Project Hail Mary (2026) is the newest movie to be a movie adaptation, which is based off of the 2021 science fiction novel by Andy Weir. Project Hail Mary (2026) stars our protagonist Ryland Grace, played by Ryan Gosling, who has starred in movies like The Notebook (2004), La La Land (2016), Barbie (2023).
Weir also wrote The Martian (2011) which also got a live action adaptation in 2015.
Ryland ends up in space after a mysterious series of events that he has no memory of. He then discovers that the Earth’s sun is dying out; he must save it or else everything on Earth that has everything he ever loved perishes. Now aside from the actor and protagonist sharing the same initials, Project Hail Mary (2026) is doing pretty well in the box office. It’s gotten a 94% rating on Rotten Tomatoes, and a 8.4/10 on IMDb.
Project Hail Mary (2026) has made 300 million dollars in the first 2 weeks of its release. Around 160 million of which was garnered domestically (U.S and Canada). In the opening weekend, it made 140 million dollars worldwide and 80 million dollars domestically. This is more than The Martian (2015) because it only made around 54 million in its opening weekend domestically. The movie also beat out Scream 7 (2026) which garnered around 64 million dollars domestically and Hoppers (2026) which garnered 46 million dollars domestically. As of this article’s publishing, Project Hail Mary (2026) has amassed over 500 million dollars worldwide.
THE PROS
The movie was pretty good. I rate it a 7/10. The sets and backgrounds were immaculate and truly fantastical. Specifically, I think the spaceship was very cool. The different chambers that it had from the control room to the Earth simulation were all really nice and furthered the sense of confusion that Ryland experienced when he first woke up. The cinematography was spectacular. The times where the camera shifted to really display the zero gravity feeling of space was incredible. Specifically, there was a point in the movie where the characters were collecting samples of astrophage and you could see it on the screen. It was so incredibly beautiful and surreal. The music was the cherry on top because it fit so well and let you sit in your seat just taking it in.
Speaking of music, there were also many moments where the music that was playing, very much highlighted the scene’s importance and really drove the point home of the scene. For example, the scene where Eva Stratt portrayed by Sandra Hüller was singing Sign of The Times by Harry Styles and you could feel the emotion of the characters and the reality sinking in that they were going to space and knowing that they would die up there.
Speaking of the emotion, you could feel the emotion and the tension between the characters. The acting was phenomenal and you really could really understand the characters and their perspectives on the mission. The humor was genuinely really funny. The bit where Ryland Grace asked “Am I expendable?” and the officials watching him had to discuss before giving him an answer made me chuckle. The irony and sarcasm that the characters had was also insanely funny. Ryland was giving a motivational talk to his class about how “The best minds on Earth are working on it right now” (referring to the astrophage and Petrova line that was killing the sun) and it pans to the next scene where he’s alone in space. The chemistry that Ryland Grace had with all of the characters was genuinely very believable and Ryan Gosling was the perfect casting in my opinion. His natural sense of humor and awkwardness was really highlighted in this movie. It felt like he was just being himself. The witty attitude all of the characters were giving each other were very funny at times and made the movie feel more light-hearted.
THE CONS
However, this wittiness became too much after a while. It felt like too much sometimes and kind of random and out of nowhere. The jokes at one point felt very constant where the plot felt overshadowed and got downplayed. For example, the sequence where everyone was preparing the ship for launch, characters that seemed to be stoic and serious were doing very uncharacteristic things, such as making witty remarks, which is fine but it breaks the illusion that they are extremely serious for the mission. The mission was made to be very serious but even before the stakes were set very high, characters were cracking jokes like it was a comedy special. Ryland and the other background characters did this kind of well.
