Well, I didn’t think I’d be able to see this movie until it was available to rent. But praise the Lord, I was able to watch it in theaters for my birthday, and thus am able to deliver my analysis, as requested by Miss Runyan, while it is still relevant.
Overall, I’d give this movie a 3.5 or a 4 out of five stars. It was entertaining and I did not leave feeling angry, irritated, depressed, or disappointed. But given that it was nearly three hours long, I don’t think I’d watch it again. Only things like LOTR merit that much time committed more than once. It was rather like Interstellar – I liked some aspects, didn’t like some others, had some problems with the science, enjoyed the soundtrack, appreciated the visuals, and probably won’t watch it again.
(As with The Martian, I have yet again seen the movie before reading the book, and so if I’m missing aspects that the book remedies, don’t yell at me. I have it, and I’m going to read it soon.)
But let’s start with the pros, and then I’ll get to the cons.
The Pros:
I’ve already heard this comment from multiple review sources already, so sorry to remark about this again, but this movie is pretty dang clean. For this day and age, I’m impressed. There were like three instances of the Lord’s name in vain and that’s it. ‘Fudge’ is used as a substitute for an expletive once, true to Grace’s character in the book and his established nature as a somewhat softer man teaching middle schoolers.
I must also say I was quite surprised to see Amazon allow this line to be in a movie:
Eva: “If God wills it.” Ryland: “Do you believe in God?” Eva: “It’s better than the alternative.”
Let’s hear it for characters in a secular movie talking seriously about God – I am all for it.
Compared to Amazon’s last release, Mercy, Project Hail Mary was far closer to the target in terms of truth and morality. True human nature shows through as Grace would rather let all of Earth die in thirty years than sacrifice his own life now in space, and even fights his hardest to try to make that happen. The theme of sacrifice, while a bit predictable, was still noble, and a better thing to walk away with than the convuluted morals of Mercy. Plus, the way that Rocky makes Grace realize that life is not about living for yourself, but living and sacrificing for other people, was a nice element in the theme that I was pleased to see.
Additinoally, hearing a soundtrack on a theater sound system is absolutely the best – you can hear all the different layers. It’s not something I’d re-listen to in its entirety, but I liked some scores. (Did anyone else hear Spot’s theme, from the Spiderverse, in there? It is the same composer, and he uses some of the same instruments here.) I liked the visuals of the sets, the soft but beautiful pastels of Earth versus the bright colors of space and planets, and the great variety in lighting and camera angles. Space really is a stunning thing, too beautiful to be random, and they captured that well.
Gosling’s acting was good, and though most of the dumb humor wasn’t for me, I did like how he pulled off the dorky aspects of Grace’s character. The movie also did a good job of bringing the character to life with little quirks like how he hangs his glasses off one ear, his very unmanly scream, and his very, very reluctant courage. The cinematography was good as well, with plenty of interesting and varied shots, especially within the spaceship and in zero-G. I can always get behind the use of creative practical effects instead of the overabundance of Netflix-style CGI we’re seeing these days.
Writing-wise, I did feel for Grace and like him as a character, though I never believed the writers would let Rocky die, and from the hopeful tone of the overall movie, a happy ending was pretty predictable. I did like the scene where Eva sung ‘Sign of the Times’ – that did hit emotionally.
Now for the cons.
The Cons:
Though the movie was overall decent, and appreciably family-friendly, it did have its cons. Maybe I’m a little too old for the movie, but I didn’t really enjoy the whole ‘alien buddy’ thing and the dumb misunderstanding-or-pun-based humor. I wish more time had been spent on them actually solving the problem, and on the hard science aspect which The Martian hit better. There were some pretty large leaps in logic during the whole portion where Grace learns Rocky’s language. (And it’s just conveniently ignored that Rocky seemed to understand Grace from the start without any tech.) One can’t just jump from identifying nouns (via the method of pointing at things and seeing what the other person’s noise for that is) to things like verb tenses (like there were 23 others) and qualifying adverbs (such as only.) Plus, Grace is a biologist, not a linguist. Also, his later abilities to know what all the switches in the ship do, and how to fix busted fuel tanks, seemed a bit far-fetched.
And yes, I understand that it was necessary for Grace and Rocky to understand each other. But I felt like it was too easy, and too rushed, leaping from the point of no communication to suddenly Grace has the software program he’s written to translate wired throughout the entire ship so he can always understand Rocky. (Maybe it’s better and more of a natural journey in the book.)
