by Tom Farrelly<\/p>\n
Worth:\u00a0$18.20
FilmInk rates movies out of $20 \u2014 the score indicates the amount we believe a ticket to the movie to be worth\n<\/p>\n
Cast:
Ryan Gosling, Sandra Huller, Milana Vayntrub, Ken Leung<\/p>\n
Intro:
\u2026 an undeniable cinematic feat, managing staggering spectacle whilst being packed full of heart.<\/p>\n
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 \u2014 and the threat to Earth that he\u2019s been sent to neutralise. As Ari Gold would say, \u2018It\u2019s Bourne Identity in space, what\u2019s not to love?\u2019<\/p>\n
The modern cinema audience has seen every trick in the book at this point, technologically speaking. It takes something truly special to \u2018wow\u2019 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.<\/p>\n
The spaceship interior, anti-gravity, alone-amongst-the-stars imagery isn\u2019t 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\u2019ll never forget.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
Project Hail Mary is joke-heavier than you might expect. Particularly in the first act, it feels like we\u2019re running at a Marvel-style rapid-fire-jokes pace, often at the expense of tension.<\/p>\n
There are some tonal inconsistencies at play, it doesn\u2019t 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\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n
This is the second Hollywood adaption of an Andy Weir novel (again by Drew Goddard), following 2015\u2019s The Martian. Project Hail Mary ditches the science-heavy, rhetoric of its author\u2019s predecessor. It\u2019s more fiction than science and whilst the science riddles are there to be solved, it doesn\u2019t 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\u2019t crystal clear, you can trust that you won\u2019t get left behind. An accessible \u2018Idiot\u2019s Guide to Space Science\u2019 is intermittently dispersed, remarkably without being condescending.<\/p>\n
If you\u2019ve seen the trailer, you\u2019ll know that Grace makes a friend along the course of his travels. Not since E.T has there been such a tender interplanetary friendship.<\/p>\n
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 \u2014 IMAX strongly encouraged!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"by Tom Farrelly Year: \u00a02026 Director:\u00a0 Phil Lord, Chris Miller Rated:\u00a0 M Release: \u00a019 March 2026 Distributor:\u00a0Sony Running…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":477787,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[96,2839,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-477786","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-movies","tag-entertainment","tag-movies","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/477786","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=477786"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/477786\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/477787"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=477786"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=477786"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=477786"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}