Project Hail Mary (Phil Lord & Christopher Miller, 2026)

[Brian C]

Project Hail Mary (Phil Lord & Christopher Miller, 2026)

Lots of people like this and it's not hard to see why, it's uncommonly well-made from a VFX standpoint and it's a decent story. But it also feels overlong in a way that doesn't usually bother me with longer runtimes, and I think its unceasingly flippant tone is the biggest culprit. Gosling's character and a Tony Stark-esque fountain of wisecracks, and the rock puppet is always set to maximum cute, to the point where he feels more like a pet than a peer to the Gosling character. It's like a 3-hour, live-action, latter-day Pixar movie.

And that's all fine and pleasant as far as it goes, but over nearly three hours, it wore awfully thin to me. And that was before the film even got to its multiple endings, which just made the last thirty minutes or so drag even more. It's very difficult to sustain comedic energy over such a long time, especially when the comedy is so superficial, and I think a lot could have been accomplished by either varying the tone a bit or cutting 45 minutes or so. There's especially a lot of narrative fat in the beginning that could have been excised, where the film gets unnecessarily bogged down with story ambiguity and subsequent flashbacks to address that ambiguity. Plus the multiple endings.

Anyway, I think Lord & Miller's comedy background really led them astray here. My feeling is that the decision to turn this story into a sweet buddy comedy really undercut the stakes, and ironically, also undercuts the relationship between Grace and Rocky. Just felt like they left a lot of potentially good stuff on the table ... maybe it's just me, but a story about interspecies cooperation to save multiple planets seems like it would have been more affecting and meaningful if one of the characters wasn't reduced to being a hard-shelled Ewok?

[Roger Ryan]

Project Hail Mary (Phil Lord & Christopher Miller, 2026)
... I think its unceasingly flippant tone is the biggest culprit...

This was my problem with the film as well. Project Hail Mary is superficially in the mode of The Martian (same author as well as screenwriter), but heavily influenced by Interstellar and Arrival as well. Yet, the dynamics and emotional beats found in all three of these previous films are only given lip service in this Lord & Miller epic which is weighed down by the incessant need to charm the audience with cuteness and sweet buddy comedy jokes. Imagine if the brief asides in Nolan's Interstellar when McConaughey's "Cooper" jokingly interacts with Bill Irwin's "TARS" robot constituted ninety percent of the running time and that's what Project Hail Mary feels like. The story is an intriguing one, and the visuals are often spectacular; I just wish the concept was allowed the seriousness it deserves.

[Never Cursed]

Project Hail Mary (Phil Lord & Christopher Miller, 2026)
... I think its unceasingly flippant tone is the biggest culprit...

This was my problem with the film as well. Project Hail Mary is superficially in the mode of The Martian (same author as well as screenwriter), but heavily influenced by Interstellar and Arrival as well. Yet, the dynamics and emotional beats found in all three of these previous films are only given lip service in this Lord & Miller epic which is weighed down by the incessant need to charm the audience with cuteness and sweet buddy comedy jokes. Imagine if the brief asides in Nolan's Interstellar when McConaughey's "Cooper" jokingly interacts with Bill Irwin's "TARS" robot constituted ninety percent of the running time and that's what Project Hail Mary feels like. The story is an intriguing one, and the visuals are often spectacular; I just wish the concept was allowed the seriousness it deserves.

Co-signed. The film is often gorgeous, I will admit, but the constant need for the screenwriters (honestly probably Lord and Miller, who have the "additional literary material" credit here) to have a character cracking jokes really wore thin and obliterated the film's intermittent attempts to actually take the survival/contact with aliens angle seriously. Gosling's video diary that begins with something like "soooooo, I just met an alien" is probably going to remain the worst two seconds of any film I see this year. Apparently the book on which the movie is based is even worse than this, just endless ironic asides stem to stern, so the rot was probably present at the source and the adaption should have been more radical, at least from a tone/dialogue perspective. I truly do not understand the "best film evaaaaaaaar" reactions present across the internet (the film is at present one of the top 150 highest-rated movies on Letterboxd), and they seem like a redux of the hyperbolic praise of Everything Everywhere All At Once for being a "feel-good" movie.

