Review by Tim Robins
Project Hail Mary is an exciting sci-fi adventure based on the book by Andy (The Last Martian) Weir. The film stars Ryan Gosling as Dr Ryland Grace, a maverick scientist turned school teacher, who becomes a very reluctant astronaut when he is rocketed to the Tau Ceti star system in a last ditch attempt to stop our sun being eaten by space mites known as the Astrophage. Along the way, Grace teams up with a silicon life form nicknamed ‘Rocky’, who is on a similar mission to save his own system’s sun.
Weir’s book clearly has a passionate readership, some of whom have been outspoken in their criticism of the film’s trailers for revealing the alien which, they say, spoils an important twist in the story. I can’t speak to the book, but when it comes to the film, Grace’s encounter with ‘Rocky’ is not a twist. It is the film. In any case the film contains plenty of revelations, none of which I will spoil here, including a startling flashback that reveals just how heroically brave Grace has become.
Gosling carries the film with an energetic, demanding performance that balances moments of contemplation and daring do with physical comedy and banter. Grace’s recruitment to the mission is revealed in flashbacks, particularly his relationship with Project Hail Mary’s steely hearted mission commander, Eva Stratt, played by Sandra Hüller.
‘Rocky’ looks to be mostly a work of CGI and puppetry, and they work well. His character manages to be expressive and entertaining as it scampers, spider-like, around and about the two space ships. Once they meet, Grace and Rocky become a double act along the lines of Laurel and Hardy, or, as I kept thinking, Calvin and Hobbes. Not because ‘Rocky’ is imaginary, but because the duo are just so cute and fluffy – even if ‘Rocky’ is, as the nickname suggests, a pile of rocks.
The book may be a work of “hard SF”, but the film doesn’t get bogged down in detail and isn’t as ponderous as it would have been if it had been made in the 1960s or early 1970s – think 2001: A Space Odyssey, The Andromeda Strain or Star Trek: The Motion Picture, or by Christopher Nolan in 2014’s Interstellar.
In contrast, Project Hail Mary is to those movies as Dr Strangelove is to Fail Safe (although without the satire).
The film has moments of wonder that should be awe inspiring but the skittish (in the sense of unserious and excitable) editing and pace don’t give enough time to be awed. The cosmos needs space and time to be presented in all its overwhelming menace and grandeur. This movie is just so cute and cuddly.
An anecdote – I once stood alongside a man sitting at a bar in a local pub. When I asked him what he did in life, he replied that he was a mathematician who had worked with Stephen Hawkings. I struggled to grasp the enormity of the unexpected revelation and could only manage “So you’ve read and understood the maths in Newton’s Principia Mathematica?” He replied, “Yes”.
My mind was totally blown. Here was a great man, as I described him to a drunken friend, whose knowledge of mathematics, General and Special Relativity and Quantum physics meant he could hold the universe in his mind. What he wasn’t, was a goofball, and Project Hail Mary has a lot of goofing around.
The movie is directed and co-produced by Philip Anderson Lord and Christopher Robert Miller, best known as the writers and directors of the animated films Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs (2009), The Lego Movie (2014) and the Spider-Verse stuff. They aren’t fools and have cannily pitched Project Hail Mary at a young adult audience in search of an evening’s entertainment. You’ll laugh, you’ll cry and, every now and then, you’ll yawn.
The movie could have done without a lengthy, post disaster-averted coda, although it does bring the story’s themes and character arcs to a somewhat laborious conclusion. The movie insists on wrapping its hard SF core in softer tropes, including mutual care between Grace and ‘Rocky’. By the end of the film, you’ll believe a rock can cuddle.
I found the various character beats in Grace’s and ‘Rocky’’s relationship had a seen-it–before. And ‘Rocky’ is another off-the-shelf, infantilisation of otherness. Despite ‘his’ undoubted knowledge, he comes across as a winsome, primitive, child communicating in Hulk-speach. I still laughed as he tries to come to grips with American English – “Fist my Bump!” indeed.
I was taken aback by the way Grace’s and Rocky’ s relationship developed into a full-on bromance. The script chicken’s out of having the pair actually marry.I struggled not to shout , “for Mary’s sake, get a room!”
A Hail Mary or Ave Maria is a Catholic angelic salutation, more generally used in America to describe an act performed against all odds, in other words where success will be a miracle. But, humanity not withstanding, Project Hail Mary is certainly not in need of divine intervention. With Gosling’s performance, an endearing SFX sidekick, accomplished special effects, and whizzy editing, success seems assured.
Tim Robins
Project Hail Mary is in cinemas now
• Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir (AmazonUK Affiliate Link)
Ryland Grace is the sole survivor on a desperate, last-chance mission – and if he fails, humanity and the earth itself will perish.
Except that right now, he doesn’t know that. He can’t even remember his own name, let alone the nature of his assignment or how to complete it.
All he knows is that he’s been asleep for a very, very long time. And he’s just been awakened to find himself millions of miles from home, with nothing but two corpses for company.
His crewmates dead, his memories fuzzily returning, Ryland realizes that an impossible task now confronts him. Hurtling through space on this tiny ship, it’s up to him to puzzle out an impossible scientific mystery-and conquer an extinction-level threat to our species.
And with the clock ticking down and the nearest human being light-years away, he’s got to do it all alone.
Or does he?
- About the Author
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A freelance journalist and Doctor Who fanzine editor since 1978, Tim Robins has written on comics, films, books and TV programmes for a wide range of publications including Starburst, Interzone, Primetime and TV Guide.
His brief flirtation with comics includes ghost inking a 2000AD strip and co-writing a Doctor Who strip with Mike Collins. Since 1990 he worked at the University of Glamorgan where he was a Senior Lecturer in Cultural and Media Studies and the social sciences. Academically, he has published on the animation industry in Wales and approaches to social memory. He claims to be a card carrying member of the Politically Correct, a secret cadre bent on ruling the entire world and all human thought.
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