Amazon MGM Studios’ “Project: Hail Mary” was released in theaters on March 20, becoming the company’s fourth movie to debut in cinemas nationwide. Directed by Phil Lord and Chris Miller (“The Lego Movie”, “21 Jump Street”, “Into the Spider-Verse”), the film stars Ryan Gosling (“La La Land”), Sandra Hüller (“Anatomy of Fall”) and James Ortiz (“The Woodsman”).
The film was based on the novel “Project Hail Mary”, written by Andy Weir, best known for his other best seller “The Martian”, which was also adapted into a film starring Matt Damon (“Good Will Hunting”).
WARNING: Spoiler ahead!
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The story’s plot centers on Gosling’s character, Ryland Grace, a witty scientist whose integrity forced him out of his career. Once a groundbreak molecular biologist, Grace now works as an elementary science teacher, enjoying a life of peace and quiet when news of doomsday makes headlines.
At this time, scientists discovered an infrared line between the Sun and Venus, dubbed the Petrova line. A sample reveals the line to be made up of dots, dubbed “astrophage.” Whatever they are, experts believe they’re dimming the Sun to catastrophic levels.
Grace is approached by Hüller’s character Eva Stratt, a German scientist heading the global effort to save the Sun. Agreeing to help, Grace uses a government lab to experiment on the astrophage, revealing three things: they’re cells, they use consumed energy to propel themselves and they breed using CO2.
Scientists decide to initiate Project: Hail Mary to discover a cure for astrophage at a distant sun called Tau Ceti, which somehow remains immune to the galactic plague.
The plan is to build a ship, called the “Hail Mary,” capable of travelling light-years in a short time using astrophage as fuel. Aboard will be three crew members: a pilot, a mechanic and a scientist. After enduring an induced coma, they will travel to Tau Ceti, find a cure, send it back to Earth via autonomous craft and unalive themselves. Without enough fuel to return home, the mission is suicide.
As the launch window approaches, however, the Hail Mary’s scientist and backup are killed in a laboratory accident. Without any other options on short notice, Sratt orders Grace to join the Hail Mary’s crew. Refusing to do so, Grace is drugged and sent to his death regardless.
The film starts in space, where Grace wakes up with complete amnesia aboard the Hail Mary. Without an idea of why he’s in space, Grace is further destroyed by the death of his crewmates, who both died during their comas. Eventually, Grace’s memories begin coming back throughout the film.
Resolving himself, Grace heads to Tau Ceti when he encounters an unfamiliar ship. Made up of solid xenon (dubbed “xenonite”), Grace realizes that he’s discovered sentient aliens. Surely enough, he meets the ship’s sole inhabitant, an alien Grace dubs “Rocky.”
Rocky is an engineer from the planet 40 Eridani. He has five legs, communicates and sees using sound, and is his ship’s engineer, capable of crafting virtually any device out of xenonite.
Like Grace, Rocky’s sun is being dimmed by astrophage. His crew also perished mid-voyage due to radiation, something Rocky harbors guilt over. As a result, he is eager to team with Grace and protect him from a similar fate.
After some time bonding, the two travel towards Tau Ceti’s own petrova line aboard the Hail Mary, where they encounter the astrophage’s local breeding planet. Dubbed “Adrian,” the planet appears to have a stable population of astrophage, unlike the exponentially multiplying numbers on Venus. Closer inspection reveals a local organism dubbed “Taumoeba,” which naturally hunts and keeps astrophage numbers in check.
Realising Taumoeba is their long-awaited cure, Grace and Rocky plan a dangerous descent into Adrian’s atmosphere to collect a sample of the organisms, utilizing devices crafted by Rocky. Before their attempt, Rocky reveals to Grace that his ship stores excess astrophage. With it, he tells the human he can refuel the Hail Mary and send him home, saving him from death.
After much celebration, the two undertake their mission. Although they acquire the Taumoeba samples, Rocky is nearly killed saving both Grace and the Hail Mary from certain doom. Requiring substantial healing, Rocky falls into a long coma.
During this time, Grace uses xenonite breeding pods designed by Rocky to breed the Taumoeba, making them nitrogen-resistant and sufficient to flourish back on Eridani and Venus. Rocky eventually wakes up, and the two part ways with their samples of Taumoeba.
During his trip home, Grace realizes that the Taumoeba he’s bred have evolved to bypass the xenonite that made their breeding pods, and have begun to eat his fuel. Though he saves his ship, he realizes the astrophage has certainly plagued Rocky’s xenonite ship and eaten his fuel. In a fateful decision, Grace sends his Taumoeba samples home via autonomous craft and saves Rocky, traveling back to 40 Eridani instead of Earth.
The movie concludes with Stratt receiving Grace’s samples. Meanwhile, Grace makes a life on 40 Eridani, where Rocky’s people provide him with a home to live out a life of peace and quiet once more.
