Project Hail Mary: Cinema's Saving Grace

Yes, Project Hail Mary (Phil Lord, Christopher Miller, 2026) may be the world’s biggest film right now, and people are probably pretty tired of hearing about it. However, this film may be one of the best things to have happened to me in a while.

The last “good” film I saw in cinemas, or one that left an impact, was perhaps Iron Lung (Mark Fischbach, 2026). That film was made by an independent filmmaker and was a huge success, so it really says something about what the people actually want these days (also, the huge amount of crossover fanfiction now existing between Fishbach’s Simon and Gosling’s Grace tells us the masses yearn for the doomed spaceman yaoi). Both films take successful, yet relatively unknown media and transform them into something so palpable and heart-wrenching (in different ways).

Project Hail Mary (PHM) is one of the most visually stunning movies I’ve seen in a long time. Other than James Cameron’s Avatar films (which, should be counted as an outlier since they’ve been working on the visuals of those films for literal decades), film has felt washed-out, dull and two-dimensional (both colour and story-wise) for a long time. I’ve been reviewing my Letterboxd diary while writing this, trying to see what recent releases I’ve seen as of late, and few stick in my memory. Everything nowadays is dark and gritty, following some grizzled, expert protagonists and they save the day in the nick of time. PHM follows a protagonist who is remembering his own self in real time, so the audience follows along on his journey of rediscovery and new discovery of extraterrestrial life. Ryland Grace (Ryan Gosling) is such a wholly human protagonist, as are the other characters in the film. He cares for his students as if they were his own children, and you can see from the first flashback his level of interaction with them (and their connection with him) is so incredibly close, they are the most important things to him in the world. Grace is a disgraced scientist whose ideas were too out-of-the-box for the scientific community to consider, and is exactly what Eva Stratt (Sandra Hüller) needs, who herself is an incredibly headstrong, powerful, and flawed character. Grace and Stratt, for all their flaws, are some of the most human characters in media lately, each in their own ways. 

Grace is a protagonist who says “no”. Who disagrees and argues and fights back, who has to be forced to save humanity. It's not that he doesn't want to, it's that he doesn't want to. Grace has nothing left on Earth for him to cling to as an excuse. He wants the Earth to be saved, he just doesn't want to be the one to do it, not when there's no return in sight. If anything, it makes him all the more compelling as a character. We've all seen movies where something goes wrong and our protagonist has to take a deep breath and step up to the job. Grace always says no. He says he can't do it, he says he doesn't want to, he messes around because he doesn't really want to be there. But it's because he thinks he's not good enough to be there, not smart enough, not qualified enough. He puts the “not” in “astronaut”, after all. But the scientist part of his brain yearns for the opportunity to gain new knowledge. The moment Stratt says she doesn't need him anymore, he begs her to let him stay on the assignment. Perhaps that's the moment it all changes for him. After that, he's in on Project Hail Mary, if he likes it or not. 

Stratt is a morally grey protagonist. At no point is she a direct antagonist, just a desperate woman who's been granted (literally) all the power in the world. She can get anything done with a snap of her fingers, fly anyone halfway around the world, or stun a room of personnel with her angelic rendition of Sign of the Times by Harry Styles. She is a blunt, fantastic woman, truly a character shaped rapidly by circumstance and hardened by experience. Other than Grace and Rocky, she is definitely one of my favourite characters. 

Rocky and James Ortiz are such an incredible part of this film. The practical puppet is fascinating, and was definitely a draw to the film for me, I'm a sucker for practical effects. Rocky's movement and physicality is adorable and addicting, and ever so alien. The puppetry team literally gave him so much life and personality that you forget he doesn't have a face, and even his grammatically incorrect speech is endearing from the beginning. Rocky and Grace's relationship in PHM is a beautiful connection founded in desperation and hope, each scrambling for a common solution. 

The soundtrack alone (by the master Daniel Pemberton) is so incredible, that even on its own, I can see the film in my mind, each moment so poignant and memorable and connected to the music it's visible to me. Music is such an important part of cinema, and is second to the visual look that is discussed and criticised by audiences. Its haunting choir notes and varied percussion has such a unique sound to it that occasionally feels alien (when it needs to be, shoutout Rocky). Pemberton continues to one-up himself with every score, and I cannot wait for the final instalment to the Spider-Verse franchise. 

Director of Photography Greig Fraser (Rogue One, Dune, The Batman) has to be one of the best cinematographers I've ever seen. Every time I see PHM I notice something about the cinematography. The aspect ratio changes when the perspective shifts from memory to present moment, the film look created by scanning the film transferred onto analogue, the chicken wire cage of infrared lights for the iconic Petrova Line scene (I truly think I ascended the first time I saw that scene). The team's dedication to the “no green screens” is admirable and absolutely a direction this film needed. 

There are probably a million things to say about the masterpiece that is Project Hail Mary, and anything I say has probably been said before. The one thing I want to repeat though, is that this is the film we should be following. Copying. Stealing ideas from. PHM has shown us the power of colour, reminded us of the power of friendship, and proven that there will always be a space in my heart for movies about space.

Project Hail Mary2026