Project Hail Mary
Directors: Phil Lord and Christopher Miller
Cast: Ryan Gosling, Sandra Huller, Lionel Boyce, Ken Leung, Milana Vayntrub
Released: March 20, 2026
Before I saw this movie, I read the book. Actually, I listened to the audiobook which I really enjoyed. I became quite immersed with the story. The movie is just shy of almost three hours while the audiobook is 16 hours! I highly recommend it if you saw the movie and liked it. As you can imagine, the book goes a tad more in depth! For instance, they took out the guy from New Zealand and the whole Sahara Desert plot. For those of you who just watched the movie, you're probably asking, What guy from New Zealand, question? What's this about the Sahara Desert, question? Exactly. But I get it. I understand that not everything from the book can make it into the movie. I think for the most part they did a good job of adapting the novel into a movie.
Project Hail Mary was written by Andy Weir, the same guy who wrote The Martian (and was made into a movie with Matt Damon). I also read the book (and I actually read the physical book - in fact, I own it). No surprise, this is also a sci-fi story.
There is a "streak of infrared light from the sun to Venus" called the Petrova line (named after a "radio telescope enthusiast named Irina Petrova" who noticed this two years ago). In this streak, there is a bunch of tiny little black dots called astrophage (ha! I was quite familiar with that word since it's mentioned A LOT in the book) that are essentially eating the sun and dimming it. It is bit of an issue because over the next thirty years, the earth could cool 10-15 degrees. This means crops will die, and people and animals will die of starvation. So, not great.
The movie starts with our main character, Ryland Grace (Ryan Gosling - ha, both character and actor have the same initials!), waking up on a spacecraft from an induced comma. He sees there are two other astronauts - a Chinese man and a Russian woman, but they are both dead. They don't really go into much about why they were in a coma, but it's really interesting in the book. Basically they put the astronauts in a coma so they wouldn't go crazy and kill each other because they would be in a small enclosed space for about four years (UGH!). But I'm getting ahead of myself.
He has no idea where he is until he looks out a big widow and sees outer space. He starts to have flashbacks and this is how he eventually puts the pieces together. He's a middle school science teacher and he remembers telling his class about how the sun is dying, but reassures his kids by telling them "the best minds in the world" are working on it.
German Eva Stratt (Sandra Huller) with the Petrova Task Force comes to his classroom (after all the kids have left) and pulls out a journal titled "An Analysis of Water Based Assumptions and Recalibrations of Expectations for Evolutions Models" (yes, I paused the TV so I could jot all that down!) which Grace wrote. BIG YAWN. That sounds like something that could put you to sleep! There was one part of the thesis where he claims that water is not necessary for evolution. She asks him if he still believes this and he replies while "water is required for life on Earth, a completely different planet might have completely different conditions." A lot of his colleagues were skeptical over this and he was pretty much kicked out of the scientific academia circle after he called a the leading expert in the field "a staggering waste of carbon" which is so on brand for a biologist. This is why he now teaches middle school.
He is hesitant when she tells him he needs to come with her. According to her, "Petrova line samples splashed down last night. I want you to tell me what they are, how they work." She has chosen him because of that scientific journal he wrote and he wrote it because he has a doctorate in molecular biology. But when she adds that the samples survived on the surface of the sun, that gets his attention. He meets Carl (Lionel Boyce) the bodyguard who escorts him into the SUV.
He is driven to a lab where he's completely covered up in a hazmat suit. There is a big concrete wall with a window separating him in the lab from Stratt and a bunch of officials. She's communicating with him via a radio and reminds him to try not to rip his suit because the entire room is filled with argon.
He can't seem to be able to see into the astrophage (since I listened to to the audiobook I'm not sure if this should be capitalized or not; I've seen it printed both ways online so I'm just gonna lowercase it) even though he's tried x-rays, microwaves, gamma rays, and visible light. We know it's a tedious process because all the officials except for Stratt are falling asleep. He finally discovers it's a tiny alien cell. He's very excited about this when he announces it to his audiences, but when he looks back at the cell, he's discovered it's died. But this is good because now they can find out what these little dots are made of. He takes the sample and see it's composed of carbon, oxygen, and hydrogen, so it's made almost entirely out of water. This disappoints him greatly.
Stratt basically tells him, "Thanks, bye"; she has over 300 other biologists from around the world to help figure out what's going on with these dots, but he still wants to help, so she leaves him three of the tiny cells so he can continue to study them.
