Project Hail Mary

Bluesky

Project Hail Mary joins a long list of filmed adaptations of science fiction novels, a litany that goes back more than a century and to one of the first such books. You might object to me calling those science fiction but their liberties in service of the fantastic are rooted in imminent modernity. There are electric shocks, electric lights, Dune might have spaceships but Dracula has train timetables.

All that to say that there's ample precedent, and while its protagonist's technically-grounded astronautic adventure has shades of Interstellar, Moon, and Sunshine, its fantastic elements push it into different territory. The trailers give away one of the book's significant reveals, while our protagonist (Ryan Gosling) awakes alone he's eventually got company. Drew Goddard, who adapted Andy Weir's The Martian has taken the novel's parallel discoveries, both of stars and self, almost verbatim.

Some sequences are shortened, including discussions of relativity, and compression as the consequence of that kind of speed is thematically, even mathematically, appropriate. It gives Gosling more time with Rocky, voiced by James Ortiz and puppeted by Ortiz and a team of others. There are a significant quantity of practical effects, including rotating sets, wire-assisted free-fall as with Gravity, but this is less about hardware than heart-warming. As with ET, Rocky makes it clear there's no problem that an interpersonal connection can't help solve. With plenty of competition in the sub-genre, few could lay a finger on this pair. The air they breathe might be wildly different and kept separate by barriers but their chemistry is palpable.

So too between Grace and the director of Project Hail Mary, an icy Sandra Hüller. While Grace might be the fool of the piece she's aloof, but as with The Fall Guy, karaoke brings us close to the musical. That's in part due to directors Phil Lord and Chris Miller. This is not their only movie to have a tie-in Lego set, though this might be the first time it's more merchandise than muse. Their willingness towards physical comedy is well-used here. Weir's novel has plenty of humour but words on the page grab less efficiently than a shaggy-haired Gosling on a gimbal-mounted stage.

It's helped, massively, by the incredible presence of Rocky. Ortiz's performance is up there with Kermit and the gang in another adapted novel. I don't make that comparison lightly. There's a physicality to his relationship with Grace that transcends even the progress made between Gollum and Quaritch. That's not to undersell Gosling. He has ample capability to veer from fragility to capability to comedy. His charm carries a role that's innately fluid, icy at times, wet at others.

Also of varying states is how we see things - the blur of memory, the tactility of Rocky's view, visions of Petrova. There are moments that are glorious that only a cinema screen can do justice to, no matter how accurately Lego brick 3250 in Bright Yellowish Green reflects it. It should perhaps have a strobe warning: there are plenty of actual flashes among the moments of brilliance, but there's craft throughout.

I could count rivets. I did notice that a carrier's deck wasn't set up for flight operations, but that's less of an issue than pacing, if not spacing. The film takes its time with some elements but rushes past others. They're not quite subliminal but their relative importance is distorted. Andy Weir is well-versed in constructing narratives where every solution brings a new bit of adversity, and that propulsive background is evident here. At over two and a half hours one does wonder if a bit of re-engineering might have kept the core of the journey without all the same baggage, but that's ever the problem with adapting the literary. Not everyone has the clout to stretch one book over three films, and that's a bad Hollywood habit.

We've a more efficient weaving of story here. The embroidered logos at the end credits are nice enough, but all involved have properly leveraged what makes movies magic. One particular highlight is the variety of voices as Rocky is given voice, but the film's already given him life. Where the film really blesses us is in its relationships. That's not unique - much of the best science fiction is about the spaces between individuals, not planets - but Project Hail Mary is a stellar adaptation.

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