Praise can be a dangerous thing, more dangerous than even microbes killing the Sun. Such is the case with Project Hail Mary. It has been less than three weeks, as of this writing, since the Academy Awards were held. Project Hail Mary, again as of this writing, is now seriously talked about as a major "awards contender". I will leave my exhaustion at the incessant awards season aside to look at the film itself. Project Hail Mary has some nice images and music. It is also far longer than it needs to be and is fast slipping into the most overrated film of 2026.
In space, no one can see you stumbling into consciousness. A man finds himself awakened and receives various shocks. He is shocked to find two people dead. He is shocked to find himself floating in deep space.
Over the course of Project Hail Mary, things begin to fall into place. Through a series of flashbacks, we learn that our floating astronaut is not Major Tom. It is Ryland Grace (Ryan Gosling). He is a renegade molecular biologist whose fight against orthodoxy has led him to be a middle school science teacher. His class, in fact, the whole world, is vexed by the Petrova lines. This is a strange infrared line between the Sun and Venus. The end result of this phenomenon is that it is slowly eating the Sun. This will cool the Earth within 30 years, dooming the planet.
There is, however, hope. Dour, humorless German Eva Stratt (Sandra Huller) gets Grace to examine the microorganisms collected from the Petrova lines. He finds that these microorganisms, named Astrophages, are infecting more stars. They can provide fuel for a desperate space journey to the distant star Tau Ceti. This is the only star that has not fallen to the Astrophage. It is time to find what if any immunity Tau Ceti has and if it can be brought to Earth.
All that is revealed in bits and pieces as Project Hail Mary tackles Plot B. Once he realizes where exactly he is, Grace works to complete the mission. Once near Tau Ceti, Grace is astonished to find another ship hovering nearby. Eventually, he finds that there is another creature who is working on the same problem. After a few fits and starts, Ryland is able to communicate and even become friends with an Eridian whom he names "Rocky" (James Ortiz). They jointly find that Tau Ceti-e, a planet in Tau Ceti's orbit, contains a microbe that prevents Astrophages to procreate and thus keeping Tau Ceti alive. The mission to retrieve that microbe off Tau Ceti-e (whom they rename "Adrian") is dangerous. The potential return journeys for both Grace and Rocky also put them in danger. Will amazing Grace and Rocky still manage to return to their respective home worlds? Will their distinct separate home worlds be saved?
Project Hail Mary has been wildly praised by both critics and audiences. I can speak only from what I saw both on screen and the screening that I attended. The people next to me were audible in their complaints about Project Hail Mary's runtime. Noting that Project Hail Mary is over two hours long, they noted that they were twenty minutes in with nothing that interested them. They walked out shortly afterwards. Project Hail Mary is two hours and thirty-six minutes long. As such, it needed cutting.
I note that Project Hail Mary has not one but two karaoke scenes. I understand that Stratt breaking from her usual humorless manner to sing Harry Styles' Sign of the Times has been embraced as this moving moment. However, did we really need to see Grace and Rocky with his digital voice doing a little bit of Let's Call the Whole Thing Off?
As much adoration as Project Hail Mary is getting, I think people need to pause for a bit to look at how some things do not work. I might walk that back a bit. I think they work in a predictable, almost cartoonish manner. Rocky's somewhat cutesy voice is already a bit hard to take. It is, however, how almost everything he says ends with the words "statement" or "question" to emphasize that they are statements or questions that is a bit childish. For me, it runs the risk of not having us take what should be a dangerous situation seriously.
So much time is eaten up by the Grace/Rocky bromance that it veers dangerously close to being a straight-up comedy. Perhaps Drew Goddard's adaptation of Andy Weir's novel was meant to be that way. However, it also took stabs at what was intended as serious drama. Take for example when Grace launches the two dead crewmen into space. Project Hail Mary was meant to have this as a very moving, dramatic moment. However, given how Project Hail Mary was structured, we really did not know who these people were. We did not see Grace interact much with them in the various flashbacks. There was no chance for him to interact with them when they were all in deep hibernation. Therefore, I cannot feel emotional over people I do not know.
I find a few things wrong with this scene. First, there is no sense of urgency or danger about how the Sun is slowly dying. The kids are not well-directed to express their fears of impending doom. Ryan Gosling is not well-directed to show that he is trying to simultaneously shield and inform them. Second, I figure that we could have found another way to give us the information. Granted, we would have lost the "cool teacher forced into space" bit. However, we get another infodump when Grace is taken by jet to a battleship. Third, we do not connect with the kids or ever see or hear from them again. I'm not sure that they are even ever mentioned by Grace again. For being a hip teacher, Grace forgets the kids once he finds Rocky.
Project Hail Mary has also been lauded for having practical visual effects. I admit that when they go to Tau Ceti-e, it did look beautiful. However, the other visuals were laughable, at least judging in part from the audience reaction. The Hail Mary and Rocky's spacecraft looked like they were from a lost 1980's Doctor Who episode. They did not look real. They looked like children's models. Yes, some CGI can also look fake. This, however, looked like it came from something closer to Mystery Science Theater 3000 than from a major studio. I genuinely expected the Satellite of Love to come wandering in and join the Hail Mary.
The film reveals the reason: he was drugged and essentially kidnapped into it. I have a genuine question. Eva Stratt is supposed to be forever professional and humorless, calculating everything to near perfection. However, how is it that she never conceived of having multiple teams of Hail Mary crew on standby in case something happened to those scheduled to go up? Instead, after an explosion kills the scientist who was going to fly up, she is forced to turn to someone who apparently never had any real training to fly the ship or knew his way around it. Stratt first gives Grace three hours to think about it. After he states that he doesn't want to do it, Stratt, ever aware of the dangers, first attempts to force him into the ship. As he attempts to escape the facility, she then gets her goons to chase after him. This results in him getting drugged and corralled onto the Hail Mary without his knowledge or approval.
Bugs Bunny going up against Marvin the Martian had more logic to it. Yet, again, I digress.
Sandra Huller had one thing to do in Project Hail Mary: look serious. The dour, humorless German who looks like she takes everything literally and seriously is pretty much a stereotype.
I can find things in Project Hail Mary to praise. Daniel Pemberton's score was nice and worked well in the film. Of particular note is a tango used during a montage. Some of the visuals, such as when they go to Tau Ceti-e, are also quite beautiful.
Project Hail Mary is not a bad film. It has some good qualities within it. However, it is also too long for the story that it is telling. It also is a bit too jokey for what is meant as a serious situation. I think there is an overpraising for Project Hail Mary that will, in time, be seen as rather absurd. Project Hail Mary is fine enough, but it is not among the greatest science-fiction films ever made. That people are making it out to be may indeed be a Sign of the Times.
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