He and Carl buy a bunch of supplies at a hardware store (with the government's money; I laughed when they also each got a pair of sunglasses and a bunch of candy; Grace's choice of candy appears to be Twizzlers). They're trying to figure out why the astrophage traveled to Venus. They build a large wooden crate where Ryland hangs a box inside that crate that is supposed to represent Venus. He even has it set "to emit the same infrared light frequency as Venus's C02 atmosphere." Carl dumbs it down for us non-scientific folks: "So if the dots move when you turn the lights on, that means they're looking for CO2."
The atrosphage move off the slide when they begin the experiment. Ryland can't just go in the crate to retrieve them because they will escape if there is light. The only way to retrieve them is to move the crate into an enclosed room within the bigger room they're in which they cover the windows with foil that they duct tape to the walls. It's a good thing they bought a crapload of foil and duct tape! I guess they knew they would come in handy! When Ryland enters the dark room, he not only finds the three astrophage, but there is a fourth. He calls Stratt to tell he they figured out how astrophage breeds.
He's taken by fighter jet to an aircraft carrier in the middle of the ocean. Stratt asks him if he can do the astrophage reproduction at scale. She introduces him to a room full of scientists who are working on this issue. They have figured out that the C02 of Venus helps the astrophage breed and that's why they're going there.
It turns out that Grace was flown to this top secret location because they need two million kilograms of astrophage. Stratt has to quickly grant him clearance to Project Hail Mary and she presents a slide show explaining what it is: "The sun is not the only star dying. There is a clear pattern of infection. Every star was infected by its neighbor except one." That is Tau Ceti, which is 11.9 light years away. Okay, when I saw how that was written out on the screen when I watched with the subtitles on, I was like, Ooohhh, that's how you spell it. For some reason, I was thinking it was Tau City, but I knew that couldn't be right. Anyway, it is uninfected despite being well within a cluster of infected stars. Nobody knows why this is so they built a ship to go there and find out. It was easy enough to build the ship (really, question?), but the energy required to power the ship is the problem, or at least, it was. This is where the two million kilograms of astrophage comes in. If they can make enough of it, they'll be able to reach Venus. Ryland isn't sure about this. The cells store a lot of energy and if they make a mistake, that much astrophage could vaporize California, to give an example. Stratt reminds him that is why they "live on a boat in the middle of the ocean" in case something like that happens.
Grace reiterates, "So you wanna build a near-light speed spaceship, have it travel further than any human-made object has ever traveled, and visit a star just to 'see what's up?'", question. Stratt confirms this and when Ryland asks what will happen once they get there, she says, "There won't be enough fuel for a round-trip so they send their findings back to Earth on probes." On the screen behind her, we see the "Beetles" prototype design. This is an Easter egg for those who read the book, though it should be spelled "Beatles." (Though to be fair, I never read the book, so maybe it was spelled "Beetles" :::shrug:::.)
When he learns that the astronauts are basically going on a suicide mission, he asks if there's any other possible solutions, but this is the only choice they have if they don't want the entire population to starve "and watch everything on this planet go extinct."
In another flashback a little later, Stratt introduces the flight team to Grace. He meets the pilot, Commander Yao (Ken Leung); the engineer, Oleysa Illyukhina (Milana Vayntrub); and the scientist, Martin DuBois (Malachi Kirby); plus their back ups. Once the mission is completed, they will have the option to end their lives on their terms or "the alternative is a slow, miserable death by starvation." The Russian woman wants to do "lethal injection with heroin" and the Chinese pilot jokes, "I'll have what she's having." This is true that Illyukhina wants to die that way (she wants to experience "massive pleasure" before she dies), but Yao just wants to shoot himself in the head to end his life. I guess they wanted to lighten the morbid scene, so they just had him make the joke. Of course, neither of them will have to worry about that because they just never woke up from their comas which is probably the best way to go if you're going to die anyway, though it doesn't help if you're dying before you've completed your mission! You may be wondering why Grace only found the bodies of Yao and Illyukhina and why he himself was on the Hail Mary when he wasn't one of the astronauts prepared to go. Well, I'll get to that later.
Aboard the spacecraft, there is a computerized voice dubbed Mary that is there to answer Ryland's questions. While this computer is still there in the book, Ryland figures out most of his questions himself, but I suppose this is to help move the film along. When he commands Mary to "call Earth" (lol), the AI informs him, "Current transmission time to Earth is 11 years, 10 months, 14 days, and six hours." That makes the Pony Express look like high speed internet!
Okay from here on out, I will be spoiling the movie, so if you haven't seen the movie then and don't want to be spoiled, then don't read any further.
Warning! Spoilers ahead! Warning! Spoilers ahead! Don't cry if you're spoiled because I warned you!
