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Project Hail Mary directors Phil Lord and Chris Miller tend to thrive off our lowest expectations and cynicism. These are the guys who rebooted 21 Jump Street, which many of us expected to be craven nostalgia bait. Instead, they served up a surprising lively, self-deprecating and sweet comedy skewering Hollywood’s insistence on craven nostalgia bait, and discovered Channing Tatum’s limitless comic sensibilities at the same time.
They went even harder proving a toy brand extension like The Lego Movie could be clever and riotous, and that the exhausted Spider-Man franchise not only had more life in it, but could yield something as brilliant and wildly entertaining as the Spiderverse movies (which they co-wrote and produced).
“We always seem to be keen on doing things that seem like a bad idea at the time,” says Lord, in an interview with CBC Arts, speaking to their track record for pulling off hail marys alongside Miller.
“This one actually, …” Miller starts, referring to their adaptation of Andy Weir’s bestselling space odyssey Project Hail Mary.
“… seemed like a good idea,” says Lord.
“And it comes with very high expectations,” adds Miller.
The two carry on in this way, bringing the bouncy energy from their movies to this interview, completing each other’s thoughts inconsiderate of what a nightmare that is for this journalist to reproduce in print.
Weir’s Project Hail Mary is a story about a man stranded largely on his own in space, much like his earlier novel The Martian, which was turned into a movie starring Matt Damon. Canada’s own Ryan Gosling stars as a high school science teacher, Ryland Grace, the last survivor on an interstellar mission sent to research and discover a solution to an invasive microorganism killing our sun.
“We started working on [the movie] before the book was published,” Miller. “It turned into a giant international bestseller with fans who are very passionate about it. Suddenly expectations were high. And now we have to clear a much higher bar.”
WATCH | The trailer for Project Hail Mary:
“The common denominator of the movies that you’re talking [about],” Lord continues, referring back to the silly buddy comedy that is 21 Jump Street or the movie about a bunch of Lego bricks, “is that we took those movies really seriously. … And we try to prioritize the relationships in those movies, which no one ever does in a silly R-rated comedy.
“But in this movie, the relationships are the whole bag. It’s all about can adult men make friends …,”
“… if the world depends on it,” says Miller, again punctuating Lord’s thought.
The bro-y relationship the filmmakers refer to is that between Gosling’s Grace and an intelligent alien that appears like an Arizona rock formation with limbs. Grace actually dubs the fellow interstellar traveller, who shares the same science mission on behalf of his own species, Rocky. This movie basically has Gosling test that oft-repeated expression that a particular actor “can have chemistry with a rock.” The two join forces, in what ostensibly becomes a giddy but high stakes interspecies buddy comedy.
Lord also suggests that so many classics in the space movie canon served as “anti-influences.”
“There’s a lot of stuff that feels dry or cold, or slick and shiny,” he says, a description that could apply to masterpieces like 2001: A Space Odyssey and Alien, or even Ridley Scott’s adaptation of The Martian. Instead, they made a movie where the spaceship can feel like home to a shaggy everyman with his mess strewn all over the place, which Lord says his NASA consultants and ISS reference photos suggest is actually more authentic.
“We didn’t want to make a movie about how space is cold,” Lord continues. “A lot of movies are about how, there’s a guy who’s really at home on Earth, and he goes to space and he’s lonely. This is a movie about someone who feels lonely on Earth. And he goes to space to make a friend.
“The spaceship, if you look at it, the walls are quilted. The spaceship is actually put together by many different space agencies on planet Earth, so the ship itself is a big quilt. It’s meant to comfort him. And then he goes and makes a friend. And over the course of the movie, he slowly becomes warmer and warmer and warmer. The sun, which is a character in the movie, is shining in the tunnel in which he meets the alien. So much of it is about trying to find warmth in space.”
I suggest to the filmmakers that making an actor as smooth, commanding and roguishly charming as Gosling into an anti-social loner who has a hard time connecting with people on Earth is a hard sell.
“That’s why you need the greatest actor of his generation,” says Lord.
