by Tom Farrelly
Worth:Â $18.20
FilmInk rates movies out of $20 — the score indicates the amount we believe a ticket to the movie to be worth
Cast:
Ryan Gosling, Sandra Huller, Milana Vayntrub, Ken Leung
Intro:
… an undeniable cinematic feat, managing staggering spectacle whilst being packed full of heart.
Project Hail Mary follows Ryland Grace, a high school science teacher who wakes up on a spaceship with no recollection of who he is or how he got there. As his memories slowly return, he begins to uncover more about himself — and the threat to Earth that he’s been sent to neutralise. As Ari Gold would say, ‘It’s Bourne Identity in space, what’s not to love?’
The modern cinema audience has seen every trick in the book at this point, technologically speaking. It takes something truly special to ‘wow’ people in a post Avatar world, but Project Hail Mary does just that. As far as purely visual space spectacles go, this is the best to do it since Interstellar, which was the best to do it since 2001: A Space Odyssey.
The spaceship interior, anti-gravity, alone-amongst-the-stars imagery isn’t groundbreaking, but not much is in 2026. Its smoking gun is the way that it plays with colours, environmental textures and character design. One set piece in particular, involving Grace retrieving a sample from the orbit of a green and purple planet is truly breathtaking, in the literal sense of the word. One of those cinematic experiences you’ll never forget.
Ryan Gosling proves here why he is truly one of the last remaining movie stars. He plays Grace with a dorky, bumbling, intelligent, high-school-teacher-that-stumbled-into-space, energy.
Project Hail Mary is joke-heavier than you might expect. Particularly in the first act, it feels like we’re running at a Marvel-style rapid-fire-jokes pace, often at the expense of tension.
There are some tonal inconsistencies at play, it doesn’t blend its comedy and drama smoothly. At times, humour gets in the way of what would have been a genuine dramatic moment. Sandra Huller and Ryan Gosling’s journey is building to something truly heartbreaking, and we trade it all in for some slapstick. But that comes with the territory when the gents behind The Lego Movie and 21 Jump Street, Phil Lord and Chris Miller are at the helm.
This is the second Hollywood adaption of an Andy Weir novel (again by Drew Goddard), following 2015’s The Martian. Project Hail Mary ditches the science-heavy, rhetoric of its author’s predecessor. It’s more fiction than science and whilst the science riddles are there to be solved, it doesn’t get bogged down in the potato-growing details of The Martian. Instead, we get to see Grace go to work and even if all isn’t crystal clear, you can trust that you won’t get left behind. An accessible ‘Idiot’s Guide to Space Science’ is intermittently dispersed, remarkably without being condescending.
If you’ve seen the trailer, you’ll know that Grace makes a friend along the course of his travels. Not since E.T has there been such a tender interplanetary friendship.
Project Hail Mary is an undeniable cinematic feat, managing staggering spectacle whilst being packed full of heart. It deserves to be experienced on the biggest screen you can find — IMAX strongly encouraged!