From the writer of The Martian comes Project Hail Mary ….
The latest adaptation of an Andy Weir novel is Project Hail Mary which, like his book ‘The Martian’, sees a lone man isolated from the world unable to make contact with the human race and so we can expect his next book to be about Andrew Mountbatten Windsor.
The Project Hail Mary story
The male isolated in space here is former science teacher Ryland Grace (Ryan Gosling) waking up alone on board his spaceship now light years from Earth and with the rest of his crew deceased. As his memory returns in a series of flashbacks we find that he has been recruited by a US space programme because of a maverick theory he posited in a paper he had written. It caught the attention of space programme director Eva Stratt (Sandra Huller) because she and her team are out of ideas. And they’re desperate for ideas because they are addressing the catastrophic problem of a virus that’s killing the sun, infecting all other planets in the solar system bar one. And they need Grace and his unorthodox ideas to find out what’s happening and to try and revert what’s happening.
The rationale for finding himself in space is that they need him to go gather a virus specimen in a bid to save Earth and in turn the Sun itself. But Grace finds himself alone on his spaceship which he’s is unable to pilot and drifting out into space with no hope of getting back to earth.
The mission would seem to have failed until he encounters another spaceship which attempts to contact him and finds that it too has one lone survivor….. and it’s a rock! But it’s no ordinary rock. Far from being a lump of dense matter relying on others to lug it around meaning that the filmmakers would stray dangerously close to having to cast Prince Harry, it is instead an intelligent life form able ti move itself unaided. Naming his new found friend Rocky, the pair make an unlikely connection with both being in the same situation stranded from their home planet in a bid to save the universe from the virus that’s killing it.
Who’s behind it all?
Directed by Phil Lord & Christopher Miller this is their first live action film since the disastrous ‘Solo – A Star Wars story’ saw them unceremoniously booted off the production. Since then they have redeemed themselves by producing the excellent animated Spider Verse films ( the first of which won them both an Oscar) and the equally good ‘The Mitchells vs the Machines’
Project Hail Mary is an ambitious undertaking relying on the always engaging Ryan Gosling and his interaction with a CGI lump of rock. It’s their relationship that is the unlikely heart and soul of the film as a friendship forms that is often endearingly comic and by the end strives for an emotional beat.
It’s an ambitious undertaking and at almost two and a half hours it is overlong but Gosling’s likeable screen persona alongside brilliantly realized effects that isolate the pair in a giant cosmos in an impossible situation makes this a cinematic yet sprawling but often soulful essential viewing on IMAX
related feature : What went wrong with ‘Solo – A Star Wars story’? – we go behind the scenes and the story of the directors being sacked!
related feature : The most difficult FX shot in the original Star Wars trilogy – stop motion genius Phil Tippett reveals all
Here’s the Project Hail Mary trailer……
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