A review of Project Hail Mary (2026)
As someone who never read the book
Photo courtesy Dam0812/Wikimedia Commons
Project Hail Mary (2026) came out just recently, and the space traveling sci-fi film starring Ryan Gosling seemed to be an instant hit with an engaging and interesting plot.
Spoilers ahead!
In my 21 years of life I have confidently stood behind the statement: the book is always better than the movie. I had maintained an almost perfect streak of reading the book before I knowingly watched the movie or series, but I recently broke this streak. The 2021 novel by Andy Weir was recently turned into a film under the same name, Project Hail Mary (2026), and was released into theatres on Mar. 20, 2026.
While I have heard that this movie was incredible in IMAX, I decided to stay local and see the movie at the Geneseo Theatres. Going into this movie, all I knew was that Ryan Gosling goes into space and he meets some alien. I was fully expecting to watch this movie and see Gosling interacting with a classic green alien who magically speaks English. This was pleasantly not the case.
Ryan Gosling plays the main character Ryland Grace in this movie, as seen on IMDb, who begins the movie as a totally normal high school science teacher. We are introduced to a recent scientific discovery by a student who says that it is going to eat the sun and destroy earth, which in many cases would be something to ignore, a silly childish lie, but unfortunately she is telling the truth.
The movie operates by flashing back and forth from Grace on a spaceship, and to his days on Earth leading up to the spaceship. I found this format to be very entertaining, because even Grace himself cannot remember what he is doing on the spaceship, waking up from a coma with little memories and muscle weakness.
It is revealed throughout the movie that Grace was pulled from his classroom to do scientific research on the new discovery because it is similar to research he had done in the past. Scientists from all over the world are working on this, with an end goal of making a new form of fuel to send a team of scientists and other qualified professionals into space. Even with the newly discovered source of fuel, they will not be making enough to safely send the scientist back to Earth after their mission, and they know they are going to die out there.
Shortly after the audience finds this out, we see the karaoke scene, which has become very popular on social media. Actress Sandra Hüller plays Eva Stratt, as seen on IMDb, and she recruited Grace for this research and recruited those that are going to die on this mission, something that seems to be an incredibly difficult task, though she claims she did not struggle with it because they have the ability to save the world.
All of the scientists and professionals are celebrating being just days away from the mission beginning by drinking at a makeshift bar and singing karaoke. Up until this moment Stratt is an incredibly intense character who does not mess around, but after a conversation with Grace she stuns the crowd with a performance of “Sign of the Times” by Harry Styles.
I have heard this song before many times, but seeing it in this movie made me listen to the lyrics in a different way. This scene was the first of many in this movie that brought me to tears. Shortly after this, something goes wrong on the base and there is an explosion. All of the people that were supposed to go onto this mission are killed, leaving Stratt to ask Grace to go to space.
He immediately says no, he has no interest in it, he cannot believe that she is asking him to go die in space. She reminds him that without this mission, everyone is going to die a slow painful death within just a few decades. Many scenes are spent trying to convince him, but eventually against his will he is put under an induced coma to be placed on this spaceship.
I originally could not wrap my head around why they specifically needed him to go when qualified scientists from all over the world were there. This is where reading the book would have come in handy. The movie completely left out the detail that Grace had a certain mutated gene, from my understanding, that would make him more prone to surviving this lengthy induced coma.
This gene is what sets him apart from everyone else and explains why when he woke up on the spaceship, his two colleagues were already dead. I have heard of even more details that were left out from the movie that I would have loved to know, and make the story even more interesting. Overall this movie was an incredible watch, and there are so many fantastic different artistic aspects, I plan on watching it again very soon. I will also be reading the book as soon as possible!