Okay, I probably could have waited a few more paragraphs, but I wanted to touch on something. When I listened to the audiobook, I had NO idea there was an alien in it and when Grace sees the large alien spacecraft, I was thinking there's no way there's an alien...there must be some explanation. Well, I was wrong because there is indeed an alien!
I watched the trailer for the movie after listening to the audiobook and for the first minute and thirty seconds of the two minute trailer, I was impressed that Rocky wasn't shown or mentioned. I think there is one little moment shown where Grace is meeting him for the first time, but if you're not familiar with the book, you wouldn't know what's going on. So I'm thinking, oh, I love that. They're keeping the alien out of the trailer. That's brilliant! Uh, yeah, no, that didn't happen. The last thirty seconds of the trailer is all about Rocky. Now they don't show him (maybe just like a claw), so at least they saved that for the movie. But there's a scene of Ryland recording a video and saying, "So I met an alien today..." and I'm thinking, Why are they spoiling this?!, question? Okay, yes, they're probably assuming most people who are planning to see the movie have read the book, but I bet there are a lot of people who never read the book who also saw the movie! In my opinion, they should have kept the alien out of the trailer! Or at least maybe hint at an alien and take out the "I met an alien today" line! Okay, thank you for listening to my gripe about this!
Once Grace approaches the Tau Ceti orbit, he sees a huge unidentified flying object that Mary refers to as "Blip A." We are only thirty-six minutes into the movie at this point. In the audiobook, it's about four hours in when he notices the odd spacecraft. It is gigantic in comparison to the spacecraft Grace is in. He's freaked out and wants to get away from the other spacecraft which can only be described as otherworldly. In the book, he's more curious about it. But in the film, he's desperate to get away from it. There is a bit of a comical scene where we see him zoom away, only for the other spacecraft just to follow him. An automated arm outside the spacecraft sends what looks like a bottle (except not made out of glass or plastic). Grace surmises it's either a message or a bomb. It hits his space vehicle and goes off into the void. The next one is moving a lot slower than the last one and he realizes it's because the aliens think he's dumb, haha. He has to put on an EVA suit and go on a space walk. I think this would be terrifying, especially if you've never done this before.
The bottle is difficult to open because it's made out of Xenon (he has machines to tell him what is is) which is odd that a gas is a solid. Once he gets it open, inside is a model showing where the alien's planet is compared to where they are now (what, question? is Google Maps available in space, question?). Grace comments that this alien is "also a long way from home." In return, he adds Earth to the model to show where he's from and sends it back.
Now we're ready for Ryland to meet Rocky. Well, he's unnamed at this point, but I enjoyed the alliteration of that sentence.
One thing I appreciate about the movie was the visualation of Rocky. When I listened to his description in the audiobook, I had a hard time imagining him. He's described as looking like a spider about the size of a dog (specifically a Labrador) with a carapace. He's faceless and has five limbs that have three triangular "fingers" that look more like claws. He kinda sounded freaky to me! He got his name Rocky because his exterior looks like it's made out of rocks...which is how he looks in the movie.
I also appreciate that Rocky was created as a puppet rather than CGI. He is voiced by James Ortiz who also operated the puppet. The voice is fine, but after listening to hours of Rocky's voice in the audiobook, that's what I was used to. When we first meet Rocky (in the audiobook and movie),
he communicates by "speaking" in musical notes. It almost sounded like an electric organ in the audiobook. (BTW, I would love to know how this is conveyed in the physical book.) Once Rocky is speaking English, in the audiobook, you can still hear the musical chords behind the words. It also has a robot-sounding quality to it, but this is probably to reflect that his words are being translated through a computer. Rocky's movie voice does have a computerized sound to it, but the background musical chimes are missing. It just wasn't the same, so it was a little jarring. To me, it just didn't sound like Rocky. This is not my Rocky!
I'm still not exactly sure how Rocky's alien language was translated into English. I mean, it's not like Google translate has Eridian. It's a little more elaborated on in the book, but I'm still a little skeptical that Ryland could understand Rocky...but I get it. If the main character or the readers/listeners/viewers couldn't understand Rocky, then that would just be frustrating! All I'm saying that if, for some crazy ass reason, someone in real life met an alien, there's no way they'd be understanding the alien as well as Grace understands Rocky...but I digress...
When Grace becomes the first human being to come into contact with an alien, there is a cute moment where he finds that whatever pose he makes, the alien will mimic him. It's also really cute when the alien laughs; it sounds like a little chitter.
