Publication Date: 03-25-2026

Project Hail Mary (2026) review

Dir. Phil Lord and Christopher Miller

By: Steve Pulaski

Rating: ★★★

Two years ago, Netflix released a movie called Spaceman, which centered around an astronaut, played by Adam Sandler, communicating with an enormous, six-eyed arachnid alien aboard his spaceship. You probably don’t remember it. It got sucked into the vacuous void of streaming about as quickly as it premiered. It was amusing to see Sandler take on another against-type role, and Paul Dano voicing a spider was just loony enough to work, but the entire project was languid and forgettable.

Project Hail Mary essentially has the same premise as Spaceman, but its entertainment value is infinity and beyond by comparison. Helmed by Phil Lord and Christopher Miller — the minds behind The LEGO Movie and their first directorial feature since 22 Jump Street back in 2014 (!) — this is a pure-hearted throwback to the kind of movie that could appeal to your toddler-aged nephew as well as your grandmother, and everyone in between. On that note, you could consider it the Star Wars story the duo never got to make. It’s a sci-fi epic that doesn’t get crushed under the weight of its concepts, and it’s another stand-out showcase for Ryan Gosling, who is tasked with anchoring much of the movie’s two-and-a-half-hour runtime.

Distilled to its essence, Project Hail Mary is a story about navigating the unknown and the challenges therein. There are no villains; just the vastness of the universe that is simultaneously barren yet overloaded with mystery. Our lead is 12 light years away from Earth: lonely, exhausted, and initially confused, having woken up with retrograde amnesia, with no recollection of how he even got on this spacecraft.

But before I get to that, let’s address the circumstances. The sun is gradually dimming, causing the Earth to cool at a rapid pace. This is due to a stream of particles, located on Venus, stretching all the way to the sun and siphoning its energy. This is the Petrova Line. A significant percentage of Earth’s population could be wiped out due to starvation within the next 30 years if a solution to this interplanetary energy-suck isn’t addressed. A group of scientists (Sandra Hüller, Lionel Boyce) respond by launching “Project Hail Mary,” a fitting name for a longshot concept that will send three astronauts into the far-away galaxy to analyze how a single star, the only one in the vicinity of the line, hasn’t dimmed. The success rate is minute and the chance of survival is minimal.

So, who better to take on this mission than Ryland Grace (Ryan Gosling), a middle school science teacher? In the early minutes of the film, he awakens in a medical pod, confused and unable to recall anything for a short while. Johnny Cash’s “Sunday Morning Coming Down” plays to a montage of Grace cleaning up his beard and getting his act together, one of a handful of impressively specific-yet-uncommon needle-drops that set the mood of this flick, which is far more light-hearted than the stakes suggest.

This is because Grace later discovers an alien creature made of stone, who he fittingly names Rocky (voiced by James Ortiz). The two struggle to communicate at first, as Rocky doesn’t have a face and his hands, like the rest of his body, are blocky and not sufficiently expressive, but that gap is bridged when Grace creates a voice modulator based on Rocky’s echolocation. Suddenly, the cosmos don’t feel so lonely, as this friendship brings both the feeling of connectedness for Grace yet the challenge of a language barrier.

A lion’s weight of the fun in Project Hail Mary stems from watching Grace and Rocky interact, build a vocabulary, and flirt with existential poignancy. After spending the better part of the 2010s brooding and amplifying his mystique as a handsome loner, Gosling has transitioned to being the human personification of a Ken doll, not solely based on looks but his charismatic personality too. Here, Gosling’s Grace is the epitome of imperfect, yet willing. He always tries hard. He frequently comes up short. He’s a little goofy, exceedingly vulnerable, but he cares, and he’s damn-smart when it comes to this molecular biology thing. Although the film was written by Drew Goddard (working off of Andy Weir’s book of the same name), you can sense Grace is another version of Emmet from Lord and Miller’s The LEGO Movie. The fact that Grace is so ordinary is what makes him lovable.

That doesn’t mean he can’t be a little grating, however. A commonality in Lord and Miller’s features, be them of the animated ilk, raunchy comedies, or the legion of pictures on which they have producing credits, is their manic edge. While Project Hail Mary favors slow and methodical relationship-building between Grace and Rocky, there are times when Grace’s character is so unserious that his charm begins to sour. This is evident in one of the film’s many flashback sequences, when Sandra Hüller informs Grace that he will be one of the “lucky ones” to conduct Project Hail Mary as opposed to being an advisor. The scene’s tone expels seriousness from its composition and the stern looks afforded by the other scientists. However, the script forces Grace to respond to every statement with some kind of quip or crack at himself (“I put the “not” in astronaut”) to the point that we lose the emotional heft of a man who, while having no wife, children, or animal at home, is leaving the only place he’s ever known. Project Hail Mary sometimes shoots itself in the foot when it tries to evoke humor for the sake of lightening the mood for no other reason than the perception it’s getting too heavy.

As someone who was critical of Damien Chazelle’s First Man — you know, that other Ryan Gosling space opera in which he played Neil Armstrong — for its lack of energy, I realize this complaint might sound hypocritical. This is the superior movie on multiple levels, but its propensity to dial up a quip, at minimum, dampens some of its pathos, while at worst, pauses the forward momentum of an already lengthy film.

There’s also the fact that Project Hail Mary feels like a greatest hits compilation of other sci-fi works. This is not the kind of movie that will win/has won people over for its originality. In many ways, it stirs the soul because it’s familiar. Its astrological wonderment echoes Contact. Its intimate focus on one isolated individual recalls films like The Martian (based on another Weir novel) or Cast Away. It’s akin to a very good meal at your favorite restaurant, rather than a new dish from a place you’re first trying out.

Beyond the core interpersonal dynamic between Grace and Rocky, Project Hail Mary won me over by how Goddard’s script allows us to sink into the material so naturally. This is a movie in which plot progression and stakes rise very naturally, and the discovery aspect afforded by Grace’s initial amnesia, while something of an obligatory trope, does at least assure that we start on square one as opposed to being dropped into the middle of the mission and forced to endure an exposition dump. The use of flashbacks is thoughtfully placed because it’s as if we, the viewers, are slowly recalling what got us here in the first place, and the clarity they afford makes them worth being plucked from the confined setting.

Furthermore, the visuals are dazzling, and they take on another level in the third act, when it feels as if stars and other space sprites are washing over the characters. Daniel Pemberton’s score is equally wonderful. Pemberton brings the same kind of attention to musical detail that he did with Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse with bouncy arrangements and emotional gravitas achieved without having to blow one’s speakers and ear-drums out with whirs and thunderous bass. When an original work like Project Hail Mary hits theaters and instantly captivates a culture that is growing increasingly fragmented, and doesn’t do so by way of nostalgia-pandering and instead old-fashioned sentiment and filmmaking tactics, it’s a lob of faith on part of its creators that you’re happy to receive.

Starring: Ryan Gosling, Sandra Hüller, James Ortiz, and Lionel Boyce. Voiced by: James Ortiz.