Movie Review: Project Hail Mary (2026)

by Donggeon Kim (Grade 11)

Project Hail Mary, the latest movie by directing duo Phil Lord and Christopher Miller, has gained critical acclaim since its release just a week ago. With an outstanding 4.4/5 on Letterboxd (making it the 89th highest rated movie btw), 8.5 on IMDb, and a 96% audience score on Rotten Tomatoes, Project Hail Mary seems to be a strong contender for the Oscars next year (with ratings higher than One Battle After Another, which won Best Picture at the Oscars this year).

At least that’s what everyone’s saying. But does it really live up to the hype?

After having watched the movie recently, I can see both positives and negatives to the film, with the positives mainly outweighing the negatives. The first positive I have to mention is the soundtrack. Daniel Pemberton, the same composer for Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse and its sequel, Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse (coincidentally movies that Lord and Miller both worked as producers for), shows off his musical prowess by composing the impressive soundtrack for this movie. His scores added palpable emotion to many of the scenes, particularly during the climax of the movie, with his track Time Go Fishing being a clear standout. 

However, Pemberton’s scores were only the cherry on top of an already solid movie, which brings me to my second positive: the relationship between Ryland Grace (Ryan Gosling’s character) and Rocky. I remember when the first trailer was released, I was disappointed that it spoiled Rocky’s appearance, but I’ve come to realize that this relationship isn’t so much of a spoiler as it is the thematic core of the movie.

Their relationship in the movie felt tangible and real, which was definitely helped by the use of a physical puppet for Rocky during the movie’s filming. Although their relationship does verge on being corny sometimes, it’s still developed well throughout the movie, allowing it to unite the film as its emotional center. 

Another positive would be the movie’s cinematography and visual effects. After doing some research on the film’s production, I learned that not only was no green screen used, but a physical spaceship setup was also used so that the realism would be maximized.

These production choices definitely contributed to the stunning visuals of the movie, and coming from cinematographer Greig Fraser (who worked on the cinematography for both Dune and Dune: Part Two), it’s certainly not a surprise. Furthermore, I would like to spotlight a particular scene in the movie with impressively stunning visuals, which happens when Grace goes spacewalking through astrophage illuminated by infrared light. 

An additional positive would be this movie’s condensing of the novel’s events. In the novel, there are a couple of events that I thought were extraneous and didn’t really add much to the plot. In particular, the novel had a scene where the Taumoeba gets into the fuel tanks and eats the astrophage fuel, leading to Rocky and Grace having to flush out all the Taumoeba before parting ways (which occurs again after they say goodbye, so like what was the point?). The movie decided to cut this and a couple of other scenes, including some set on Earth, which did make the movie more concise but also led to a slight loss in worldbuilding, something that I will explain later in the negatives section. 

The last positive I would like to point out was the karaoke scene with Sandra Hüller’s character Eva Stratt, where she sings her rendition of Sign of the Times by Harry Styles. It was an absolutely gorgeous scene that truly highlights the emotional weight placed on these characters. 

Now, having given all this praise, I would like to focus on the negatives of this movie. My main gripe with this film was its inability to properly balance humor with emotional stake. Despite slightly verging on corniness, I didn’t mind the humor in this movie; I even enjoyed it at times. Nevertheless, the timing of humor in certain scenes definitely undercut some of the emotional moments, which would have had more impact on me as a viewer if I were left to ponder those moments instead. Furthermore, with the movie’s premise of a dying sun, I expected the characters to carry a lot more emotional weight, something I felt wasn’t reflected that much in the film (although the book also shares this issue). 

My other main negative with this movie would be a large omission of the novel’s science. A core and one of my favorite parts of the novel, the science was what truly allowed the novel’s premise to be fantastical yet grounded.

However, its omission in the movie led to a couple of things being left without full explanation, like the biology of astrophage and the specifics of the physics behind Hail Mary’s interstellar travel. I know that these scientific aspects might not have fit well into movie form, but during the movie, I kept feeling like I needed to fill in the blanks with knowledge from the book in order for the narrative to fit well. 

Speaking of the book, there were some details that were left out in the movie, details which I felt could’ve made the worldbuilding slightly more compelling. There were two omitted scenes I wanted to see in particular: One where the Sahara was covered in solar panels to expedite astrophage production and the other when a nuke was blown up in Antarctica to release greenhouse gases to slow the Earth’s cooling. I felt that these scenes really added to the worldbuilding of the story, and with them omitted, it made the movie shallower in scope.

Overall, I would give Project Hail Mary an 8/10. I feel that it is slightly overrated by the public despite its merits. However, since many of my friends hold this movie in higher regard, I think this movie still deserves a watch, and will definitely be memorable in the public’s eye for years to come.