Review: Project Hail Mary (2026)

The majority opinion seems to be that Project Hail Mary is a near-perfect cinematic experience. "The first truly great movie of 2026," reads the headline from various cinematic pundits and online outlets. There's an adoration associated with it that we rarely see post-pandemic. It seems to work for just about everyone, but I find myself in the minority in thinking that the movie is momentarily pleasing but ultimately fails to fly. I think part of its success is that it's entirely inoffensive, carefully crafted to appeal to the widest market possible with 1) a main character who reflects the weariness of our current times but rises above it, 2) a cute (and marketable) alien sidekick, and 3) a story that has lots of emotional twists. It's the kind of thing general movie audiences eat up. Because the average person only goes to the movie theater four or less times per year, they want those experiences to pack in everything they want in a single package: big visuals, loud explosions, laughs, pathos, and a sense of triumph that leaves them feeling satisfied. Project Hail Mary delivers that. 

But a more cynical, (or is that practical?) view might reveal that the whole thing is a little bit mathematical, putting the audience through a set of beats in order to elicit a very specific reaction. Project Hail Mary has been cooked up from a recipe of all the most crowd-pleasing elements, but those elements are hiding some pretty big holes in the story and a movie that throws out traditional structure. Case in point: the third act has three acts. That's six acts! Act 1: our hero finds himself alone in space. He must come to his senses and get on with his mission. Act 2: The visitor, in which our hero makes a friend. Act 3 Part 1: We have to do this thing to save the universe. Act 3 Part 2: Oh wait, there's another problem we didn't foresee. Act 3 Part 3: There is yet another mission after the previous crises have been dealt with. The movie just goes on. And on. And on. 

Because most of the audience has bought into the emotional core of the characters and their interactions, they likely don't notice the long periods where nothing is happening. There's a flashback motif that the filmmakers employ to distribute pertinent information only when we need it, which allows them to Deus Ex Machina the story whenever they feel like it. "Now this moment has emotional resonance because we waited to tell you something very important about our main character!" The story focuses at length on things I'm not particularly interested in (pseudo-science explanations of cosmic catastrophe, flashbacks with characters who are barely in the movie) while entirely avoiding the things I want it to focus on, chiefly the evolution of the friendship between our two main characters, which seems to mostly happen off-screen in the span of about five minutes. Seriously, it happens very quickly and with almost no tension. For a movie that's over 2 1/2 hours long, it oddly seeks to pull our emotional strings in the quickest, most efficient way possible. 

This is no accident and it's not my imagination. Remember that screenwriter Drew Goddard co-wrote and directed 2011's Cabin in the Woods, which is a deconstruction of horror movies, their tropes, and how they work. He's used some of those same tricks here in Project Hail Mary, but instead of using them to deconstruct, he's employing them to elicit certain reactions from the audience. It's almost like a magic trick. "At this point, we'll have the audience laugh. Now at this point, we'll have them cry. At this point, we'll have them gasp, and then here we'll have them breathe a huge sigh of relief." Are you thinking of The Truman Show? You should be. Maybe you're also thinking "but all screenplays do that," and you'd be right. But rarely is the form so completely exposed and rarely are the tricks used so blatantly. About half-way into the movie, I realized that the Project Hail Mary was playing the greatest hits of other movies: take one part E.T., add a little bit of Castaway, a dose of Interstellar, a heaping portion of Silent Running, and three parts of The Martian, with its "I'm stuck here all alone but I gotta find a way out of it using science." Same author of the source material (Andy Weir) and same structure. Project Hail Mary often feels like a remix of The Martian with a cute alien added for commercial appeal. 

Let's talk more about that cute alien. There's an old screenplay shortcut If you want the audience to hate a character, you have that character kill the dog. Now, it doesn't have to be a dog, but the point is that humans have an innate instinct to protect innocents. By putting an innocent character in jeopardy, you instantly have the audience on your side. Project Hail Mary is guilty of using this shortcut repeatedly. By the second time a character was in mortal danger, I wanted to get up and walk out. 

Somewhere in this bloated 157-minute movie is a tight little story about a man facing his own fears and rising to an impossible challenge. It's worth mentioning here that Project Hail Mary is an Amazon production, and I have a feeling the lengthy running time is by design, since we know that streaming services such as Amazon Prime Video and Netflix count minutes watched, not completed views. For that matter, many audiences seem to enjoy a longer experience at the movie theaters, too, giving them more "bang for their buck." You spend $15 on a ticket, you want to feel like you got your money's worth. Was the movie really that great, or did the audience have a great time going to the movies? It's the Deadpool & Wolverine syndrome. Some movies are a success before they ever open because they have the goodwill of the public, who will overlook things that don't work in order to have a positive experience at the movie theater. 

There are things I like about Project Hail Mary. Ryan Gosling is not only a great actor, he's also a bona fide movie star, carrying so much of the story all by himself. Behind-the-scenes reports suggest that it was an isolated, lonely shooting experience for the actor, and I believe some of that comes through in his performance. I also really like Rocky, both in design and in how he's realized. My criticisms are in how the screenplay uses Rocky for sympathy and as a MacGuffin, not in how he's brought to life. I also love the overall themes of the film about bravery and the shared human condition--and even how that human condition may apply to other beings in the universe. 

Ultimately, I find the movie to occupy the middle of the road. It's an REO Speedwagon song, designed for maximum radio airplay. There's nothing here remotely offensive. No profanity, no deep character flaws, but no balls or teeth, either. No risk, no challenge. It feels more like a product than a piece of art. There are parts of Project Hail Mary that are good, maybe even great. But there are also parts that are decidedly less so, and it will be interesting to see if those rougher edges become more apparent to viewers upon a rewatch, long after the smell of movie theater popcorn and the magic of IMAX have faded, when all that's left is the reality of the film and how it tells its story.