In a last-ditch effort to save the dying sun, Ryland Grace finds himself aboard a spaceship hurdling towards the only star not suffering from the mysterious astrophage. But as he nears the distant star, a strange alien craft closes in, pressuring him to make contact…
Project Hail Mary is based off the novel of the same name by Andy Weir, adapted into this 2026 film starring Ryan Gosling as Dr. Ryland Grace, a molecular biologist and 8th grade teacher, who finds himself in a long shot operation to counteract the vicious astrophage cells choking out the sun. On the long, one-way journey, he encounters Rocky, a lonely rock-like alien whose echolocation chirps and hums he must translate if the two of them are to find a solution to the imminent threat to their homes.
Let us know what your thoughts are on the film, if you’ve seen it, or if you’re planning to. Since this is a very recent film, make sure to use the spoiler function when discussing spoilers for the film or book, as both follow the same story.
This was a great movie, and I would call it one of the better movies I’ve ever seen.
I was a little disappointed at at the parts they left out from the Earth section, like the icebergs and the criminal solar-panel guy, but I get that they needed the movie to focus and flow. Also, the karaoke scene felt a little pointless to me.
Rocky was quite fun, although I’m not a fan of how they adapted his ship. Said ship does look really good, but it’s completely different from what I remember from the book.
I was quite perturbed that they removed the coma gene, until I read an interview with Andy Weir where he expressed his gladness at its removal and explained his reasons why.
Overall, I thought it was excellent. Definitely not perfect, but definitely also a better adaptation than I was expecting. Also, Ryan Gosling was better as Dr. Grace than I anticipated.
I don’t have too much to say about it, I just really enjoyed my experience watching it.
My wife is a big fan of Andy Weir and had read both the Martian and PHM before the movie came out. I went in already knowing about Rocky because she would always regale me with his antics after I heard her giggling to herself while reading. Needless to say, he was the part of the movie I was most excited for (and he was indeed…“amaze.”).
I didn’t know any of the rest of the plot other than Rocky being there, that they were both trying to save their planets, that they would science the heck out of it, and that Grace winds up living on Erid at the end. I’m a big science guy and I love a good puzzle or problem to solve, so much like with The Martian a lot of my enjoyment came from seeing exactly how Grace and Rocky solved whatever problem came their way. My wife impressed upon me after the fact that there was a whole ton more in the book they left out, but it was already a pretty long movie and I expected and understood why they would breeze past a lot of the intricacy. When it came down to it, I think the friendship between Grace and Rocky and the payoff for the twist reveal at the end (that Grace was initially a coward and unwilling participant before choosing to risk his life for Rocky) was the true core of this movie. And I certainly know it worked because my wife was crying at least 3 separate times and even I was getting teary-eyed.
If I had any criticism, it was that Rocky and Grace sort of worked out their communication issue extremely fast. Part of my issue with that might be that I also really like the movie Arrival, and the entire plot of that movie is scientists trying to work out how to communicate with aliens, and it does such a really good job of showing just how difficult that is (and how different alien life would be from us). Rocky sort of seems to already understand a lot of the same conventions that humans do (making physical models, numbers, math, sentence structure and grammar, human gestures), and besides one or two little Rocky-isms he doesn’t seem to have much about him that’s radically different from just a weird human, or things that would make communicating with him any different than like, someone who just speaks a different language. But that’s a nitpick as, again, their eventual relationship is the core of the movie. They can’t spend 2 hours dissecting exactly what each little chirp he makes means.
It was beautiful looking, amazing soundtrack (parts of it I could swear were reminiscent of Skyrim or Interstellar), very well written, enjoyable science, a lot of funny and emotional scenes, and Ryan Gosling just freaking kills it.
Honestly some of the added details that I’ve heard of in post (having never read the book myself) such as the solar panel subplot and the coma gene mentioned by Zhyndea couldn’t have very well served the plot, imo. Hopefully the author will have the good sense to not make a sequel just so he can milk it for all it’s worth.
Sentence structure is unfortunately mandatory here, as Ryland’s mannerisms when interacting with the Chinese pilot speaking his native tongue indicate multilingualism is not his strong suit. However, the film also has a lot of instances where Rocky is simply a whole lot smarter than Ryland without any explanation as to how he got anywhere near the assumptions he makes (somehow figuring out that he needs oxygen to breathe by observing his face for a couple seconds). However, all that being said, the film did a good job of illustrating Rocky’s seeming ineptitude was due to unfamiliarity with the technology around him and not a lack of intelligence, so it makes up for it for the most part.
On language specifically, Rocky is also shown to pick up on Ryland’s english way faster than Ryland can math out his chirps and buzzes. There is the assumption that Ryland would have a much easier time figuring out Rocky’s language once he realized the sentence structure was the same as english (odd since english has a fairly unique sentence structure among real languages), but the movie had to get to the part where he started dunking on Ryland’s living conditions and genuinely get me to crack up, so I forgive it
Huge highlight here - as someone who found Lord and Miller’s comedy in most of their films to be pretty mediocre at best, this film actually had some genuinely funny moments, and Rocky trash-talking Ryland’s living quarters (not a spoiler as this was in the TV spots put out ahead of release) got me to actually show human emotion for once and laugh audibly (I will never recover ).
Overall, as someone who really doesn’t like Ryan Gosling or pretty much anything he’s starred in, he really did a good job here and watching this was a blast-
no wait, I mean it rocks-
actually, it was amazi-
The book definitely did this part better. I won’t go too much into it, but he had to figure out each word in the book with much more difficulty, and he only stopped having to carry around the translator much later, when he had spent enough time with Rocky to where he understood everything instinctually.
I might be getting this wrong, because I read the book over a year ago, but I think I remember that, in the book, Ryland had to make his own model of the atomic structure of oxygen.
Overall, I would say that the book is worth a read for anyone who liked the movie. There were certainly a few elements it executed better, like Ryland and Rocky meeting. In the book, said meeting was longer and explained a lot of those elements that were hand-waved in the movie.
