Project Hail Mary is a spiritual sibling to The Martian – and it’s awesome

Project Hi Maria
In cinemas from 19 March

There is so much fun and fascinating stuff in it Project Hi MariaAndy Weir’s novel about a last-ditch effort to stop our sun from dying, which I felt guilty for leaving almost 100 pages into. I couldn’t get past Ryland Grace, a molecular biologist-turned-teacher-turned-astronaut who wakes up on a spacecraft light years from home without a clue who he is or why he’s there.

I hated Ryland. I hated his immature, sardonic personality. I hated that such a great premise was filtered through the eyes of a person who calls their penis “gentleman’s equipment”. The questions the book suggested—like why an interstellar mission would be necessary to save our sun—weren’t quite exciting enough to tempt me to stay inside Ryland’s head for 500 pages. So I stopped reading.

More trick me. Had I pushed through, I would have found a heartwarming, science-filled story—one like the new film adaptation of Project Hi Maria has fortunately revealed to me.

I breathed a sigh of relief in the very first scene, where Ryland (Ryan Gosling), after spending years in a coma aboard the ship, has his breathing tube and other vital life support systems removed by a robotic arm. In the book, there is a prolonged moment full of flipping pages; in the movie, stripped of the awful heart, it’s as dull as you’d expect and over in seconds. Cut to a bearded, dazed Ryland wandering the ship like a Gen X Tarzan, and we’re off, instantly invested.

The scene is representative of this adaptation’s greatest strength: it doesn’t overexplain, trusting the cast to convey what’s needed without heaps of exposition. As Ryland, Gosling becomes a smart loner, kicked out of academia to question the orthodoxy about what alien life can look like, feel like a real commons – and he’s actually funny.

We slowly learn that Ryland was recruited by the coldly competent Eva Stratt (Sandra Hüller). She is putting in the effort: The sun is estimated to decrease by up to 5 percent over the next 20 years. If the trend continues, the earth will plunge into climatic chaos and humanity will slowly starve to death. Hüller takes what could have been a one-note role and fills it with tightly controlled emotion—between her, Gosling, and James Ortiz in a role that I won’t spoil, Project Hi Maria is full of performances that will make you laugh and break your heart in equal measure.

And the science – my God, the science! – is everything you could have hoped for from writer Drew Goddard, who also adapted The Martiananother Weir book. As its spiritual sibling, Project Hi Maria is a film about a lone genius struggling to survive in space and how the scientific process can save him, though it’s less concerned with the details of survival than it is with big, bold ideas in physics and biology.

Still, Ryland is forced to put his considerable brain to work when he realizes that the team’s pilot and engineer both died on the journey, leaving him alone in space and ill-equipped to complete the mission. With nothing but time on his side, Ryland is able to come up with some clever solutions to his situation that will please die-hard sci-fi fans, even if not everything is explicitly spelled out.

Without revealing the twists and turns this story takes, I will only say that the question of what life is and what makes it important is central to Project Hi Maria. Not everything in the film is effective: like its source material, it can indulge Ryland’s goofy side and veer into corniness on occasion. But perfect is the enemy of good, and while he still wouldn’t be my choice of guide to the stars beyond our own, I was surprised by how much I cared about Ryland’s fate by the end of the film.

Project Hi Maria is a beautifully shot, utterly charming adventure – and, for me, a lesson in pushing through your initial concerns. I may even take another break from finishing the book.