"Project Hail Mary" (2026)

Hang on... did Hollywood just release a really good movie?  Like, a really, truly good movie?  A movie I wanted to see more than once in the theater?  A movie I wanted to take my teens to see?

Whoa.

And to think, I almost didn't go see Project Hail Mary (2026) because I've been so busy!

I'm really glad I made time to go see it last Saturday, and was able to go back with my husband and our teens before it left the theaters.  Because this movie was so much better than I expected.  And I say that knowing that it was based on a book by Andy Weir, who also wrote the book The Martian (2015) is based on.  And I really like the movie version of The Martian.  

I really enjoy stories about astronauts and space travel.  I really like stories about figuring out how to survive in dire circumstances with limited resources.  But this movie is so much more than either of those!

In fact, at its core, it's a buddy comedy.  About two super smart dudes working together to save both their home worlds.

But it's more than that, too.  It's a look at the incredible preciousness of life.  It's a study of what it actually means to be brave.  It's an examination of what deep friendship can accomplish.  And it beautifully exemplifies the Biblical principal that "No one has greater love than this: that someone lays down his life for his friends" (John 13:15).

Dr. Ryland Grace (Ryan Gosling) didn't think he could save the world.  He didn't think he could even make much of a difference in the grand scheme of things.  Be a good science teacher at a middle school, sure.  He could do that.  But solve the question of why the earth's sun was going dim?  Find a way to fix the problem?  Not him.  He was just too ordinary.  He was not a hero.  He couldn't become a hero.  He didn't even want to try to be one.

Because heroes are big, tough guys like John Wayne and Rocky Balboa, right?  

Actually, the character of Rocky Balboa comes into play a lot during Project Hail Mary, and it is not an accident that author Andy Weir picked him.  Think about the movie Rocky (1976) for a minute.  A very ordinary guy (Sylvester Stallone), who is actually a loser, a wannabe, a part-time puncher who makes most of his money menacing people for the Mob... has one shot at being something better.  At proving what he can do.  And showing that even a loser like him can stand tall alongside the kinds of people everyone says are winners.

There's a lot of that in Dr. Grace's story too.  He just has to grow into the shoes a little at a time.

And can we talk a minute about Ryan Gosling's acting?  Because, to be honest, I have never had much time for him.  In fact, he's the reason I wasn't necessarily super excited to see this movie, initially.  The only thing I have really seen him in was The Notebook (2004), which I sat through because a) I do love James Garner, and b) I was sequestered on jury duty and it was the movie picked by my fellow jurors to watch in our sealed-off lounge one night.  And that was not my kind of movie at all, and Gosling seemed so perfectly suited to that sort of maudlin fare that I just couldn't take him seriously ever since.  

Yeah, I take him seriously now.  Because wow.  I will start watching movies of his now that I had previously avoided.  

I liked the whole movie so much the first time... and I loved it the second.  Going to have to pick up the soundtrack by Daniel Pemberton -- I already love his scores for The Man from U.N.C.L.E. (2015) and King Arthur: Legend of the Sword (2017).

Also, the screenplay is by Andy Wier and Drew Goddard.  Drew Goddard was an important part of Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel, and I was so excited to see he was part of this!  

Is this movie family friendly?  It is!  Okay, there is one little joke about the alien, Rocky, saying an inappropriate variation of the phrase "fist bump," which is not explained and will go over the heads of clean-minded kids.  There's a super-short discussion of suicide by some very minor characters.  Zero cussing.  (For real!)  Zero romance, a little mild violence when some security guys restrain someone.  There are a couple of jump scares, and there are several very tense and dangerous sequences.  So you wouldn't want to take really little kids to it.  But it's remarkably clean.  (As I have repeatedly remarked, lol.)