I was also both confused and irritated by the presence of the random gold panels depicting evolution in the spaceship. First, those are incompatible with God and it feels irritating to see them in the same movie with a character who acknowledges God and also the incredible complexity and beauty of space. Plus, why were they even there? They didn’t help Grace as he tried to recover his memory (at least, not in the movie. Perhaps in the book, which I haven’t got to yet.) And they didn’t seem to serve any other purpose either. The ship wasn’t a time capsule or something, and unless the scientists were expecting their spaceship to get picked up by scholarly aliens sometime in the future, it seems like a completely purposeless feature, or else some stupid virtue-signaling about the ‘grand evolution’ of mankind from amoeba to astronaut (which honestly could have been exactly what they meant, and does seem like something our woke world would slap in a spaceship.)
I think one area where this movie was lacking was stakes. Grace doesn’t have anyone to fight for or surrender for except himself. Yes, I get that that’s on purpose because it’s the problem he’s got to fix throughout the movie. And though survival stories featuring a few or even one character are a well-established, respectable genre. I just never seriously thought Grace was going to die, so I was never worried for him. And, since it’s a movie, we’re not in his head a lot and experiencing his expectation of imminent death. He doesn’t even really bring up his feelings about it until that one scene with Rocky. Maybe an example earlier on in the movie of how destructive and hostile to life space can be could have helped – for instance, specifying what killed the other astronauts.
I also figured that just given the overall tone, they wouldn’t kill off Rocky either, so his sacrifice, while upright and good and all that, didn’t feel terribly meaningful. That’s one thing that I’ve studied as a writer – if you’re trying to write a high-stakes story, ‘saving the world’ isn’t enough. There have to be stakes for the characters we care about, and if you haven’t proven that you’re unmerciful and unpredictable, we readers are already going to be assured that our characters will be fine before the danger has fully manifested. Brandon Sanderson nails this area well in the Mistborn books, and in the earlier books of The Stormlight Archives, as characters abruptly get killed when you thought they’d stick around for a while to come.
(Again, I haven’t read the book yet. Maybe there’s more context in there, or maybe it comes across differently. We shall see.)
Theme Discussion:
Overall, on a moral level, this movie scored more points for itself than against. And it makes a solid point – altruism doesn’t really hold up as a reason for sacrifice. When Grace is handed the option between his own life and the life of ‘everybody on the planet in thirty years,’ he naturally chooses himself. We are not naturally good. We’re flawed, sinful human beings, and our first instinct is self-preservation. Seriously, who wants to shoot themselves into space and then lethally inject yourself after your mission, dying alone in a cold bleak vacuum? But sometimes, we can rise above that basic impulse and sacrifice for the people or causes we love, such as how the other astronauts join the mission because they love their family. Yet, it’s still for people we care about, still interests close to our own heart. Only One Person ever died unselfishly for the entire world, sacrificing for all even though He knew many would not choose to be saved and would in fact hate and despise Him for eternity.
I’ve been reading some books lately about the stories of incredibly courageous folks in our military, or who serve as first responders. Why do they sacrifice? They sacrifice for their wife and kids back home. To make the streets of their town safer. To live up to their family legacy. To defend their country. To aspire to a greater level of their own discipline or character. To fight for causes that matter to them.
They’re not in it for the great progressive ideal of altruism. That falls incredibly short as a reason for sacrifice, because we are selfish, fallen human beings. We only work for what we care about. If you’re trying to find a savior of the world, humanity is a woeful place to look. Only Jesus died for all.
Ryland can’t make a sacrifice for the nebulous concept of ‘the world.’ He can’t make it for the various scientists and soldiers that he failed to connect with meaningfully during his period at the laboratory or on the ship. He can only make it for the alien that saved his life. Similarly, none of us can live righteously for a completely altruistic reason. We can do things that we think are righteous to puff ourselves up – like the Pharisees, or woke ‘social justice warriors.’ We can do it out of love for other people we care about, but that, while nobler and admirable, is still in its own way selfish because we are doing it for, again, people we care about. Sometimes we can even go so far as making one person, or a specific group of people, into idols and wrapping all of ourselves up in them. Or we can serve people so that we get the reassuring feeling of ‘I’m a good person.’
