PROJECT HAIL MARY is a nice crowd pleasing sci-fi movie based on a book by Andy Weir, same author as THE MARTIAN. It’s directed by Phil Lord & Christopher Miller, the team who directed 21 JUMP STREET, produced SPIDER-MAN: INTO THE SPIDER-VERSE and got fired from SOLO. It’s a huge hit, some people are talking it up like it’s Important, and it’s the closest thing Lord & Miller have done to a classy grown-up movie, so time will tell if it sends them on a catastrophic Adam McKay type trajectory. But right now we’re good. It’s a movie with lots of laughs and a lovable alien. People just get emotional about astronauts, I think.
Ryan Gosling (director of LOST RIVER) stars as Ryland Grace, a middle school science teacher who accidentally winds up shouldering the responsibility of keeping the entire earth and at least one other planet from becoming uninhabitable. It’s kind of a long story doled out in episodic flashbacks, but an against-the-grain paper he wrote in a former life as a molecular biologist leads to him being one of numerous scientists recruited by a top secret international program to stop the crisis of single-celled alien organisms they call “astrophages” from blotting out the sun.
He’s one of those have/eat cake characters who is both historically brilliant and a relatable doofus. Sure, his genius will save humanity, but first he’ll be awkward and embarrass himself and make everybody think he’s an idiot. It’s sort of played as a matter of him having to learn to believe in himself. He feels out of his league, but riffing with his military escort Carl (Lionel Boyce, The Bear) leads to discoveries that become crucial to the organization’s last ditch effort to save the sun, and other occurrences lead to him being sent on the interstellar mission, along with characters played by Ken Leung (RUSH HOUR) and Milana Vayntrub (the AT&T lady, WEREWOLVES WITHIN). The movie opens as he wakes up from an induced coma, light years from the earth, experiencing amnesia, not knowing what to do, and the other two are dead.
It has been the subject of much ridicule that THE MARTIAN competed in the musical or comedy categories at the Golden Globes. It is much funnier than other astronaut movies, but certainly it’s more about the drama and thrills than the chuckles. The same is true of PROJECT HAIL MARY, but I’d say it leans more toward comedy than THE MARTIAN did – Lord & Miller are much more liable than Ridley Scott to go for a laugh that might undermine the seriousness of the situations. And normally I’m against that, but I forgive it here because it gave us what was for me the biggest laugh in the movie (I won’t spoil it but it’s when Grace figures out how to open the alien object he finds).
I like how Gosling has shifted from our most accomplished young brooder in DRIVE, THE PLACE BEYOND THE PINES, ONLY GOD FORGIVES and BLADE RUNNER 2049 to North America’s most charming, hilarious goofus in THE NICE GUYS, BARBIE, THE FALL GUY, etc. And it struck me that in this opening, where we’re thrust without context into his nightmarish awakening in space, he makes it funny not just with his pratfalls and comical shrieking, but even the Looney Tunes way he darts around or pops into frame. He’s a really good physical comedian.
At the same time, not even seeing it in IMAX, I was hit by the menacing vastness of space, the frailty of a body wrapped in plastic, scrambling around in metal chambers, falling down ladders, banging against walls, panicking as the calm voice of the computer (Priya Kansara, POLITE SOCIETY) sort of communicates with him. I felt the horror of it pretty deep. It takes advantage of its big budget with excellent visual effects (supervisors Paul Lambert [TRON: LEGACY] and Mag Sarnowska [KRAVEN THE HUNTER]), production design (by Charles Wood, MINDHUNTERS) and cinematography (by Greig Fraser, ZERO DARK THIRTY, THE BATMAN). It’s a big ass Hollywood movie type of movie.
