Project Hail Mary Is Amazing, But I Don't Wanna Talk About It.
Industry
When I sit down to write these articles, I try to approach films from a unique perspective. I don't want to hit the talking points that every other critic is using; that would make my articles boring. I don't want to make things up for the sake of angering the general population; there's enough of that online. I want to tell the truth, I want to be engaging and I want you to consider a new perspective. This usually works, but sometimes the stars don't align.
The movie that everyone is talking about right now is Project Hail Mary. Looking to tap into the zeitgeist, I went and watched it on Cheap Tuesday at my local Cineplex. Going in, I knew about its rave reviews, its heartwarming message and its rock. All this made me highly skeptical. As a snobby cinephile with a penchant for controversy, I had a feeling that I was going to hate "the feel-good movie of the year." You can imagine my disappointment when I ended up really liking it.
I must wholeheartedly agree with the crowd. Project Hail Mary is heartwarming. It's funny. Ryan Gosling really can have chemistry with a rock. So, why do I still feel the urge to write something negative? Maybe I want to watch the world burn, or maybe it's a deeper conversation about how we measure a movie's success in the modern age.
What mainly drives people to films these days are celebrities and viral moments. Marty Supreme became the highest-grossing A24 film ever on the back of Timothée Chalamet's unending press tour. "Wuthering Heights" was an early cinematic moment of 2026, despite it not being very good, because of the incomparable good looks of its two lead actors, Margot Robbie and Jacob Elordi, and the walking controversy that is director Emerald Fennell.
Project Hail Mary's marketing campaign started six years ago. MGM bought the rights to a novel that wasn't even written yet and attached Gosling to the project. The novel would be written by Andy Weir, who had proven his bankability in 2015 with his novel turned blockbuster, The Martian. The book version of Project Hail Mary was another hit for Weir. It was a finalist for the Hugo Award and its audiobook won Audiobook of the Year. Through smart IP business planning, MGM had secured a foundation for audience intrigue.
Cut to 2026 and the official press tour of Project Hail Mary. Amazon MGM (now merged) largely avoided the modern trends of red-carpet shenanigans and stars popping up in the most random places. The studio stuck to the classics. I'm talking TV advertisements during big sports events. I'm talking Gosling on The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon and SNL. They tried to get some viral moments going, but they lacked ingenuity. There was Gosling throwing a clearly augmented football through a big donut. There was Gosling in a scripted Jeopardy! moment where he took a random guess, a hail Mary if you will, and got it right. It wasn't internet-breaking like Jacob Elordi in the rain. It was unoriginal, inoffensive, effective marketing.
It was clear from the rollout that Project Hail Mary was going for mass appeal. They didn't do a muted campaign like The Drama that is designed to appeal to Gen Z. They didn't play to Millenials who fall to their knees every time Sydney Sweeney wears a booby dress. Rather than create controversial buzz, they wanted everybody to see this movie. Amazon wanted everybody because the studio has struggled to find a box-office hit. Each year they have some players, with movies led by Jason Statham as an everyman or The Rock saving Christmas, but making a film that is highly lauded and successful has proved evasive. Their Project Hail Mary strategy worked, as it has become the studio's highest-grossing film of all time.
However, like its marketing campaign, the film is overly safe and lacks any memorability. Unlike the football play that inspired the movie's title, Project Hail Mary feels more like a hitch route: the odds of it working are high, but it's not making many highlight reels.
I don't think I'm really spoiling anything when I say that nothing bad happens in Project Hail Mary. Despite a gargantuan task and insurmountable odds, Grace (Gosling… "Hail Mary full of..." Writers think they're pretty clever don't they?) handles it all pretty capably. He doesn't know how to fly a spaceship, but he figures it out in a couple minutes. Same with communicating with UFOs. There are many moments where it looks like things are going to take a turn for the worst, but with the film advertised as a heartwarming space adventure, I wasn't expecting things to get very sad.
What I expected was exactly what I got. In this case, that is totally fine. Gosling being a charming funny guy? Check. Cool space shots? Check. Science talk that I don't understand but act like I understand? Check. I enjoyed the story beats that were spoon fed to me, but the film lacked unpredictability.
In Interstellar, a movie that is easily comparable with Project Hail Mary, there's this scene where Matt Damon randomly shows up in space. Watching it in theatres, nobody was expecting this cameo. People were doubly shocked when he turned from friend to foe a few scenes later. This sense of space being unpredictable was missing in Project Hail Mary. While Grace encounters an odd entity and has to face some harsh truths while in the outer reaches, I was never surprised by the direction of his journey.
I'm sure that Amazon and Gosling, who is a producer of the film, are happy with their work. It's filling theatres and everyone is loving it. To be a box-office hit and loved by both critics and audiences is pretty damn difficult. The third pillar of success, though, and the one where I think Project Hail Mary will fail, is longevity. The day will soon come when the film will leave the cinemas and go to Prime, where it will sit and collect dust for eternity, becoming just another Gosling-in-space movie. If you want to see Gosling in space, First Man is better.
The reason I think that Project Hail Mary will struggle in keeping any cultural relevance is exactly the same reason that it is a big hit today. The film is accessible. It is joyful and mysterious. There's nothing in it that is questionable or debatable (unless you want to get into the weeds about the science behind the film's plot, which is a bit of a fool's errand considering this is a fantasy). It's just a really good, safe movie. It's something I'd recommend everybody go see in theatres because, you know, space, but also because I know that this movie won't offend anyone. That's a blessing and a curse.
Maybe I'm making a mountain out of a mole hill. Maybe longevity doesn't really matter. Maybe Wu-Tang was right when they said, "cash rules, still don't nothing move but the money." If that's the case, then Project Hail Mary has moved the cinema world in a new direction of unbridled optimism. There's nothing wrong with positivity, and some days you just want to watch something that will make you feel good. I only wonder if people will want to want to rewatch a man interact with a rock for 2.5 hours. 2001: A Space Odyssey did something similar, with a man communicating with an inanimate object named HAL 9000, but that movie also has one of the most mind-bending, WTF endings in American cinema history. It is that ending, not the HAL-human relationship, that I always return to 2001 for. Without these bigger, grander, questioning-our-very-existence moments, I just don't see why I would ever rewatch Project Hail Mary.
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