[The Curious Sofa]

It had its moments, but I also felt it was overly cute and tried too hard to please. I had a similar issue with the other Andy Weir adaptation, The Martian, which also felt tonally too lightweight for my taste, though I liked that better than Project Hail Mary. Since I haven’t read his novels, I don’t know whether that is inherent to his writing or whether the film adaptations deliberately lighten the tone to make up for the serious predicaments their protagonists face.
I also thought Sandra Hüller’s wig was so bad that it became distracting.

[bunuelian]

I read the book for my book club. As a literary work, it belongs in the young adult category. No shade to YA as a venerable industrial product, mind you. Emphasis on product. I strongly suspect the book was written after the film rights were sold.

As with all science fiction, the book is really about something other than its stated story, in this case, social isolation, professional inadequacy, and a profound inability to make connections with others.

[bdsweeney]

I agree with just about everything that’s been said, especially regarding the film’s over length and heightened cuteness level. But if I were to place it on a binary, I’d still lean towards it being ‘good enough’ rather than bad.

I guess a lot of this comes from the fact that since becoming a parent, I’ve seen what’s out there in terms of contemporary stuff for 5-to-teen-year-olds and a lot of it is very poor and it’s getting especially rarer and rarer to see somewhat decent live action material. So, in terms of this low bar, it’s pretty good. Actually, that’s underselling it a little. It’s definitely worth a family movie night watch. I’m going to guess that my 6-year old would love it. I just wish that he’d been just a touch older (and the movie shorter) so that I could have taken him to the cinema to watch it. If he’d been just six months older, I would have.

[Toland's Mitchell]

I truly do not understand the "best film evaaaaaaaar" reactions present across the internet (the film is at present one of the top 150 highest-rated movies on Letterboxd), and they seem like a redux of the hyperbolic praise of Everything Everywhere All At Once for being a "feel-good" movie.

The Letterboxd list is dog crap and so is Project Hail Mary. I know what you mean about the similarity on LB with Everything Everywhere. Every couple years or so, there's a film that shoots its way up the list as it soon as it launches. Parasite, EEAAO, Spider-Verse 2, and now Project Hail Mary. I can at least understand the love for EEAAO, it was "feel-good" yet still had depth and intelligence to it. Project Hail Mary, on the other hand, contains deep intelligent materials, and does everything in its power to avoid exploring them. That was probably my biggest gripe with the film. The first act felt like it was going to be a hardcore science fiction film. The stakes were extremely high; there was contact with a higher alien species; there was going to be sacrifice; there was going to be something to think about after the credits rolled. I thought I was in for a treat like Danny Boyle's Sunshine or Villeneuve's Arrival. But then the moment Rocky arrived, it became more like Cast Away and Turner and Hooch, but in space. It's pretty clear given Rocky's spaceship, that he is from a more intelligent, more advanced species, so why didn't the filmmakers treat him as such, instead of as a cloying emotional support animal? The tone of film suddenly turned too optimistic and silly, which robbed suspense. Secondly, the movie suddenly preoccupied itself with light-hearted buddy comedy. The main plot of saving Earth from apocalypse felt tertiary at times. Still, as the movie dragged on, there was never a doubt in my mind it would make the safest, most superficial, most optimistic choices. It was a frustrating watch, especially after its promising first act, and bloated 150 minute run-time. I'll give a nod to its technical aspects, but I hated the overall experience of watching this, and couldn't run out of the theater quick enough.

[The Curious Sofa]

I also had issues with Rocky and wasn't charmed by his/her/its supposed adorableness. In a movie that aspires to be realistic hard science fiction, depicting aliens onscreen is tricky. So it's understandable that Stanley Kubrick abandoned the idea entirely after going through several designs. Arrival depicted aliens defined by their unique way of communicating, and the film pulled it off reasonably well. The film even made the nicknames given to the aliens work without cutesifying them.
When I read that they would use a rock-spider puppet in the film, I wondered how they would pull it off. For me, at least, they didn't, and it doesn't help that any communication difficulties that are easily overcome. I could see this character in a kids' show or a sitcom like ALF. I don't have a problem with cute aliens per se; Spielberg counterbalanced that aspect in E.T. with a great deal emotional depth, something that is lacking here.

[nitin]

it really doesnt help that what should be a peer relationship comes off as master/pet at best