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Ryan Gosling stars as Ryland Grace in Project Hail Mary from Amazon MGM Studios. (Jonathan Olley\/Amazon MGM Studios)<\/p>\nLongtime friends and near-equally longtime collaborators Phil Lord and Chris Miller brought the same ethos to Project Hail Mary that has shaped so many of their other films, from 21 Jump Street and The Lego Movie to the more recent Spider-Verse series.\u00a0<\/p>\n
“We often say we want this movie to help people imagine goodness,” Lord said in a recent interview with CBC’s Q about their film adaptation of Andy Weir’s sci-fi novel. <\/p>\n
“Because it’s not hard to imagine all of the crummy things in the world, you know? And sometimes we need a reminder.”<\/p>\n
For a film about a lone astronaut sent into deep space to solve a mystery and save the planet, that theme of goodness and hope was not hard to find. It also reflects a long tradition of films about space \u2014 movies also released alongside real-life space-exploration efforts or periods of heightened public fascination with the subject. <\/p>\n
Those films have often succeeded for their unique ability to infuse people with a sense of optimism about a hopeful future, especially when that optimism did not come easily.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Ryan Gosling stars as Ryland Grace in Project Hail Mary from Amazon MGM Studios. (Jonathan Olley\/Amazon MGM Studios)<\/p>\n
“That was the experience making the film also, which is a bunch of people coming together to do a difficult task,” Miller said of the experience of making Project Hail Mary. <\/p>\n
“Which was also a subplot of this movie, with people on Earth, from all over the world, having to work together to do a seemingly impossible task. And I think that’s what we kept feeling.”<\/p>\n
That strategy appears to have worked. After a strong box-office debut last month, the film has gone on to do what felt impossible for a film not based on a sprawling franchise or decades-old source material with hundreds of millions of built-in fans.\u00a0<\/p>\n
It has operated as a true “four-quadrant” movie \u2014 one that satisfies all major demographics, unites them in a shared feeling of excitement, camaraderie and joy \u2014 and makes them actually want to go to the movies.\u00a0<\/p>\n
“It’s not all doom and gloom, which I think is a very big plus at the moment with everything else going on in the world,” film critic Rachel Ho said. <\/p>\n
“This was something that audiences needed \u2014 clearly wanted and needed, because they have been coming out in droves.”<\/p>\n
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Canadian astronaut Robert Thirsk spent 187 days aboard the International Space Station (ISS) in 2009. Combined with a later trip, he spent roughly 205 cumulative days in space \u2014 the longest for any Canadian. He credits films about space travel for inspiring his career path. (NASA)Optimism and space exploration<\/p>\n
It is also far from the first thing to evoke that sense of hope. Only weeks after Project Hail Mary took off in theatres, the real-life Artemis II mission to the moon launched from Cape Canaveral. <\/p>\n
Robert Thirsk, a former Canadian astronaut who holds the national record for most days spent in space, was there for the launch \u2014 part of a group of roughly 200 invited guests celebrating an early step in the first crewed return to the moon in more than 50 years.\u00a0<\/p>\n
He described the gathering as inherently optimistic and positive: a triumphant endeavour that brought people together by showing what humankind can do when it takes on difficult things together.<\/p>\n
But as a committed fan of Andy Weir, Thirsk said he was also thinking about something else.\u00a0<\/p>\n
“My first love as an astronaut is of course space flight. But my second love is going to all these space movies,” he said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
He, like many there and at home, could not help comparing the excitement surrounding the real-life launch with the feeling they’d felt watching Project Hail Mary. Having already read the novel and seen the film the week before, the connection was easy to make.\u00a0<\/p>\n
But the parallels run deeper than spacecraft alone. Other blockbuster space-exploration films have also seemed to align with NASA milestones. First Man, released in 2018, came out just months before the 50th anniversary of the moon landing it depicts.<\/p>\n
