Project Hail Mary (2026)
Let me say upfront that I went into this one with mildly lowered expectations. Big-budget science fiction adapted from a brilliant novel, directed by the duo behind the Spider-Verse films, starring Ryan Gosling at peak Ryan Gosling-ness. The conditions were ripe for a certain kind of expensive disappointment. I was wrong, and I’m happy to say so.
Project Hail Mary is, at its core, a film about a man waking up alone in space with no memory of who he is or why he’s there. Ryland Grace (Gosling), a middle-school science teacher and former molecular biologist, finds himself the sole surviving crew member of an interstellar spacecraft light-years from Earth. As memory returns in fragments, the picture assembles itself: a microscopic organism is bleeding the Sun of its energy output, threatening all life on Earth, and Grace has been sent on a one-way mission to investigate the only nearby star not affected by the phenomenon. The flashback structure through which this is revealed is handled with real skill by screenwriter Drew Goddard, who previously adapted Andy Weir’s The Martian and clearly understands that Weir’s particular brand of nerd-optimism requires a delicate touch rather than a heavy hand.
Gosling carries the film’s first half largely on his own, and in my opinion he’s better here than he’s been in years. There’s a looseness to the performance, a kind of problem-solving energy that makes Grace genuinely likeable without tipping into saccharine. He talks to himself. He makes mistakes. He does the scientific method in real time, which sounds like it shouldn’t work as drama and mostly does.
Then Rocky turns up, and the film shifts register entirely.
Rocky is an alien life form, rendered through practical puppetry operated by a team of five, and voiced (in part) by Ray Porter and Meryl Streep. The relationship that develops between Grace and Rocky is the film’s real subject — not the solar crisis, not the mission, not even survival. It’s about what happens when two genuinely different kinds of mind approach each other with curiosity rather than fear, and find, to their mutual surprise, that cooperation is not only possible but deeply satisfying. That’s a philosophical proposition dressed up in science fiction clothing, and the film wears it well. Rocky is, for the record, also very funny. I did not expect to have feelings about a spider-adjacent alien with the social affect of an enthusiastic engineer, but here we are.
Phil Lord and Christopher Miller bring considerable energy to the material, and Greig Fraser’s cinematography is frequently extraordinary. Deep space, in this film, looks both immense and oddly intimate. That’s not an easy thing to pull off.
There are, in fairness, some problems. The pacing sags noticeably in the middle section, and Sandra Hüller, playing Eva Stratt (the formidable head of the international task force behind the mission), is somewhat underused by a screenplay that needs her primarily for exposition. This feels like a structural miscalculation rather than a performance issue. Hüller is one of the finest screen actors working today, and leaving her with limited room to move seems, in my view, like an opportunity missed.
The science, too, takes liberties that scientifically-minded viewers may find distracting. Weir’s novel has a reputation for rigour, and the film preserves the spirit of that rigour without always honouring its detail. Whether this bothers you will depend on your personal tolerance for handwaving in service of narrative momentum.
At two hours and thirty-six minutes, Project Hail Mary is not a film that travels light. The third act, in particular, stretches in ways that test patience even as it builds toward a conclusion that is, I think, genuinely affecting. The film believes, without embarrassment, that intellectual humility and human decency are worth celebrating. That it makes this case through a middle-school science teacher and a puppet alien, and largely succeeds, is no small achievement.