Project Hail Mary — Shane's Review

⚠️ Spoilers Ahead

As a lifelong sci-fi fan, I was seriously looking forward to this film. I saw The Martian years ago and loved it, and reasoned that another movie adaptation of a book written by the same author had to be just as good. When the previews for Project Hail Mary dropped, I was all in. The Interstellar vibes had me thinking that this new film would not only be delivering another harrowing story of survival in space, but also a compelling reflection on humanity's role in the universe as well. This became one of the most anticipated films of 2026 for me. I really, really wanted to like this movie, and after sitting through it with my son (who read The Martian as part of a school project) for two and a half hours, I had to admit that it wasn't what I hoped it would be.

The story begins with a long-haired and long-bearded Ryland Grace (played by Ryan Gosling) awakening from an induced and prolonged space sleep, on a spacecraft hurtling through space, having absolutely no idea where he is or how he got there. The only other humans on board that could've shed some light on his predicament, a pilot and an engineer, are both deceased. He has no contact with Earth. It's just him, alone, with absolutely no instructions — and no recollection of how he got himself into said predicament.

I really expected this survival story to have merit, like in The Martian, where our main character could and would be able to deduce and reason his way through all challenges, and eventually complete the mission, but almost immediately, it was obvious that this was not The Martian, and that this was going to push the boundaries of what a high school science teacher could reasonably be expected to know, to the point where it just became ridiculous. I am obviously not an astronaut, but it doesn't take one to imagine that the skillset required to navigate a spacecraft would take years of training, just to be adequate, and not incinerate yourself.

I have watched a lot of sci-fi in the last 40 years. I've watched Jedis move ships with their minds, wizards slay Balrogs, and queens ride dragons. Of course it's just a movie, and of course I can enjoy the magic of a good story unfolding without being too critical of anything that contradicts reality, but I still expect that whatever I'm watching will be rooted in at least the ballpark of plausibility — and as this film began to unfold, I realized that this didn't care if it was plausible. I mean, even Rey's button mashing and fender benders en route to her mastery of the Millennium Falcon could be attributed to her experience flying her speeder bike and other small craft. Did they really expect me to believe that this teacher waking up in space with absolutely zero experience in a cockpit would be able to fly a spaceship going thousands of miles an hour? Sorry, but that's just not realistic, and I found that most of what came after that was also too unrealistic to be taken seriously.

That being said, I didn't absolutely hate it. Ryan Gosling is great, as always — maybe a little too playful at times for me, but still a solid performance. Rocky, the Eridian, played an amazing part in the story and I enjoyed how the film delved into the lore of his species, and how he came upon the mission. I also really dug how the plot unfolded, with flashbacks sprinkled into the action that never quite revealed how Earth's top brass was able to convince this teacher to give up the rest of his life for this one-way mission, until the very end — when it's revealed that our teacher was actually taken against his will, literally kicking, screaming, and sedated. This was a clever way to edit the movie.

Overall, a decent film that likely has a better book behind it that may explain all that I couldn't buy, in far greater detail — but I can't see myself rewatching this as I've rewatched previous sci-fi classics.