Project Hail Mary

It’s the last day of middle school and she broke up with you again. 

You don’t know why because you don’t understand these things at all. Summer is almost here though and it promises an endless series of sunny days in a quiet neighborhood. There will be movies and pool parties and other girls that you also can’t quite talk to or understand. 

As you move from class to class you hear snippets of conversations about other lives and vacations to far away places and people who are doing better than you or worse or the same depending on how you judge these things. 

After lunch, when everyone’s really given up on teaching and learning your favorite teacher puts in a movie. 

It’s really good, but he is the coolest teacher in the school. There’s something about the sun dying, and Ryan Gosling plays the smartest scientist on earth and he solves all the science problems and then he’s in space. 

If those problems he’s solving are complicated you don’t notice cause everything flies by really fast and then, boom, a funny alien shows up. 

His name is Rocky and he’s great. You like that he takes everything literally. It will be years before you notice how often aliens have that problem and how its used for laughs. 

The movie ends, other kids almost clap, the girl who didn’t say anything to you all year writes, “stay cool” in your yearbook. 

You walk out into the sun. It’s warm and you smile and you feel free. 

———

Anyway, Project Hail Mary is by the same novelist who gave us The Martian. And it has that Goodfellas to Casino thing going on where it is not a sequel but it very much feels like a sequel. A spiritual sequel. 

Maybe the most spiritual sequel of all time given that a man names Grace rides a spaceship called the Hail Mary so that he can die for everyone on the planet. 

Well he has to play some hero ball first, and crack wise with his new alien pal. But yeah, death is coming for our man Grace even if he completes his mission and saves every one of us. 

It’s a bum wrap. Or a calling. Or a fine chance for Ryan Gosling to show us why he’s the man. 

Visually stunning, strong character work from Gosling and Sandra Huller and all that pesky science, which truly drove me nuts when I was listening to the audiobook, is kept to the barest of minimums. 

When I was listening to the book, knowing the movie was coming I kept wondering how they would handle the deep dives into archane science and explanations. 

Silly me, they just ignored nearly every bit of that. The book did move me though, when it spent time with either Rocky or Huller’s character. And screenwriter Drew Goddard knows where his bread is buttered. 

This movie was the longest of long shots and they sailed it through the uprights. Thumbs up. I Watched it on 70 millimeter.

If you haven’t seen it yet and you enjoy movie stars, big science fiction things and visually interesting films then you should go forth and watch this on the biggest screen you can find.