Title: Project Hail Mary (2026)
Directors: Phil Lord 👨🏽🇺🇸 and Christopher Miller 👨🏼🇺🇸
Writers: Screenplay by Drew Goddard 👨🏼🇺🇸 based on the novel by Andy Weir 👨🏼🇺🇸
Reviewed by Li 👩🏻🇺🇸
Technical: 4.25/5
First things first: If you’ve read Andy Weir’s hit novel, Project Hail Mary, kindly put it out of your mind when you watch Phil Lord and Christopher Miller’s film adaptation. The vibes are totally different, and trying to maintain the gravitas and sense of wonder infused throughout Weir’s writing isn’t the point of this movie. Instead, it’s a comedic star vehicle for Ryan Gosling, who plays Ryland Grace, a science school teacher-turned unwilling astronaut tasked with saving the solar system.
Project Hail Mary (the movie) initially struggles to find its footing. The comedy starts off goofy, complete with pratfalls that might have worked in Lord and Miller’s past films, such as 21 Jump Street (2012), but that feel out-of-step with its sober setup of Grace finding himself alone on a spaceship with two dead bodies. Editing comes rapid-fire, and scientific discoveries race by like a roulette wheel spinning in place, every tick tick tick accompanied by “Eureka!” moments that build into a cheeky supercut of space movie clichés. It’s when that rushing around finally relents that the viewer can actually pause to look at the roulette ball, check the number it’s sitting on, and see what the story is all about.
From this point on, Project Hail Mary shines. It centers on a beautiful friendship between a human scientist and an alien mechanic he dubs Rocky (voiced by James Ortiz). Both space travelers share the same goal of saving their planets from an intergalactic parasite. Grace and Rocky’s parallel journeys deliver lovely humor alongside adrenaline-pumping action and touching moments of connection. It’s an optimistic, funny movie that feels like a balm from the otherwise crushing realities of the daily news cycle.
Gender: 2.75/5
Does it pass the Bechdel Test? NOPE
With Gosling dominating the screen time, there’s little room for supporting characters. At best, Eva Stratt (Sandra Hüller) leads the international task force dedicated to solving the global crisis. She falls into the trope of a high-ranking woman who’s ostensibly in a position of power, but who still relies on a man to save the day. (Think Judi Dench’s M in the latest Bond movies, or Halle Berry’s Jo Fowler, a NASA director in fellow space movie, 2022’s Moonfall.)
On the plus side, Stratt rises above being a mere token. She shares several scenes with the male lead, over the course of which viewers see her warm up to the anxious, disheveled Grace. Hüller nails the character’s deadpan humor, and while we never get so much as a hint to her backstory, Stratt’s more than just your usual woman in a leadership role who has no actual agency in a male-driven movie.
Race: 2.5/5
Another time-worn archetype you’ll find in Project Hail Mary is the Black male special agent, perpetually seen wearing a trim black suit and tie—earpiece in, straight-backed, and unsmiling. Here, that role is assumed by Lionel Boyce, one of Stratt’s special agents known only as Carl. Thankfully, screenwriter Drew Goddard improves on this cliché by elevating Carl beyond “the muscle” to being clever and friendly, too. Yes, Carl’s number one priority is to enforce Stratt’s directives, and like her, Carl never gets a backstory either. But within those constraints, Carl jokes around with Grace and contributes his own ideas to lab experiments that help unlock major discoveries.
In minor roles, characters of color similarly assume stereotypes while briefly subverting them. For example, Chinese scientist Xi (Orion Lee) seems stoic at first, but he reveals a playful side when he riffs on one of Grace’s jokes. Additionally, an African woman asks Grace a highly technical scientific question. But characters of color are clumped together in just a couple of scenes that involve the international task force, and they seldom receive more than a single line or two.
Behind the lens, American director Lord is Cuban on his mother’s side. But the more interesting question around racial representation is what Project Hail Mary does with its white male lead: Grace is a bumbling mess. He’s sloppy, with ever-present stubble, and he’s the butt of jokes just as often as he’s shown demonstrating innate intelligence. He fits a trend that continues to center white male protagonists but hedges by making the leads ineffectual (Leonardo DiCaprio’s scientist in 2021’s Don’t Look Up) or unlikable (Timothee Chalamet’s abrasive table tennis star in 2025’s Marty Supreme). This is no The Martian (2015), screenwriter Goddard’s previous Weir adaptation, where Matt Damon’s Mark Watney is resourceful, calm, and smart. Yet they all share one thing: They’re still white male geniuses. Racial inclusivity can only go so far with this ceiling intact.
Mediaversity Grade: C 3.17/5
In hesitant marks of progress, white male protagonists like Grace have become more fallible in the intervening years since Weir’s last adaptation, The Martian. And Project Hail Mary’s women and characters of color still don clichés, but they infuse personality and mirth into their roles. But at the end of the day, guess who’s still headlining $200 million productions? The same demographic that’s been in place for decades, with little studio appetite to bankroll more diverse heroes.