Now there's a lot of things about Rocky that never gets addressed in the movie or are very quickly addressed while in the book we learn a lot about him and his his physiology and biology works and what his home is like. For instance, they never touch on that he's 291 (!!) Earth years old. When Grace asks Rocky what he misses most about home, he replies, "My mate" and says they've been together for 186 years, so I guess that's a clue that Eridians live a long time. Also, the reason I'm using Earth years is because Eridians use a whole different system, which makes sense. It's explained in the book. Grace also asks what Rocky's mate's name is and Rocky replies with a long musical note.
For the most part, I was fine with how Rocky was portrayed in the movie, but there were a couple of qualms I had. The first one was that he didn't end all his questions he asked with the word "question." Every single question he asked in the book ended with a question, like "What do we do now, question?" or "What does that word mean, question?" (hehe, he asked what the word "jerk" meant after Ryland called him one...Ryland told him it didn't matter!) or "How long since last sleep, question?" You get the idea. In the movie, he looked to be on track to follow this tradition, but then he asked a question without saying "question" at the end, and then it happened a few more times. Now they would still pepper in him saying "question" at the end of his questions, but it wasn't consistent and it drove me crazy! That was one of the endearing little things Rocky did in the book and I do not approve that they took it out of the movie.
Also, I feel like they made him just a taaaad more annoying than he is in the book and I wouldn't call him annoying in the book. There are times when Ryland gets a little irritated with him, but Rocky can dish it right back to him. In the movie, when Rocky moves in, he's asking a lot of questions (hence the reason they probably don't have him end each question with "question" because there's so many of them in a row it would probably annoy the audience...just a theory), but in the book he's a lot more smarter than he's portrayed in the movie (not that he's an idiot) and doesn't come off as the comic relief. Look, he's no where near Jar Jar Binks level, but I would trust book!Rocky before movie!Rocky.
Grace quickly realizes that Rocky is having the same issue him. His sun in his orbit is also dying. Rocky recognizes astrophage when Grace shows it to him and says, "Bad, bad, bad, bad, bad, bad, bad." I don't know how many times he says "bad" exactly, but it should have just been three times. As it is pointed out in the book, he says a word three times in a row if he's trying to emphasize something.
Grace is keeping a video diary of his findings and this is for the benefit of the audience; this was not in the book since he told us everything in his head. There are some funny moments where he's complaining about his new roommate but has to speak very softly because Rocky has excellent hearing (very true fact from the book). He's whispering and Rocky can still hear him, ha!
Oh, wait! There's another Rocky moment in the movie that didn't quite gel with the book. The film got it right that Eridians like to watch other Eridians sleep (he often asks Grace if he can watch him sleep), but they do not like anyone to see them eat as it is a private matter. In the book, when Grace asks if he can observe him eat (he let Rocky watch him eat), Rocky is very hesitant about this. In the movie, Rocky is watching Grace eat and he comments, "Grace look disgust when eat." The Rocky I know and love would never say that. In the book when he watched Ryland eat, he was intrigued. When Ryland (in the movie) asks how it looks when he (Rocky) eats, Rocky replies, "Beautiful" and when Ryland asks him to show him, he's fine with it. No, no, no! Rocky would never volunteer to eat in front of anyone and he would never refer to it as "Beautiful!" Quite the opposite!
Rocky was the sole Eridian on his spacecraft because the other twenty-three that were with him all died of radiation. Grace comments in the video diary that Rocky's species doesn't know anything about radiation or relativity, which is true to the book, but goes way more in depth.
Ryland and Rocky come up with a plan to orbit the planet where astrophage breeds to collect a sample and figure out why it's not eating the Tau Ceti star. (I just looked up Tau Ceti and it appears to be a real star with its own Wikipedia page. I just scanned it because it looks really boring.) So they do that and decide to give this planet a name. They decide to name it after Rocky's mate, but Grace needs a word to translate it into something he can speak. When this happens in the book, I knew he was going to suggest Adrian and I've never even seen the Rocky movies, but even I know there's an Adrian. And, yes, this is exactly what happens and they name the planet Adrian.
Once they collect the samples, they do some experiments. I did like Ryalnd's shirt which showed a picture of the periodic table and under it were the words "I wear this shirt periodically." I bet he's a fan of Breaking Bad, but really, who wouldn't be? The samples they found include life. Rocky gets excited and exclaims, "Life is reason!" He explains that "Life on Adrian makes astrophage die" and if they bring this predator home, their stars won't die.
