“Project Hail Mary” is a 2026 sci-fi movie based on the bestselling novel by Andy Weir. The movie stars Ryan Gosling as Ryland Grace, an astronaut stranded alone in space who has amnesia and must figure out why he is there and complete his mission to save the earth. The movie is a success with critics, audiences and the box office, and this has rocketed it to the status of Amazon Studios’ highest grossing film.
“Project Hail Mary” is a spectacular movie. The runtime is over two and a half hours, and it doesn’t drag for a second. The movie also does a remarkable job keeping energy up with just a single actor and a puppet on screen for most of it. The puppet is Rocky, an alien Grace meets in space. Rocky is another testament to how well the movie is made, since he is a non-humanoid alien with no face, and a text-to-speech type of voice with little expression. However, his emotions always come through and are captivating because of the excellent puppetry and the strong writing that works with his emotionally restrained voice. Gosling and James Ortiz, the voice and puppeteer of Rocky, bring exceptional performances during the parts of the movie which take place in space. There are parts of the movie which take place on earth: these are mainly in the form of flashbacks to Grace’s life before going to space that happen as his temporary amnesia wears off. The two halves of the movie are equally good and never conflict, and the viewer is never left waiting for an earth segment to finish to get “back to the good half” or vice versa.
The story comes together well with the twists and revelations from the book working just as effectively in the movie. “Project Hail Mary” is a great movie and a good adaptation of its source material, but there are some issues with what it leaves out and what it changes.
The biggest change the movie makes is its deviation from the style of the book. The book is structured around in-depth looks at different scientific problems, their solutions,and the methods taken to arrive at those solutions. This is largely left out of the movie. A positive of this is that it keeps the story moving at a good pace and does not bombard the viewer with information. However, it also causes problems for the movie. Events that unfold in the story are set up in advance in the book since the seeds of one problem are sown in the viewer’s mind during the previous problem. However, since the movie doesn’t give the viewer descriptions of the problem-solving process Grace goes through, problems seem to spring up out of nowhere.
One example (spoilers) is that Grace accidentally breeds a microscopic organism that learns to travel through certain solid substances and eats the rocket’s fuel. This is addressed and briefly explained in the movie and while this approach isn’t terrible, it seems like a plot convenience so the next thing can happen. In the book, it is set up well and is an important part of one of the themes of the story: how species evolve to overcome obstacles. While this is briefly explained in the movie, other similar things from the book happen in the movie but aren’t explained, leaving viewers confused.
The other big problem with the movie is the marketing team’s reveal of Rocky. For context, Andy Wier’s most successful book before writing Project Hail Mary was The Martian, which is essentially a “stranded on a deserted island” story on Mars. The Martian is written completely realistically, examining what would happen to someone if they were to be stranded on Mars in real life. Project Hail Mary (the book) was presented to readers as a similar story to that, but with a different setting and another goal for the protagonist: to save earth. So, the reveal of sentient aliens was a complete surprise. The movie did not do this, which robs the story of one of its best elements.
Overall, the movie is superb. It’s a strong adaptation of great source material and helmed by strong lead performances with excellent visuals and a good score to boot. However, even though it is a strong adaptation of the source material, the comparison to the book is not always favorable.
Four and a half stars.
