high highs and low lows as scientific breakthroughs are reached and the unknowns of outer space are felt in very emotional, sometimes overwrought, ways. It’s a movie that teeters between an adult picture and a kids movie, not as a detriment exactly, but there’s a heavy dose of humor that will appeal to kids alongside stretches of astrophage mechanics that are genuinely challenging to keep up with. It’s based on Andy Weir’s novel of the same name, and mirrors in some ways the iconography of Weir’s other stories. The Martian will obviously come to mind first, with Ridley Scott taking a far more self-serious tone to that film than Lord and Miller do here. Drew Goddard, who adapted The Martian for Scott, also wrote the screenplay here, and the connective tissue between the two is unmistakable even if the sensibilities diverge completely.
But I really liked it, and if we’re going to get big, winking blockbusters from filmmakers making obvious in-roads to pop culture through needle drops, references, and the like, Lord and Miller are doing it better right now than just about anyone.
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The film is extremely heartfelt, even with a few hiccups along the way. Hüller isn’t given a ton to do besides a Harry Styles karaoke sequence that ultimately leads nowhere and to be the catalyst in sending Grace to space in the first place, and the film has about a half-dozen potential endings that make the 156-minute runtime felt rather acutely.
But it’s hard not to feel pure bliss in this. After watching, I’m reminded that Lord and Miller were originally set to direct Solo, and on the weekend that The Mandalorian and Grogu hits theaters to poor reviews, I find myself wondering what the state of Star Wars would look like if the creatives had been trusted to make the critical decisions and tell their stories as they’d intended. Because in Project Hail Mary, it crystalizes into something so sweet and affecting to watch that it makes you grateful they’ve found their way here instead.
Score: 8/10
Project Hail Mary (2026)
- Cast: Ryan Gosling, James Ortiz, Sandra Hüller, Lionel Boyce, Milana Vayntrub, Ken Leung, Priya Kansara
- Director: Phil Lord, Christopher Miller
- Genre: Adventure, Science Fiction
- Runtime: 156 minutes
- Rated: PG-13
- Release Date: March 20, 2026
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