Now they have a new plan where they will get very close to the Adrian atmosphere and lower a collector that Rocky has assembled to, you guessed it, collect more samples to get this Adrian predator. Grace will have to go out on the hull to reel in the collector to reel it in, like he's fishing. If they're not at a precise angle and speed, they will die. That's not terrifying. Grace is able to collect what he needs during the mission, but once back inside the ship they hear a loud creaking noise and realize that the gravity is tearing the ship apart. Grace hits his head and passes out and Rocky risks his life by getting out of his makeshift bubble that's keeping him safe (you know because he and Grace are used to different atmospheres) and drags Grace to his bed where he's given medical treatments. Poor Rocky is on fire, but makes it back to his little pressurized ball. When Grace wakes up and sees a trail of black sludge, he realizes that Rocky got out to save him. He sees an unconscious Rocky and is happy when he wakes up a few days later (or however long it is.) I have to say this scene is way more emotional/scarier/crazier in the book.
While Rocky is unconscious, Ryland creates the predator that he dubs taulmeaba. He tells a comatose Rocky that all they have to do now is "breed enough to survive the trip." It was really cute when he makes a bunch of get well cards and tapes them to Rocky's sphere.
Okay, remember when I mentioned that Grace meets the three astronauts that will be on the mission, but one of them (DuBois) wasn't aboard the spacecraft, question? This is because he was killed a few days before the flight was to depart. When I saw a flashback scene of Ryland and Stratt standing outside with a large building in the background, I immediately knew which scene this was from the book. I knew the building was going to blow up because inside there were scientists (including DuBois) who were working "with a dangerous amount of astrophage." That is why there was no DuBois. And you may also be wondering why DuBois's replacement didn't replace him. It's because he was also killed in the same explosion. That seemed kind of dumb! But this is the reason why Grace was abroad. He is pretty much the only scientist available that knows what's going on with Project Hail Mary. He did not want to go, but was pretty much forced to go. He was scared of dying, but Stratt pointed out if he didn't go, he would die anyway, along with the rest of the planet.
At one point, Ryland has to tell Rocky that he's not going to survive this trip. Rocky is upset by this, but Ryland tells him he's made peace with it. When Rocky discovers that Ryland will need two million kilograms of astrophage, he has plenty and is happy to give him some so he can make the trip home. Grace starts crying because he is so overwhelmed with happiness. When this happens in the book, Rocky ask him why his face is leaking (question?), but he never asks this in the movie! He also cried when he found out that Rocky was okay after being unconscious.
Everything seems to be looking up. Both Ryland and Rocky will save their planets and Ryland will get to go home. It will be a loooong trip, but now he has the mileage (it's that the right word, question? Probably not) to get there. The journey will be four years, 2 months, and eleven days. And I thought the road trip I took from Omaha to Charleston about a decade ago that took about two full days was never ending!
Ryland and Rocky say their tearful goodbyes (well, Rocky isn't crying because he physically can't) and Ryland even gets to visit Rocky's oddly shaped spacecraft (which is not a scene in the book) before they go their separate ways. So there's twenty minutes left in the movie and about this part in the audiobook, there was about an hour and a half left, so I knew they were going to rush/skip over a few things!
There's one last issue Grace has to deal with and this goes way more in depth and is a lot more stressful in the book! Like, when this was going on in the book, I was STRESSED OUT! But maybe because I knew everything would work out, I was less stressed out while watching the movie. Plus it all happens pretty quickly, so there was no time to stress!
Grace hears a warning on the ship saying "contaminant detected." The taumoeba were able to get through the Xenonite which they were in. Luckily, he was able to stop them before they ate all the astrophage on the ship, which remember, are his ticket home. The issue is that he's worried about Rocky because Rocky's ship is made of Xenonite and the taumoeba will already be in his fuel line. He's going to be stranded without fuel and his life support systems will fail. As Ryland muses, "He's looking at a long, slow painful death alone." How do you say "Rocky is f***ed" in Eridian, question?
Ryland must make a Sophie's choice: return to Earth or go and save Rocky. He only has enough fuel to choose one. Of course he saves his space buddy! I do think he made the right choice. Rocky is such a great character, you can't help but cheer for Ryland to save the alien. And of course Rocky is indepted to him and puts in a good word for him on his planet where Ryland will be a guest for the unforeseeable future. He's even pretty much fluent in Eridian by now!
And yes, Earth is saved too He was able to send the taumoeba to fight off the astrophage and Earth will be spared, hurray! The one thing I don't like is that we see an older Stratt watching the videos Grace sent and he's talking about Rocky and showing footage of him. In the book, nobody ever found out about Rocky (because there was no video diary!) and I kind of liked it that way.
I enjoyed the movie and I implore everyone who also liked it to check out the book, especially the audiobook. It is definitely worth the 16 hours.