However, Eva Stratt who is the person behind the whole project and operation really didn’t fit in my opinion. She felt very stiff but also trying to be funny and it sometimes works but I don’t think this translated well onto the big screen. She was portrayed as kind of somber and calm but the wittiness that they gave her character was too much. Yes, characters can and should be complex but this contradiction didn’t work for her character here. In other works of fiction, many characters are complex. For example, Mia from La La Land (2016). Mia is portrayed as a very determined and hardworking person who is trying to achieve her goals of stardom in acting. This is one of her main goals and what her story mostly revolves around. But she’s not perfect and is very realistically complex. She wants to achieve her goals but a lot of her selfishness gets in the way of this. Her ambitions get in the way of her relationship with other people. She thus breaks up with Ryan Gosling’s character Sebastian and moves on with her life. This level of complexity and multi-dimensional character feels realistic and works in the film’s favor but with Eva, she’s just a contradiction of traits. She’s snarky and clever but then super serious and somber.
The space sequences were mostly great, but the part where Ryland and Rocky were meeting felt kind of confusing even though I’m pretty sure it was supposed to be mysterious and intriguing. Their introduction to each other was very bizarre to me and felt very random. It kind of went against my expectations of the film but adding a bigger fiction element than I was expecting because it is a science fiction movie but from the start, I was assuming this was meant to be more science than fiction because of how little fiction there was in the first half of the movie. Some points of the movie were definitely confusing especially since I’m not the best person at science. If you love science, you would love this film. But if you don’t, you’ll still enjoy it but probably not on the level of someone who loves science.
It was very obvious that Eva Stratt was supposed to be a love interest of Ryland but their chemistry in that sense felt underwhelming and underdeveloped. A lot of their on screen chemistry felt more like 2 coworkers. The chemistry felt very off screen and implied since they were working on the project for months.
Very Important Note: There are a few flashing light sequences that were kind of disorienting, so if you are sensitive to flashing lights, please be cautious when watching the movie.
THE ENDING
It was not bad but also not the ending I expected. Ryland choosing to go with Rocky was a reasonable choice in my opinion since the 2 went through so much together. Eva Stratt at the end watching the tapes that Ryland recorded was nice but the “cliffhanger” ending that it ended on was incredibly disappointing and a little bit frustrating. You could kind of assume that Ryland didn’t go back to Earth and Eva was able to put a stop to the Petrova Line but I wish I could see those events play out.
THE BOOK
To fully understand the full justice that the movie was given, if any at all, I read the book that the movie was based on. I must say, the book had a lot more freedom than the movie. Partially because the book allows for the reader’s imagination to run wild, but with a movie, they have to physically create an image for the viewers. And with books, you can read what the characters are thinking and you’re really able to understand the characters on a deeper level. The movie had a budget of millions of dollars and real life physics to work with, the book had creative droughts and hundreds of drafts to work around. Books tend to let you read more about the characters and know them inside and out. Furthermore, the book has more time to develop the plot and storyline as well as characters with no time limit, but movies need to do it in at most 3 hours and in a few years.
The book is able to go into way more detail than the movie. Such as scenes like Rocky’s introduction. To me, it fits better on paper than on the big screen. Books obviously have more liberties to step out of realism and flow into fiction. Movies don’t usually portray this too well. A lot of the book is Ryland’s dialogue and monologue which I really like because it makes you connect with the character more. Some scenes translated incredibly well onto the big screen. Such as, the scenes where Stratt and Ryland interacted. You could read and feel the chemistry here way more than the movie.
Some scenes didn’t translate as well, such as the points where they tried to explain the science behind the whole operation. The movie I think simplifies it way more to appeal to all audiences. This might just be an issue that I have because I’m again not a very science tuned person. Books also give you the freedom to imagine the characters however you want and have this image in your head to make sense of things, instead of having real life characters to watch.
A lot of love for the movie has come because of Gosling himself. And it’s easy to see why. During the opening night of the film, at a theater in New York, Gosling had this to say: “Here we are, we’re all back in theaters. … It’s not your job to keep them open, it’s our job to make things that make it worth you coming out.” This resonated with many people because Hollywood has been in a big drought of movies that have people wanting more. Many people either stream the movie at home or pirate it for free. Movies like Project Hail Mary are a reminder that there are many great movies out there, and we the audience have power to show Hollywood which movies we want more of and which ones need to go.
