#MovieReview443 "Project Hail Mary" (2026)

I went to the theater to watch the movie "Project Hail Mary" (2026).

Directed by Phil Lord and Christopher Miller, screenplay by Drew Goddard, starring Ryan Gosling and Sandra Hüller.

Produced in 2026, 156 minutes, American film.

Grace (Ryan Gosling), a middle school physics teacher, is visited by Eva, a government official. She says she came because of his research, which had led to him being expelled from an academic society in the past. In space, an unexplained abnormal phenomenon is occurring where the sun's energy is being drained, and in thirty years, the Earth's temperature will drop by twenty degrees, crops will fail, people will fight over food, and humanity will go extinct.

While the same phenomenon is eroding the energy of not only the sun but countless other stars as well, it is discovered that only the star Tau Ceti, 11.9 light-years away, is safe. Grace, a mere middle school teacher, is told that the only way for humanity to survive is to uncover why that star is safe.

When Grace wakes up on the spaceship, his two fellow crew members are dead, and he is suffering from amnesia, not knowing who he is. Grace proceeds with the mission while remembering events that happened on Earth in the past. There, he meets a rock-like alien who had also come from another star to investigate the Tau star. That alien also possesses advanced technology. Grace names the rock alien Rocky, records his speech, and analyzes it. By determining the meaning of the words and creating a dictionary and translator, the two begin to communicate.

Then, together with Rocky, they succeed in grasping the existence of Taumoeba on the Tau star, which is the natural enemy of the Astrophage that is eroding the stars.

This story follows an ordinary physics teacher who is forced into a one-man mission to save humanity because he is single and has no lover or pets, and is on a one-way trip with no energy for a return journey. I found it very good that even in dire straits, the film does not emphasize tragedy but proceeds calmly and comically, with him choosing to live on the star of the rock alien who helped him rather than returning to the Earth that had treated him as a disposable pawn.

Ryan Gosling, the lead actor and producer of the film, said in an interview, 'Someone said it's like a mix of Interstellar and E.T., and I thought that was spot on,' so I think it's safe to assume that's what kind of story it is.

There is a scene where Grace realizes on his way back to Earth, 'If I keep going, Rocky will die. Rocky risked his life to protect me,' and the moment he hesitates and chooses to rescue Rocky is wonderful. He trusts the rock alien close to him rather than the humanity that pushed all the risks onto him. It was a movie about choosing the nearby Rocky over the distant humanity.