I need reasons to hope. Everything around us moves faster and faster and decisions are made in rooms I’m not in. Art is made, but whether I see it among the clutter is a matter of fate beyond my control. I need stories that commiserate with me and then turn around to quiet my fears, reminding me that hope, wonder and curiosity are not fleeting or accidental. They can be what saves us when the light of the sun gets stolen away.
At risk of spoiling a perfect novel, that is what “Project Hail Mary” does, and after braving a movie theater in the age of streaming and $20 movie tickets, I could tell it did the same for the filmmakers.
No movie is ever going to be able to represent the books we love in perfect detail, in part because no two people ever read the same story.
Adaptations are hard to get right, especially when contending with fans like me who don’t want movies as much as we want time-sensitive reasons to tell everyone around us to read our favorite books. No movie is ever going to be able to represent the books we love in perfect detail, in part because no two people ever read the same story. So how can a filmmaker be expected to take that story, itself containing multitudes, and whittle it into shape for 90 minutes of a whole different medium?
“Project Hail Mary” answers this challenge by reminding the pedantic critics among us, myself included, that the goal is not to make a visual novel. A film adaptation excels when, out of the endless possibilities provided by the source material, it has selected its message, its perspective and its audience and is allowing everything else to act in service of that one vision. Humanity needs hope to survive, and we need people who are brave enough to try even when armed with the slimmest margin of that hope. That’s the vision.
This is a story that starts when everything feels hopeless. A man wakes up alone in space. He is not an astronaut; he is a middle-school science teacher with a seemingly endless supply of punny T-shirts. His name is Ryland Grace. There is a red line arcing from the Sun to Venus slowly siphoning away heat, effectively dooming the Earth to a slow, cold march towards starvation. He has to find a solution.
This is approximately the order in which he remembers facts about himself as he wakes up from the medically-induced coma and years-long journey that his two crewmates did not survive.
Instead, trust me that the minds at work in crafting this film saw what I saw, and felt what I did upon reading the book, and were somehow able to translate it to the screen.
I’d tell you the rest, but that would deprive you of the feeling of experiencing a beautiful story for the first time. Instead, trust me that the minds at work in crafting this film saw what I saw, and felt what I did upon reading the book, and were somehow able to translate it to the screen.
Sometimes the most popular things — or people — get that way for good reason. Ryan Gosling brings Grace to life with his performance. He walks into conference rooms like a kid being sent to the principal’s office, but in his classroom, in his lab and in zero-G he comes alive. Fear sent him to space: dire, desperate fear and a last-ditch hope that maybe there was a solution somewhere up in the stars. Yet Grace is more than either of those things because he gives himself space for wonder.
He appreciates beauty in a faraway planet, in the contours of alien metal, and even amid the thin red line that sent him to space in the first place. The movie lingers on these stunning visuals, encompassing the grandeur of space, but it feels like more than eye candy. We are seeing the world through Grace’s eyes and he thinks it is absolutely stunning. This is even clearer in the book, as Grace often takes a moment to revel in just how cool whatever he’s doing is before returning to the task at hand, but I was genuinely shocked at how well the filmmakers translated this to the screen.
When he floats alone inside the Petrova line, Earth’s official name for it, he lets a million red particles wash over him just to soak in the moment. A wide shot shows him there from afar. So far from the rest of humanity, carrying all their hopes on his shoulders, honoring them by seeing something no one ever had before and appreciating it.
The power of a striking visual, a sweeping score, the emotions inscribed on someone’s face; it cannot be understated.
Even though I felt tears fighting their way out, I couldn’t bring myself to close my eyes even for a second and risk missing this view. I knew in that moment that this was exactly the same feeling being portrayed onscreen. The power of a striking visual, a sweeping score, the emotions inscribed on someone’s face; it cannot be understated.
Even if the opening scene hadn’t immediately earned my trust by being an almost one-to-one representation of the book’s first lines and even if I hadn’t experienced religious levels of sweater envy seeing Grace’s fox cardigan, this scene would have cinched it. My initial displeasure with pacing — there’s a twist about 200 pages into the book that gets revealed 20 minutes into the movie — turned into a gripe I’m willing to set aside. It was worth it to see this film, just to see that someone out there felt what I did in reading this book and had the skill to translate it into visual language to share it with the rest of the world. Read the book, watch the movie, do whatever you need to do to feel this way, even for a moment.