Project Hail Mary

In Project Hail Mary is the discovery of a science fiction movie that draws a clear line from 2001: A Space Odyssey to Arrival. Based on the novel by Andy Weir, whose debut The Martian set the pattern for witty and scientifically-minded prose against an excellent plot, made it a successful movie. It feels like a long time ago, but here we are with another archetypal hero-by-default who wakes to find himself on a spacecraft approaching Tau Ceti (11.9 light years away), with no idea who he is or why he is there. 

We soon learn that he’s a schoolteacher, having been drummed out of the scientific community for an unpopular opinion which—as they sometime do—become popular later on. A microbial form of alien life is draining the sun of its energy, and how can there be life in the extreme heat of the sun?

The book and the film deal with the science without treating the audience as incapable. Weir gives us a science teacher who can talk to kids without patronising them, and the film dresses up the man as Ryan Gosling. But why is Gosling’s character, Ryland Grace, is on the ship at all? How did he get there? Well like with all science-fiction, there’s government in there somewhere. In this case it’s a coalition with a bottomless pit of resources, and there’s a charming and steely agent dealing directly with Grace: Eva Stratt (Sophie Hüller—magnificent) works on him with steely words and a bit of flattery, but there’s a non-benign power behind her which ironically is working its fists for the common good.

And it’s heartening to find out that it’s not just the human race which is trying to solve the same problem, and that the film is honest about every complex part of what that means. This is good without being cheap. The humanity at the heart of the story comes from the most sensible of all charming and fun first contact stories with aliens. You can think about the unseen force in 2001, or Arrival; you can think of Alien and even sci-fi where the enemy is human like Blade Runner and its sequel—that’s where Project Hail Mary is. How is it that good? Somehow the doom facing the world is shown to be entirely horrific but it’s set against both clever grown-ups in the room and the fact that we’re one planet facing the challenges of great isolation and immense threats of destruction, but two like minded characters meet and make everything better in some senses. This makes is more like Silent Running with its ecological message. Rylan is mostly alone but he meets an alien—an Eirdani—and the two species have to work together. They choose to work together. For the good of all…

It’s a tremendous performance from Ryan Gosling. He is mostly alone, but acts with practical effects, which in this case is the species he befriends. There’s only one of them left from their identical research mission. Rocky is an engineer with vast technical resources, and completely different from humans in most respect. He is an optimist though, and he cares and so we care: he is performed by James Ortiz and it’s a more satisfying performance for being a little bit real and human.

This is a science-fiction movie of ideas, with exquisite design and a script that does the book justice. It’s performed to perfection by everyone involved and deserves to be named among the classics.