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Matt Damon as Mark Watney in a scene from the film, The Martian, directed by Ridley Scott, based on the novel by Andy Weir who also wrote Project Hail Mary. (Aidan Monaghan\/Twentieth Century Fox\/AP)<\/p>\n
Weir’s earlier film adaptation, The Martian, was released shortly after NASA announced findings about liquid water on Mars. Another Weir adaptation, Artemis, came out before NASA announced its current Artemis project, though the two are unrelated. And Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey depicted astronauts walking on the moon roughly a year before it really happened.\u00a0<\/p>\n
LISTEN | Project Hail Mary’s Phil Lord and Chris Miller talk about crafting the space film:<\/p>\n
23:15Forget kindred spirits \u2014 Project Hail Mary\u2019s Lord and Miller are kindred weirdos<\/p>\n
Directors Phil Lord and Christopher Miller (Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse, The Lego Movie, 21 Jump Street) are two college friends with a gift for turning \u201cunfilmable\u201d ideas into box office gold. From the cult favourite series Clone High to the high-concept chaos of Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs, they\u2019ve built a career on big swings and absurd humour. Now, the Oscar-winning duo is heading into deep space with their new sci-fi blockbuster Project Hail Mary. Lord and Miller join guest host Garvia Bailey to talk about adapting a beloved novel, being fearless in an industry that seems allergic to risk, and what it takes to keep your friendship and creative partnership alive in Hollywood.<\/p>\n
That is not always accidental. NASA often works with Hollywood and filmmakers more broadly to help frame the agency’s goals and public image. While it works mostly with documentarians \u2014 advising on about 100 projects a year, on average \u2014 Hollywood has become an increasingly important part of that outreach. <\/p>\n
In the year First Man was being made, for example, the agency collaborated on 143 documentaries, 25 films and 41 TV shows.<\/p>\n
Usually, productions approach NASA for help on their own. But the agency also reaches out when it learns of projects involving space. Not every film involving space gets that level of support: Christopher Nolan’s Interstellar and Alfonso Cuar\u00f3n’s Gravity, for example, largely went without NASA’s help during production. <\/p>\n
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Sandra Bullock appears in a scene from Gravity. While the actress did receive guidance from astronauts on the experience of microgravity, Alfonso Cuar\u00f3n said the agency stopped helping the film after seeing it depicted a disaster in space. (TIFF)<\/p>\n
Not entirely unlike the U.S. military \u2014 which allows Hollywood productions to use Pentagon equipment only if scripts meet its approval<\/a> \u2014 NASA offers support based on its view of the filmmaker and whether the fictional depiction of science and exploration \u2014 and NASA itself \u2014 broadly aligns with its own self-perception.\u00a0<\/p>\n According to NASA multimedia liaison Bert Ulrich<\/a>, the alien disaster film Life was denied use of the agency’s logo, as they didn’t want it used for a horror. They backed away from initial involvement with found-footage mockumentary Apollo 18 over concerns it could confuse the public<\/a>. And for Cuar\u00f3n’s Gravity, the agency withdrew its support after seeing that the film depicted a major catastrophe in space, which ran counter to NASA policy, according to Cuar\u00f3n<\/a>.<\/p>\n “If we actually have our brand on something, it means that we\u2019re really involved,” Ulrich said in a NASA podcast from 2018.<\/a><\/p>\n “Something like The Martian or Hidden Figures and First Man, of course, we were very much involved with. We did allow our logos to be used.”<\/p>\n Project Hail Mary and NASA<\/p>\n That involvement extended to Project Hail Mary as well.<\/p>\n “Space exploration captures the public’s imagination, and collaboration between science and storytelling brings that sense of discovery to a wider audience,” a NASA communications officer said at a recent panel celebrating the aid NASA offered Project Hail Mary<\/a>.<\/p>\n “Inspiring the next generation, whether through rocket launches or sci-fi movies, helps build the talent and support that underpin American leadership in space.”<\/p>\n
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