Project Hail Mary

PROJECT HAIL MARY 🚀 (2026)

“Friendship is when two beings choose to help each other survive, even when it isn’t logical.”

Most people will go see PROJECT HAILT MARY for the space-based exploration, but they’ll stay for the friendships formed along the way.

The film follows Ryland Grace (Ryan Gosling), a science teacher who wakes up alone on a spaceship light-years from Earth with no memory of how he got there. As his memory slowly returns, he realizes he’s been sent to stop a mysterious substance from consuming the sun, and wiping out humanity. Things take a turn when an unknown spacecraft latches onto his ship, introducing an alien presence that deepens the mystery and reshapes the mission.

There’s serious talent behind this: an adaptation of an Andy Weir novel (The Martian), directed by Phil Lord and Christopher Miller (Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse, with Ryan Gosling leading after Barbie and The Fall Guy. Add in the book’s massive fanbase, and expectations are sky-high.

Maybe too high.

I found this to be an overly stuffed sci-fi film. The space exploration should have been the main draw, but the heavy exposition, delivered through sporadic memory recalls, didn’t quite work for me. And by “didn’t work,” I mean I just didn’t care.

What ultimately won me over, though, was the overwhelming charm of Ryan Gosling and the endearing bond between him and an unlikely companion.

Rocky and Ryland are two peas in a pod, slightly awkward, but both with their hearts in the right place. Gosling brings a natural warmth to Ryland, and together they become something quietly compelling: sincere, a little clumsy, and easy to root for. Their connection, built through patience, curiosity, and cooperation, gives the story its emotional weight.

In a world obsessed with being right, they just want to work together and find solutions. That’s where the movie shines.

This feels closer to the warmth of WALL-E than the grand scale of Interstellar. It’s not a space epic, but it doesn’t need to be.

For a story about isolation and survival, it’s surprisingly tender. By the end, I stopped caring about the science and just wanted these two to make it out alive. It does stumble with an overlong finale, but the emotional payoff lands.

In the end, PROJECT HAILT MARY trades spectacle for sincerity. It’s not the scale of the mission that sticks, it’s the bond at the center of it, building something together instead of drifting apart.

I didn’t connect with the film at first, but somewhere along the way, it found me. And you can find it now in theatres. 

Enjoy!

7.1/10 🍿 🎥

Runtime: 2hrs36mins

Where: In Theatres March 20th.

The Richmond Reviewer Project Hail Mary Review - March 20th, 2026.

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