Project Hail Mary gives Dr. Ryland Grace the task of saving humanity from a sun-eating bacteria whose appetite threatens life on Earth—all while he slowly regains his cloudy memories. The movie is a visual marvel, and it contains many positive messages about bravery and sacrifice. But light sexual quips, a couple frightening moments and misuses of God’s name may make the ride a little bumpy for younger viewers.
How many times can a bad situation get worse? Dr. Ryland Grace has an idea.
Certainly, it’s bad enough to wake up from an induced coma with few memories of who he is or what he’s doing there. (The fact that a robotic arm seems intent on “helping” him doesn’t help matters at all.) But worse, the other two somebodies who were apparently with him are dead.
As if that weren’t upsetting enough, Grace soon discovers that he’s in a spaceship—one that’s not even in his favorite solar system (you know, the one that has Earth). He’s more than 11 light years away, rapidly approaching a star called Tau Ceti.
Memories slowly flash back into his head. There’s a reason for this mission. He remembers explaining it to his middle school science class.
The sun is dying. No, that’s not right. It’s being consumed by microscopic organisms called astrophage. And unless humanity can stop it within 30 years, it’ll cause a 10-or-15-degree drop across the globe, irreparably ravaging Earth’s ecology. Food shortages will skyrocket. Animals and trees with freeze. Billions of humans will die. And that’s just the beginning of the optimistic outlook.
Scientists scoured the galaxy and discovered plenty of other stars infected by astrophage. Most were dying, too. But one infected sun—Tau Ceti—wasn’t dimming. And humanity decided to send a small trio of astronauts there to find out why—and see whether it might hold the key to saving the sun.
Slowly, Grace recalls bits and pieces of the project. Project Hail Mary. That was its name. And he worked on it. And there was something about it being a one-way ticket …
Whatever happened, he’s here, and his crew is gone, dead before their time. Grace will have to save humanity all by himsel—
Blip-A detected. The computer informs.
Yes. Grace will have to save humanity all by—
Blip-A detected.
Okay, just what is a “Blip-A?” And why is it coming closer to his ship?
[Spoilers are in this section]
Even in his frightening situation, Grace immediately resolves to do his best for humanity. Despite not having his memories, Grace understands the gravity of the problem he’s been tasked with fixing, and he often puts himself into dangerous spots in order to accomplish the mission.
Fortunately for Grace, he doesn’t have to do that job alone. He meets a friendly alien he dubs “Rocky,” and the two engage in perhaps the friendliest first encounter ever put to screen. The two eventually discern they’re both attempting to solve the astrophage problem affecting their respective home worlds, and they resolve to go at it together.
That partnership allows the two to share ideas and information that benefit humanity and Rocky’s Eridians alike. They form a strong friendship—resulting in both Grace and Rocky sacrificing for the other, even when it could mean death.
And those sacrificial moments highlight the film’s larger message on bravery—a virtue that Grace struggles to embody. In a flashback, Grace speaks with one of the astronauts slated to go on the mission, telling him that he admires whatever gene the man has to make him brave enough to sacrifice himself on the one-way mission.
“It’s not a gene,” the man responds. “You just have to have someone to be brave for.”
In response to the looming global catastrophe, countries put aside their differences and rally together to bring forth the smartest minds and solve the problem. One of the smartest is Dr. Eva Stratt, leader of the project. Her job is a thankless one, and she makes some impossibly difficult decisions that can seem cruel in the moment. But they’re made with an eye toward the greater good.
While speaking with Stratt, Grace asks her if she believes in God. She responds that “it beats the alternative.” The gospel song “Glory, Glory, Hallelujah (Since I Laid My Burden Down” plays through the movie’s end credits. And obviously, “Hail Mary” is taken from Luke 1:28.
Grace jokes that he’s trapped in Hell.
When Grace first wakes up, he’s being taken care of by the ship’s robotic assistant. He’s dressed in a see-through medical bag and underwear occasionally visible underneath. Grace later references some of the astronauts on the prep mission “hooking up.”
With the help of his assistant, Carl, Grace successfully breeds astrophage. When talking about it, he quips “We’re fathers. Carl and I made a baby.” And Grace states that, after supplying the proper conditions, the astrophage “were like ‘Whoomp! There it is!’”
