Project Hail Mary Review

Andy Weir wrote two of my favorite books. I read Project Hail Mary when it came out, and then again about six months ago. I’ve seen The Martian probably eight or nine times. I’ve read that book three times. I could watch it again today. The movie, while different from the book, is an excellent adaptation.

I just walked out of Project Hail Mary, and I don’t feel like I need to see it again.

That’s the review, really. But let me explain.

Ridley Scott directing Matt Damon was a far better Andy Weir adaptation than two Lego Movie directors pointing a shaky camera at Ryan Gosling and a rock puppet.

Credit where it’s due. Rocky, as a practical effect, was the right call.

That’s not to say Project Hail Mary wasn’t entertaining. It was. But the pacing never lets you sit with the gravity of the situation. The Martian lets you feel the weight on Watney’s shoulders. This felt like watching The Lego Movie. Frantic, bouncing from one thing to the next, never stopping to breathe.

I found it kind of irritating.

I’ll leave the spoiler-free version at that.

SPOILERS AHEAD

The book works because it earns its moments. Grace wakes up alone, has no idea where he is or why, and that confusion sits with you for a long time. In the movie, the amnesia is so poorly established that, if you haven’t read the book, I don’t think the audience would even pick up on the fact that the flashbacks are him remembering. You lose the fact that he spends a real stretch not knowing why he’s there. And then I wonder if the last couple of flashbacks land the way they should. He chickened out, didn’t believe in himself, and they basically abducted him for the mission. If you don’t understand that he doesn’t remember any of this, it lands differently.

The same problem hits the Rocky relationship. In the book, Grace and Rocky spend a long time just trying to figure out how to communicate. It’s painstaking, and that’s the point. That’s what makes the relationship work. In the movie, they’re practically finishing each other’s sentences within minutes.

Some of the casualties of science are understandable. Andy Weir spent real time on the fact that Rocky’s people use base-six numbering because they have six digits on their hands. I get that most moviegoers wouldn’t care about that the way I do. But the core environmental details, the ammonia atmosphere, the extreme pressure and heat differences, those were load-bearing elements of the story. The movie glazes right over them. I’m also not sure the audience ever clearly understands that Rocky can’t see light. Maybe they do, but I worried about that for the whole second half of the film. It felt dumbed down.

And then there’s the tone. The movie leans into goofiness constantly, like that’s the engine of Grace and Rocky’s relationship. It isn’t. In the book, their bond is built on the fact that they’re both trying to save their species, and the hard work and shared hardship that comes with it. The humor in the book comes from the fact that Grace and Rocky understand the universe differently. Their slight misalignment, the way they don’t quite get each other, is what makes it funny. Weir’s humor isn’t always perfect either, but it works because you’ve been through the hard stuff with these characters. In the movie, the jokes are just always there. There’s no counterweight.

The ending is rushed. This is a complaint I have about many movies lately. You spend two hours building toward something, and the conclusion gets two minutes.

With a better director and fifteen more minutes of screen time, this could have been a different movie. Let the moments breathe. Let the audience feel the isolation, the difficulty, the stakes. Instead, it’s a frantic ride that never slows down long enough for any of it to land.

One way to fix many of the problems with this film would be to clearly establish that every flashback you see is Grace remembering it at that moment. Each new memory adds weight to whatever comes next, because he’s learning these things when you are. That’s the whole engine of the book, and the movie just lets it slide by.

It’s a shame. The book is great, and they had everything they needed to make a great movie. I suspect if Ridley Scott had directed it, we’d be talking about a very different film.

But we’re not. This is a movie you see once. It’s entertaining enough. And you move on.