Sandra Hüller (ANATOMY OF A FALL, THE ZONE OF INTEREST) plays Eva Stratt, the head of Project Hail Mary, and it’s one of those roles where it seems like they would’ve had to cancel the movie if she said no. Who else could be so god damn stern, but with just a tiny glint of vulnerability that makes Grace want to make a human connection with her? She recruits him, gives us lots of exposition, feels she has no choice but to be cold-hearted about everything because she’s asking people to give their lives to maybe just maybe save humanity but it’s a long shot so maybe not. The astronauts try to bond and have fun in their last days on earth, and she tries to keep a distance. Grace talks to her about it while the others enjoy drunken karaoke; she surprises him by giving in and going up for a song. I didn’t know the song (turns out it’s by Harry Styles) but she sings well and I found her impulsive decision to open the door slightly to the ordinarily off-limits world of her emotions to be the most moving scene in the movie, and the whole reason for her to do the role. So it was funny to later read that it wasn’t in the script; Gosling suggested it after hearing her singing to herself on set. To their credit, Lord & Miller knew it was good and what it would do for her character.
There’s another character who overshadows her, though. I don’t know how to write his actual name in English, but Grace calls him Rocky, because he looks like he’s made of rock. He’s a faceless, crab-like humanoid from the planet 40 Eridani whose ship attaches to Grace’s and creates a tunnel. He stays behind a glass-like barrier but tries to communicate through models and gestures – Grace calls it a puppet show. Pretty quickly he devises a way to make his laptap translate between their languages as he slowly learns vocabulary and adds it to his database. The a.i. voice Rocky chooses sounded like Steven Colbert to me, but it’s James Ortiz, who was one of the puppeteers operating the character.
I like that the movie works so hard to create a grounded reality and believable fake tech and science just to get to this silly notion of Gosling and a weird puppet being roommates on a spaceship. They learn from each other, talk about their lives and cultures, I was happy to that Grace’s explanation of the ROCKY movies goes all the way to CREED (he calls it “7”). It’s a problem solving movie with a very convenient cheat that Rocky can make almost anything out of a substance Grace calls “xenonite,” and his technology is inexplicable to humans. It works for me because they come up with weird stuff we haven’t seen in a million sci-fi movies. I love the jagged transparent space suit he creates for Grace.
There’s one unexpected wrinkle to the story that’s revealed late in the movie, so I won’t get into it. I think it was supposed to raise questions about selflessness and Grace’s status as a hero. But I didn’t really think about that at first because it mostly raises uncomfortable questions about the mission and the people involved. I’m not totally sure what it’s trying to say, but I think I like it, because it gave me something more to chew on. It makes it a little more complex.
Like THE MARTIAN, the book was adapted by Drew Goddard (BAD TIMES AT THE EL ROYALE). Unlike THE MARTIAN it does feel like there’s a bunch of stuff that has to be condensed. I didn’t feel like I entirely followed all the explanations of fictional science and the leaps they’re making. And I’m not usually this guy but it did feel strange not to learn almost anything about Grace’s life. We know he felt like a failure in science, he likes teaching kids (but they make fun of him). There is one late mention of an ex when Rocky asks about a “mate,” with the cliche that she left him because his head was in the clouds. But we never see him outside of school or Hail Mary, we have no indication that he has family members, friends, neighbors, other interests (well, except that he owns a t-shirt for the musical Cats).
Of course the most far-fetched notion in the whole story is that nobody likes this guy and he has trouble meeting people and feels like a loser. But he’s meant to be the relatable and grounded part of this story. That’s why I think showing him to have more of an actual human life and history would be helpful. But not required, it turns out. It still works.
As much as I enjoyed this, I don’t think I’m as hot on it as most people. I’m not sure how much it will stick with me. But I can’t remember, maybe I would’ve said the same thing about THE MARTIAN, which (with its seductive optimism and disco soundtrack) has become a cable classic. Maybe they’ll put this in the ROCKY marathon after 7.
SPOILER P.S. – They should make a part 2 that’s kind of a rehash but it’s an Eridian Sandra Hüller coming to him at the Eridian middle school talking to him about a paper he wrote a long time ago.