Grace and the alien Rocky discuss their respective romantic situations: Rocky states that he has a partner back home, whom Grace eventually calls “Adrian” (as a reference to Rocky Balboa’s wife from the Rocky series).
When trying on potential computer voices for Rocky, one of the voices speaks in a sensual tone. Rocky, misunderstanding the human phrase “fist bump,” occasionally says “fist my bump” instead, causing Grace to cringe.
Though this isn’t present in the movie, the originating book elaborates that Rocky’s race, the Eridians, are hermaphroditic, meaning they possess both male and female reproductive organs.
In flashback, we see the astronauts prepare to go on the mission—and discuss briefly how they’d like to commit suicide when the task is done.
Some people die offscreen in a massive explosion. We see Grace discover the dead bodies of his fellow astronauts when he first wakes up. We don’t see much of the corpses, but we do see the gray, mottled skin of one of the astronauts. Grace eventually ejects the bodies into space, and one floats with surreal beauty, hair billowing in the vacuum of space.
Grace and Rocky suffer injuries from the more dangerous moments of their job—at one point, both face life-threatening wounds. Grace has resulting cuts and bruises from his injury. Rocky doesn’t shed blood but does exude small billows of what looks like ash.
At one point, a frustrated Grace yells out f-word substitutes, like “fudging.” We hear “p-ss” once. God’s name is used in vain seven times. The British crudity “bugger” is used once.
Grace discovers vodka on the ship, and he drinks some. At a party, people drink liquor, beer and wine. There’s a reference to heroin.
We hear Johnny Cash’s “Sunday Morning Coming Down,” the lyrics of which reference having beer for breakfast and wishing he was stoned. When given an anti-nausea pill for a flight, Grace jokes that it’s been a bit of time since he last accepted an unknown pill from a stranger.
There are a few spoken references to the theory of evolution as well as a depiction of the March of Progress diagram. One scene contains intense flashing lights, and another scene contains a jump scare.
When describing how the astrophage expel light to move, Grace describes it as “they toot to scoot.” Grace vomits offscreen. After a medical robot extubates Grace, he spits up fluid. Rocky has a monostome system, eating with the same hole that he uses to expel waste. We see him stuff food inside this hole as he eats (much to Grace’s obvious disgust).
[Spoiler Warning] Grace makes Rocky a paper hat that describes him as the “Savior of the Universe.”
What do you get when you take a wise-cracking scientist and place him in a mostly isolated situation that forces him to talk to a camera as he solves plenty of sci-fi specific problems? Why, that sounds like an adaptation of an Andy Weir book!
You’d be correct, and this time, it’s Project Hail Mary. Like the movie based on another of Weir’s books, The Martian (since it’s only fair to compare the two), audiences follow a somewhat awkward man stranded in a desolate spot in space. But unlike the former entry, humanity isn’t looking to save Ryland Grace; they’re hoping he’ll save them.
And, true to form, we see some of his ingenious ways of accomplishing that goal throughout the two-and-a-half-hour movie. Audiences will also get to watch some magnificent visuals onscreen, too.
But unlike The Martian, Grace’s life is less about the value of one man’s life and more about the bravery of laying it down for others.
As one of the astronauts puts it in a flashback, bravery isn’t something that one is born with—it’s that which is brought forth in the pursuit of protecting others. And no matter the circumstances of his situation nor the many times his fear grips him before and during his mission, Grace proves himself a brave man, one eventually willing to embody that biblical truth: “Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends.”
To continue the comparison to The Martian, this film is a bit tamer in content. Perhaps because he’s a schoolteacher, Grace limits his crude language (and the movie cuts out even the profanities uttered in the book), though misuses of God’s name nevertheless pervade the film. We do see a couple of corpses, and there are light verbal sexual references, too (these, too, are tamer than the book).
So whether or not you leave the theater describing the movie with a Rocky-like exclamation of “amaze, amaze, amaze,” Project Hail Mary nevertheless will come across as a slightly more complicated but cleaner viewing than Weir’s previous book-turned-movie.
Kennedy Unthank studied journalism at the University of Missouri. He knew he wanted to write for a living when he won a contest for “best fantasy story” while in the 4th grade. What he didn’t know at the time, however, was that he was the only person to submit a story. Regardless, the seed was planted. Kennedy collects and plays board games in his free time, and he loves to talk about biblical apologetics. He’s also an avid cook. He thinks the ending of Lost “wasn’t that bad.”
