Movie Time: Project Hail Mary

A few weeks ago, the world was enthralled with the Artemis II mission and the 4 astronauts who ventured forth into space further than any humans had ever gone before.

We admired their courage and their professionalism. 

We were also enchanted by their humanity, their humor and their kindness.  

Their greatest achievement beyond going into space was to demonstrate the best of humanity, what we can accomplish when we put aside hatred, fear and bitterness and embrace hope, caring and love. 

Keep this in mind as we transition from science fact to science fiction.

It's.... Movie Time! 

Last weekend, son Dean, friend Jan, wife Andrea and myself ventured forth from the Fortress of Ineptitude to go see Project Hail Mary.  

Based on a 2021 novel by Andy Weir, the screenplay is by Drew Goddard who also developed the television series High Potential.  The film is directed by Phil Lord and Christopher Miller, the same creative team that has brought us Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs, The Lego Movie, and the Spider-Verse films.  

Ryan Gosling stars as Ryland Grace, a scientists hurled to the farthest reaches of space with a fragmented memory and urgent mission to save all humanity.

No pressure. 

The narrative of Project Hail Mary engages in some wibbly wobbly timey wimey. 

 

The movie begins with Ryland Grace waking up from a coma.

 

On a space ship.

 

Light years from Earth.

 

Alone.  Two other crew members are dead. 

 

He has questions.

 

• Who is he?
• Why is he on this space ship?
• Why is this space ship so far from home?

 

Answers to these questions arrive in fragments of memory that slowly surface as Grace seeks to orient himself to this current circumstances.

 

Long story made short: Earth’s sun is dying, being consumed by some alien contagion. The contagion manifests itself via a connection between the sun and Venus.

 

Ryland Grace is a disgraced scientist teaching high school science classes who is recruited by a mysterious cabal investigating this solar mystery. 

 

Grace is some kind of super genius who figures out what is going on.  He also discovers that material called 

astrophage brought back from a probe to Venus can power a space ship for interstellar travel.

 

Which is kind of important.    

 

Elsewhere in space, other stars are also dying with connections between the star and a nearby planet.

 

There is ONE star, Tau Ceti,  with a connection to a planet that is NOT dying.

 

The mission: send a spaceship called Hail Mary to Tau Ceti and find out why and use that information to hopefully save our own sun.  

 

There’s a time crunch. Earth has about 30 years left before the sun dies out and the planet freezes. 

 

Well, that explains the mission but how did a nerdy scientist turned high school teacher wind up on this mission?

 

That answer will be forthcoming as the story progresses and if you guessed it wasn’t exactly his idea, well, let’s not get ahead of ourselves.

 

Grace arrives at Tau Ceti and finds he has company.

An alien ship docks with the Hail Mary. The ship's pilot is a rock-like, five-legged alien from a planet in the 40 Eridani A system. 

It takes a minute to work it out but Grace and the alien pilot (who Grace calls "Rocky") learn to communicate.  

The native environments for Grace and Rocky are mutually toxic to each other.  Rocky can only join Grace on the Hail Mary in a special protective bubble.

Rocly has the same mission as Ryland Grace. His home planet is also facing an encroaching death sentence from a dying sun unless Rocky can figure out why Tau Ceti is not dying and bring that answer back home.  

Grace and Rocky form a close bond as they pool resources. 

I would say that their respective world saving missions as well as all the technobabble science and physical dangers involved are virtual McGuffins to the real heart of this story, the growing friendship between Grace and Rocky. 

Much like Reid, Victor, Christina and Jeremy of the Artemis II mission, the real value of this mission into space is to extoll the virtues of goodness and mercy, the best that humanity can be.(Or in the case of Rocky, the best Eridian.)  .  

Using their minds, Grace and Rocky science the shit out of a solution to save their respective home worlds.

Using their hearts, Grace and Rocky overcome fear to build something strong, enduring and truly valuable.  

There is a very real fear that Grace and Rocky can't both survive their missions into space.

I will caution that ultimately, this is NOT that kind of movie. 

Although the filmmakers lean really hard into that overwhelming feeling of dread.  

Project Hail Mary with it's alien worlds, distant stars and space faring tech certainly looks cool. 

But it's Grace and Rocky who make it really worth watching.

FUN FACT: James Ortiz was the puppeeter who operated Rocky.  He also provided Rocky's voice in what was intended to be a scratch track to serve as a placeholder until a more high profile actor would come in to do the voice acting. 

But Lord and Miller were so happy with James Ortiz's voice work, they kept him on in lieu of a bigger name. 

I agree with their assessment. Rocky has a peculiar cadence that rides the currents between gentle and snarky. 

And Ryan Gosling is a perfect match for Ryland Grace, intellectual arrogance interspersed with social awkwardness. He's a space hero who was never meant to be a space hero.  But he steps up to do inspiring but dangerous things not out of some sense of heroism but just because things need to be done to save Earth.  And Rocky's world as well.  

Gosling's Ryland Grace is a goofball who has no business being on an adventure in space.

But ultimately, Grace is indeed the man for the job in his own peculiar way.

There are those who might question the strong sentimentality at the heart of a sci-fi movie but it's that sentiment that make Project Hail Mary worth seeing and a pleasure to remember.

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More science fiction tomorrow with another edition of Star Trekking and the 4th season of Star Trek: The Next Generation.

And more Ryan Gosling in next week's Your Friday Video Link.