Project Hail Mary is a spiritual sibling to The Martian – and it’s fab

Hail Mary Project
In theaters from March 19

There are so many fun and fascinating things in Hail Mary ProjectAndy Weir’s novel about a last-ditch attempt to stop our sun from dying, into which I felt guilty for abandoning it barely 100 pages in. I couldn’t get past Ryland Grace, a molecular biologist turned teacher turned astronaut who wakes up on a spaceship light years from home with no idea who he is or why he’s there.

I hated Ryland. I hated his immature and sardonic personality. I hated that such a beautiful premise was filtered through the eyes of a person who calls his penis his “gentleman’s gear.” The questions the book alluded to – like why an interstellar mission would be necessary to save our sun – weren’t intriguing enough to tempt me to stay in Ryland’s head for 500 pages. So I stopped reading.

No more fooling me. If I had persisted, I would have found a heartwarming, science-filled story – one that the new film adaptation of Hail Mary Project happily revealed to me.

I breathed a sigh of relief in the very first scene, in which Ryland (Ryan Gosling), after spending years in a coma aboard the ship, has his breathing tube and other vital life support removed by a robotic arm. In the book, it’s an extended moment full of casual anecdotes; in the film, stripped of that horrible interiority, it’s as horrifying as you’d expect and it’s over in a matter of seconds. Cut to a bearded and dazed Ryland prowling around the ship like a Generation X Tarzan and off we go, instantly invested.

The scene is representative of this adaptation’s greatest strength: it doesn’t over-explain, trusting that the cast will convey what’s needed without much explanation. As Ryland, Gosling is an intelligent loner, driven out of academia for questioning the orthodoxy on what extraterrestrial life might be like, feeling like a real everyman – and he’s actually funny.

We gradually learn that Ryland has been recruited by the glacially competent Eva Stratt (Sandra Hüller). She sets out the issues: the sun is expected to decrease by up to 5% over the next 20 years. If this trend continues, the Earth will plunge into climate chaos and humanity will slowly starve. Hüller takes what could have been a one-note role and fills it with tightly controlled emotions – between her, Gosling and James Ortiz in a role I won’t spoil, Hail Mary Project is packed with performances that will make you laugh and break your heart in equal measure.

And science – my god, science! – it’s everything you could hope for from writer Drew Goddard, who also adapted The Martiananother Weir book. Like his spiritual brother, Hail Mary Project is a film about a lone genius struggling to survive in space and how the scientific process might save him, though it’s less concerned with the details of that survival than with big, bold ideas in physics and biology.

Nonetheless, Ryland is forced to put his brain to work when he realizes that the team’s pilot and engineer have both died during the journey, leaving him alone in space and ill-equipped to complete his mission. With nothing but time on his side, Ryland is able to come up with clever solutions to his situation that will please science fiction fans, even if not everything is explicitly explained.

Without revealing the twists and turns this story takes, I will simply say that the question of what life is and what makes it important is at the heart of Hail Mary Project. Not everything about the film is effective: like its source material, it can overuse Ryland’s goofier side and veer into the ridiculous on occasion. But the perfect is the enemy of the good, and while he still wouldn’t be my choice of guide to the stars beyond our own, I was surprised by how much I cared about Ryland’s fate by the end of the film.

Hail Mary Project is a beautifully filmed and utterly charming adventure – and for me, a lesson in overcoming your initial reluctance. I might even try a second time to finish the book.