Project Hail Mary (2026) – Rocks

Released: 19th March
Seen: 1st July

One of the most beloved stories that cinema keeps going back to is “Man interacts with aliens”. It’s a time-tested story that allows for so many variations, from the whimsical wonder of ET to the nightmarish horror of The Thing, cinema has run the gamut of ways to show a human having to deal with a creature from another planet, figure out how to communicate with said creature and either save or destroy it. It’s been done so many times that we’re almost out of new alien designs that we can use before repeating ourselves. So one would think that another film about a human going to space and spending the entire time interacting with an alien would feel at least a little rote, a little repetitive… somehow, Project Hail Mary manages to feel fresh while also being charming as all hell.

Project Hail Mary begins when Ryland Grace (Ryan Gosling) wakes up aboard a spaceship with a mild dose of amnesia, having no idea how he got up there. As time goes on, he begins to remember (and we are shown via flashbacks) that he was sent up to space on a mission, led by Eva Stratt (Sandra Hüller), to help save the earth from experiencing global cooling due to the sun slowly dimming. While he’s out in space trying to figure out why the sun is doing that and how to potentially reverse it, he finds another spaceship out there manned by a creature seemingly made up of rocks, thus they are named Rocky (James Ortiz). Rocky can only talk through a series of musical screeches and sees by echolocation but, after a little help from technology so Ryland can translate what’s being said, Rocky and Ryland start to form a beautiful friendship that will help keep them both sane while they try to save the world.

If ET was the whimsical Alien movie and The Thing was the terrifying alien movie, Project Hail Mary is the charming alien movie because from start to finish it uses every single trick in the book to charm the audience into a stupor and god damn it works well. Every single element is almost clinically designed to make you just smile in pure awe of everything going on, from the bold colours and glorious visual shots to the pure adorableness of Rocky to just the awkward dorky Ryan Gosling performance that holds everything together, it’s all just there to charm your brains out. It never pushes things so hard that it reaches saccharine levels, and so many scenes could very easily land there, but it’s never bland either. Everything just hits at the exact right level of emotion so you can’t really do anything beyond just grin the whole time. It’s funny at just the right moments to feel natural, the sadder moments aren’t depressing but still provide enough weight to the proceedings and when the film wants to ratchet up the tension it does so to an almost scientifically determined level of perfection. 

Then there’s just the fact that Project Hail Mary looks gorgeous, the bright, bold colour palette that makes up a bulk of the finale in particular is just glorious to look at. The film manages to do so much world-building with just a few simple shots. It doesn’t need to explain anything verbally, the visuals do so much of the work that really you could probably make this a silent film and it’d still be amazing. Obviously you wouldn’t want to do that because the script is hilarious but you could if you wanted to because the visuals are doing so much to carry everything. That script is also wildly intelligent, managing to explain the scientific technobabble in a way that makes enough sense to understand the basic plot of everything and still be able to dive into the occasional fisting joke without it feeling completely out of place. To be able to jump from quantum physics to fisting is a skill that not many writers have, but this one does it with so much ease you would think it was covered in Astroglide!

Speaking of slick, the entire film basically relies on the pure charm offensive that only someone like Ryan Gosling can pull off and damn does he do a great job. Awkward, funny, intelligent and emotionally devastating, Ryan runs through every emotion like he just wants to show you he can do them better than most other people can. It’s what sells everything, from the importance of the mission to how much we should care about Rocky. Without Ryan Gosling in the lead this film would not work, it’s probably his second-best role ever (sorry, Ken is a hard role to beat and without a bespoke musical number, this was never going to beat that) and it’s easy to just enjoy him floating about on a spaceship doing math for a few hours in between talking to a sentient rock. 

That sentient rock might be the emotional core of the film, if you don’t end up loving Rocky then the weird one is you because Rocky is precious and perfect. An entirely practical puppet creation, Rocky only speaks through a translation device and in an almost monotone voice but you will end up cackling because of him. Your heart will break for the 4-legged rock creature that spends a large amount of the film in a big bubble, that’s the power of this movie. It’s a design that should feel stupid, a character that shouldn’t be able to have any real impact whatsoever but it is undeniably one of the greatest aliens that’s ever been put on film. 

Really the only part about Project Hail Mary that’s hard to understand is some of the science talk, trying to understand or explain the jargon being thrown about can feel a little bit hard and uninviting at times. Fortunately you don’t need to understand those elements to get to the core of what actually matters with the film, which is the relationship between Rocky and Ryland, but it is a tiny thing that made some scenes feel harder to watch for me but that could also just be me being dumb, if you’re a science nerd then I’m sure those scenes will be more fun than the fisting jokes for you.

Project Hail Mary has been called one of the best films of the year for good reason; its undeniable charm and wit are so perfect that it should be used as a teaching tool for how to make an enjoyable film. It tells a familiar story in a fresh way that’s just captivating to behold. This is a film that feels like it’s going to be remembered for a long time, the kind that people can just enjoy with their whole family and enjoy the serene joy that this film fills you with. Hail Project Hail Mary.