Now, this is not to say that sacrificing for others isn’t a good thing! Tons of atheists, unbelievers, and pagans model incredible sacrifice for others, and that’s a beautiful thing worth honoring. All of those soldiers and first responders attest to the fact that they feel more joy and purpose when serving others. The fact that sacrifices in books or movies can make audiences react emotionally is proof that there is something innately, deeply good we sense about it. Take Dustfinger – his sacrifice for Farid in Inkdeath was entirely selfish. He even left behind his wife and kids, who could definitely use a little more of their dad in their life. But I still cried.
Yet, if sacrifice isn’t done for the right reasons, it’s only good on the surface, it falls short of the perfect ideal.
Alternatively… we can do our best to live a righteous life out of gratitude and awe towards the incredible God that stooped to redeem us when we were His enemies, living in active rebellion towards Him. We can obey His commandments because we love Him, and to show the world around us how much better it truly is when we live in step with His will, instead of fighting against it. We love other people, no matter how unlovable, because He loved us and modeled the ultimate servanthood. We sacrifice for others because He made the ultimate one.
2 Corinthians 5:15 NIV
And he died for all, that those who live should no longer live for themselves but for him who died for them and was raised again.
We don’t serve or sacrifice to ‘be a good person,’ because we’re all fallen, and only God can justify and sanctify us. And, while we recognize and value others as made in God’s image and worthy of love, we don’t make them the lodestar of our lives, because only God is worthy of our utmost devotion. It reminds me of Pam, from The Great Divorce. Her love for her son becomes an overbearing, controlling, stubborn thing that ends up distancing her from God and spoiling the snot out of her kid. Or, many of the girls I have seen on cop-cam videos who idolize their boyfriends to the point of driving getaway vehicles for them, or lying about crimes. They misunderstand what love truly is. We are fallen humans and we will never love perfectly until we are sanctified in Heaven.
The point is, there’s no such thing as altruism. It only exists as a concept. As many of the soldiers in that book will outright admit, when they’re on the battlefield they don’t leap into gunfire and minefields for democracy, for liberty, or whatever abstract ideal. They do it for their buddies or their families back home.
Final Thoughts:
All in all, Project Hail Mary felt like a classic movie, a normal movie. The sort of movie they used to make before Covid. Honestly, I can’t remember such buzz around a movie since Top Gun Maverick. Thunderbolts* tried to reclaim that old spirit, but fell a little short in its therapy-style introspection. The reason Project Hail Mary succeeds is because it doesn’t try to be satirical, metamodern, woke, or preachy. It doesn’t shove an agenda down your throat. It just a tells a straight story, and the funny thing is, you kind of need objective morality for that. You need a good hero, and either a bad villain to clash with him or a challenge that demands the hero stretch himself to conquer it. Maybe the hero doesn’t start out great, maybe he’s a selfish and cowardly science teacher, but he will rise throughout the story. And he did. Grace found someone to fight for. Hopefully, one day he can pull himself up by his bootstraps and fight for a fellow human being – perhaps his estranged wife, instead of merely an alien who only ever helped him, and at worst, annoyed him minorly. (And maybe his arc is different in the book. I’ll find out.)
I enjoyed Project Hail Mary, and if this is a sign that Hollywood is finally waking up to what the American people want, here’s to that. Let’s see more movies like it, that just tell a story instead of preach a sermon. Let’s go back to the old days of relying on acting talent, writing ability, and creativity with set and effects, instead of flinging a lot of CGI and cynical pop culture references in the audience’s face and telling them it’s a substitute for a story. And while three hours is certainly a long movie, it’s better than Netflix’s approach designed for 3-second-attention-spans and tailored to mimic a TikTok reel via constant chaos, motion, and vocal exposition of the plot.
Here’s praying they learn from the box office success of this one. Better yet, that they return to the morals that made classics like LOTR, most of the old Pixars, most Dreamworks animations, some 2-D Disney cartoons, and the early MCU the hits that they were.
There you have it. Miss Runyan, thank you for asking for this. It seriously made my day that you were excited to hear my opinion. This was fun to write, and I don’t know if I’d have done it without your encouragement.
What were ya’ll’s thoughts on Project Hail Mary? Any pros or cons I missed? Angles I haven’t thought about? Let me know, I’d love to hear them and engage with you on them if you’re willing.
Until next time, shine bright. Illumine the dark, and stand firm against encroaching shadows.
Cheers!
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