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Phil Lord and Chris Miller’s unique style of direction once again shines in “Project: Hail Mary.” Though general audiences would note several general aspects of the film that make it a hit, seasoned fans of Lord and Miller can spot parallels between this movie and their previous masterpieces, such as “The Lego Movie” and “Into the Spider-Verse.”
The movie is a successful comedy. Every other minute, a joke is thrown at the audience that will consistently get a laugh. Though many modern films (especially Marvel) suffer from an overwhelming amount of throwaway jokes, “Project: Hail Mary” uses them skillfully to balance out the film’s otherwise dark tones of doom, death, despair and suicide.
The film is remarkable in its unique usage of special effects. Lord and Miller have succeeded in exploring various media to embolden their storytelling, and “Project: Hail Mary” isn’t any exception.
To achieve the film’s spectacular visuals, Lord and Miller abandoned green screens in favor of simple backdrops enhanced with CGI to capture the colorful and lively atmospheres present throughout the movie. To further add to its immersion, “Project: Hail Mary” featured an animatronic to play Rocky, as opposed to pure CGI, capturing the alien’s physicality and humanity.
Perhaps the movie’s greatest aspect was its storytelling and pacing. Ryland Grace, as the film’s protagonist, drives the story consistently, his staggered recollection of the past breaking up what would otherwise be monotonous points in the movie.
As mentioned previously, humor is used to complement the film’s darker tones. But in some aspects of “Project: Hail Mary,” audiences are left with more bittersweet moments to capture the weight of Grace’s decisions, namely his resolution to save Rocky at the cost of coming home. Despite these points in the film, both Grace and Rocky are given satisfactory endings that leave room for happiness, sadness and lingering thoughts to carry back home from the movie theater.
“Project: Hail Mary”’s excellence is made even more readily apparent by its praise online. The film currently scores a high 8.4/10 on IMDB and 94% on Rotten Tomatoes. With an outstanding box office revenue of nearly $600 million, the film stands as Amazon MGM Studios’ most successful theatrical release by a substantial margin.
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In the world of theatrical adaptations of novels, critique can be two-faced. Whether a film is good is only half of the picture; the other half is whether the film reflects its source material faithfully. This inherent nature is what bogs down certain films like Harry Potter or Jurassic Park, whose excellence is marred by their inaccuracy compared to the books on which they’re based.
Fortunately, “Project: Hail Mary” virtually lacks this problem entirely, capturing the essence of the book’s story to a tee. Naturally, the movie took creative liberty in the film’s visuals, both in filling the voids of imagination the original novel left and enhancing the film’s realism.
The most prominent of the movie’s tweaks is the design of the Hail Mary itself. The film manages to capture some key aspects of the ship, such as its three engines and its centrifugal device capable of creating artificial gravity aboard its cabin. The rest of the ship, however, strays from the book’s design, illustrated in a simple blueprint. Luckily for faithful fans, this diagram was instead implemented as a diagram early in the movie as an easter egg.
Narratively, the film adhered strictly to the novel’s storyline, only ever cutting parts of the original plot to pace the whopping two hours and 36 minutes of run time.
One example is the issue of breeding astrophage in large enough numbers to power the Hail Mary. In the film, this point is glossed over without as much as a mention. In the novel, however, experts develop a rudimentary brick-and-glass mechanism to breed astrophage in sunlight. To attain the square footage necessary for such an undertaking, world leaders transform the Sahara Desert into the source of Earth’s new astrophage industry, effectively rejuvenating the African continent’s economy whilst saving the planet.
While cutting plotlines such as this wouldn’t bug most fans of the novel, the film’s ending just might, being the only point in the film that contradicts the book.
In the original story of “Project Hail Mary,” Stratt’s forceful recruitment of Grace is described as the ultimate act of betrayal. Though Grace thinks himself a coward for refusing to go on the mission, his success only leaves him bitter against Stratt and the government for sending him to his death. In fact, Grace’s motivation to return to Earth in the novel, despite the trip taking years, was largely to expose Stratt for her wicked deeds.
In the film, however, Stratt is portrayed as a righteous woman whose decision was an act of faith in Grace, rather than desperation. Grace’s sentiment towards her as a result isn’t one of contempt, but rather gratitude for Stratt’s trust. Ultimately, though hating Stratt is easier for viewers and readers of “Project: Hail Mary” to do, Grace’s forgiveness in the cinematic version of the story reflects greater maturity and peace in his decision to settle on 40 Eridani.
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Without so much as a single major controversy holding it down, “Project: Hail Mary” is the perfect movie for any demographic of movie-goers. With its endearing cast of characters, beautiful cinematography and well-rounded arcs, the movie is as satisfying as it gets and definitely worth a watch!
