A Lone Astronaut, an Alien Friend, and the Fate of the Sun
Some movies ask you to switch your brain off. Project Hail Mary asks you to switch it all the way on — and then rewards you for doing so. Based on Andy Weir’s beloved 2021 novel and directed by the duo behind The Lego Movie, Phil Lord and Christopher Miller, this is the rare big-budget sci-fi blockbuster that treats its audience as genuinely intelligent while still delivering the crowd-pleasing spectacle of a summer tentpole.
The film opens on Dr. Ryland Grace (Ryan Gosling), a junior high school science teacher who wakes up alone aboard an interstellar spacecraft with absolutely no memory of who he is or how he got there. His two crewmates are dead. The ship’s robotic assistant is being unhelpfully cheerful. And somewhere out in the black void, a mysterious signal is getting closer.
The Plot: Earth’s Last Gamble
As Grace’s memories slowly return in fragmented flashbacks, we piece together the terrifying situation facing humanity. A microscopic alien organism called Astrophage has been feeding on the sun’s energy, causing it to slowly dim — pushing Earth toward a catastrophic ice age within decades. Scientists have noticed that one nearby star, Tau Ceti, appears completely unaffected. Grace has been sent on a one-way suicide mission to find out why, and hopefully bring back a solution.
Then the signal reveals itself: another spaceship. And it isn’t human.
The film’s central friendship between Grace and his alien companion Rocky is the beating heart of the entire story — funny, strange, and surprisingly moving.
Rocky, the spider-like alien Grace encounters, communicates through musical tones rather than language. Watching the two of them slowly build a shared vocabulary — scientist to scientist, across the gulf of two completely different biologies and civilizations — is one of the most delightful things you will see in a cinema this year. James Ortiz provides the voice and motion-capture performance for Rocky, and it is a genuinely outstanding piece of work.
Gosling Carries the Film Effortlessly
This is Ryan Gosling at his most charming and most vulnerable. Grace is not an action hero — he is a nervous, self-deprecating schoolteacher who keeps reminding himself and the audience that he really should not be the person responsible for saving eight billion lives. Gosling finds the perfect balance between comedy and genuine existential dread, and his solo scenes in the first act — where he is essentially performing a one-man show against a green screen — are riveting throughout.
Sandra Hüller appears in the flashback sequences as Eva Stratt, the no-nonsense project director who hand-picked Grace for the mission. Hüller, fresh off her extraordinary run of acclaimed performances, is magnetic in every scene she appears in, and the film wisely uses her sparingly so each appearance lands with maximum weight.
Visually Stunning, Emotionally Generous
Cinematographer Greig Fraser — the Oscar-winning eye behind Dune and No Time to Die — makes the Hail Mary spacecraft feel both claustrophobically real and breathtakingly beautiful. The zero-gravity sequences have a physical awkwardness that feels genuinely novel rather than the usual superhuman floating we see in most space films. And the moments when the two alien ships sit side by side in the void of space carry a quiet awe that few blockbusters manage to achieve.
Lord and Miller lean into the film’s sense of wonder without ever undercutting it with cheap irony. This is, at its core, a movie about curiosity — about what happens when two beings from completely different worlds choose collaboration and friendship over fear. In the current climate, that message does not feel small.
Minor Gripes
At two hours and thirty-six minutes, the film does have stretches in its middle act where the scientific problem-solving sequences run a little long for audiences unfamiliar with the source material. Readers of the novel will likely also note that several of the book’s more intricate scientific passages have been streamlined into shorter, snappier exchanges — a trade-off that prioritises pace over depth. It is a reasonable creative decision, even if it occasionally makes the solutions feel slightly too convenient.
Verdict: The Feel-Good Film of 2026
Project Hail Mary is a triumph — a bold, warm-hearted, and visually spectacular piece of science fiction that announces itself as one of the best films of the year. It takes the best tradition of films like The Martian and Contact, and infuses them with genuine humour, emotional generosity, and a friendship at its centre that you will be thinking about long after the credits roll. Do not miss it on the biggest screen you can find.
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