Project Hail Mary

UK Release Date. 20 March 2026
Certification. 12A
Running Time. 2 hours 36 mins
Director. Phil Lord and Christopher Miller
Cast. Ryan Gosling, Sandra Hüller.
Rating. 58%

Review.

The cerebral science fiction film... is one of the most challenging sub-genres to perfect. One of the best examples in recent times is Ridley Scott’s The Martian (2015), which was based on a novel by Andy Weir and adapted for the screen by Drew Goddard. Now, Goddard has adapted another of Weir’s novels, Project Hail Mary, and again it features a lone scientist stranded in the depths of space. 

Both have a common tone - a cheerful, breezy humour and upbeat attitude towards the challenges in front of the principal character. The difference between the two films is that The Martian was directed by Ridley Scott and Project Hail Mary is directed by Phil Lord and Christopher Miller, who opt for the ‘Everything is awesome’ perkiness that characterised their career-defining film, The Lego Movie. 

The audience is introduced to Dr Ryland Grace (Ryan Gosling) as he awakes on a deserted spacecraft in deep space; the only other two crew members have died in stasis. Years spent in an induced coma would have appeared to have clouded his memory, but he gradually recalls that he is actually a molecular biologist who was teaching middle school science before an impatiently blunt and dry-witted German technocrat, Eva Stratt (Sandra Hüller) appeared on the scene. The monumental significance of memory loss and recall doesn’t seem to faze Grace. The process is illustrated in a series of flashbacks that needlessly punctuate the deep space storyline and seem designed to purely act as exposition for the audience. Nonetheless, even the most curmudgeonly amongst the audience will find it pretty damn hard not to fall for Gosling’s portrayal of Grace, given his self-deprecating charm and innate natural charisma.

The titular Project Hail Mary is a mission designed to avert the potential extinction of the human race - apparently our last hope of saving the Earth from astrophages that are about three decades away from destroying the sun. Herein lies the issue. Directors Phil Lord and Christopher Miller have created a character who seldom seems angst-ridden by the gravity of the high-stakes suicide mission or in any way perturbed by a close encounter with an extra-terrestrial life form. To paraphrase Michael Stipe... It’s the end of the world as we know it, and Grace feels fine.

Tonally, Project Hail Mary is all too shiny. All too exuberant. All too awesome. There’s none of the steely determination and dogged tenacity of The Martian. With no family or romantic attachments, there isn’t the sense of painful personal sacrifice that gave Interstellar its heart-wrenching power, or the constant weight of overwhelming desolation of Arrival. Phil Lord and Christopher Miller do offer a number of impressive IMAX sequences, touching on classic science fiction tropes, but Project Hail Mary would suggest that the directors are not in the same bracket as the likes of Ridley Scott, Christopher Nolan and Denis Villeneuve. Plot points are fumbled. Perhaps worst of all, in a film which had been asking us to take it seriously at some level, is the most inappropriate of conclusions. As a result, Project Hail Mary can’t quite overcome the feeling that everything is all just a little bit too inconsequential.