There are a lot of reasons why The Martian was one of my favorite films of 2015, and why it ranks in my top five for the entire decade of the 2010s. It’s smart, funny, visually spellbinding, and in one of the greatest miracles in cinema history, it made math actually seem cool. When Matt Damon and the rest of the incredible ensemble cast decide to “science the shit” out of their problem, it’s not only inspirational, it’s borderline magical. It’s one of the only modern science fiction movies where no one dies (I guess E.T. counts as well, though the title character does at least temporarily snuff it), and it earns that triumph because we take the time to show how all of this brainy stuff is possible, with everyone working in tandem to ensure that everything lines up in a logical way that maintains the high stakes risk. We don’t know that Mark Watney is going to make it, only that he has a chance because of everybody’s commitment to the cause, but as the rescue mission has never been attempted before, the best minds concede that any number of variables could work against them and he could be lost.
It so easily could have just been Cast Away… IN SPACE!, but the effort was noticeable on screen every step of the way to prevent that. It’s not that the flick couldn’t have still been compelling, but the adaptation of Andy Weir’s novel by Drew Goddard (and directed by Ridley Scott) was far more ambitious, and wasn’t willing to settle for being simple popcorn entertainment.
The proof of that thesis comes with Project Hail Mary, another Weir adaptation penned by Goddard, but with Phil Lord and Christopher Miller at the helm this time. This film does go for a more basic form of entertainment, oftentimes eschewing the dense scientific theories in favor of more bombastic, family-friendly thrills, and at times it very much does play like an interstellar version of Tom Hanks’s famous one-man show with the volleyball… only this time the volleyball sort of talks back. As such, this doesn’t reach the heights of The Martian, but admittedly, few things can. For what it is, this is still a rock-solid entry (future pun intended), but if you’re looking for something fully on the level of that earlier masterpiece, you may be disappointed.
We see throughout the film how Lord and Miller sort of speed-run us through the technobabble and laws of physics, as our lead, Ryland Grace, played by an effortlessly charming Ryan Gosling, wakes up from an induced coma onboard the film’s titular spaceship (get it, the Hail Mary is full of Grace? DO YOU GET IT?!?!?!?!). Completely disoriented, and sadly the only surviving member of the three-person crew (RIP to Ken Leung and Milana Vayntrub), Grace does his best to figure out what’s going on as he bounces around the vessel and an AI computer voice (Priya Kansara) goes about its business as if nothing is wrong. We’re shown that Grace can’t even verbalize an answer to 2+2 at first, and now he’s the sole crewman on a ship somewhere in deep space and nowhere near Earth.
The pieces are put together mostly through flashbacks. Back on terra firma, Grace was a science teacher and former molecular biologist who was laughed out of the scientific community for his theories on how life survives and thrives throughout the universe. A recent troubling discovery has found a stream of what appear to be microscopic organisms traveling from Venus to our Sun, consuming its energy, to the point where a catastrophic cooling could happen within 30 years. Grace is recruited by the secretive agent Eva Stratt (Sandra Hüller) to help solve the problem, as the phenomenon is affecting every star in our “solar neighborhood” except for one. The stoic Eva is putting together an international project to send a crew to that star (Tau Ceti, about 11 light years away) to figure out why it’s not dying like all the others, and send back the information so that our world can be saved.
That’s a lot of, shall we say, mumbo jumbo to wade through, and the trio at the top of the production basically decide to gloss over it all. The biggest moment for me where I wanted to raise my hand, pause the film, and ask “Wait, what?” came when Stratt explained the situation with the solar neighborhood, because given how fast light travels and how far away all these stars are, it’s very possible that every one of them has already died out, and we just haven’t seen its light disappear yet. This is the sort of stuff that would be explained in heavy detail on The Martian, but still in a way that the average viewer can still grasp.
We don’t do that here, and to the film’s credit, we’re kind of let in on the reason right from the off. Grace is a middle school teacher, so the concepts have to be translatable to younger minds while still being entertaining. So we’re left with a very brief note of what the actual speed of light is, and the rest is just taken as read. This carries over to Grace adapting to his surroundings on the ship. For the first half of the picture, he’s remembering things basically in real time, and we as the audience are trying to keep up with how fast he realizes what’s going on. I think that’s an acceptable tradeoff. We know he’s a genius, so as he remembers his expertise, we’re sort of just along for the ride, only taking in the very rudimentary facts and ideas we need to follow along. For our purposes here, we don’t need to know what the thousands of buttons on the ship’s consoles do, only the ones that Grace needs to press at a given moment. It makes for a lot of handwaving, which can be tiresome after a certain point, but it’s disciplined enough to keep the affair somewhat grounded (while still being, you know, in space), and we’re given plenty of early notice that we’re meant to turn off our brains to a degree. Not entirely, mind you, but enough so that we can still have fun without diving into the minutiae of how any of this stuff actually works. It’s also an effective way to distinguish this film from The Martian, because comparisons were always going to be invited, especially when the marketing heavily invoked that previous Weir adaptation.
However, the limits of this practice are tested quite a few times, most notably with the arrival of Grace’s alien counterpart, dubbed “Rocky” (James Ortiz), who is also investigating Tau Ceti to save his home planet. Now, before anyone goes screaming about spoilers, the presence of an extraterrestrial was teased from the very first previews, they just hid the reveal about its form, which I will respect so that you can all have the surprise if/when you go see this. I will say it’s a very impressive bit of puppetry and effects, for whatever that’s worth, and he’s definitely an enjoyable character.
That said, this is also the downside of Lord and Miller’s approach. Without giving too much away, Rocky is, for want of a better analogy, the Baby Yoda of the film. At times he’s far too cutesy for the gravity (figurative and literal) of the situation, and it beggars belief how quickly Grace learns to communicate with it (remember what I said about “Wilson” talking back earlier). This characterization reinforces the idea that this is intended as a “safe” film for the whole family, but there are points where it’s too precious for its own good, and comes dangerously close to cloying.
None of this is to say that anything in this movie is bad. It’s that, after seeing how daring and even revolutionary The Martian was, Project Hail Mary just, isn’t. We see an amalgam of references and stylistic callbacks to previous sci-fi films, most notably E.T., Flight of the Navigator, and 2001: A Space Odyssey, and of course Rocky himself is a direct invocation of Sylvester Stallone. This hews far closer to an 80s buddy comedy than a 21st century tale of ingenuity and survival, which is perfectly fine, but if you’re looking for a repeat of the 2015 neo-classic, you won’t find it here.
What you will find, however, is something just as charming, occasionally silly, and dazzling to look at as its predecessor. What few concepts are explained do seem plausible, at least within the confines of sci-fi theory. Are there microscopic space bacteria eating the Sun? Of course not. But could you see such a crisis in an episode of Star Trek? Absolutely. There are also similar themes of affirmation and the joys of life, and the ever-present trolley problem as certain characters make literal life-or-death decisions. We even have a limited amount of playful nerdgasms early on when the science is allowed to breathe.
You also can’t help but compare Ryland Grace as a character with Mark Watney. Matt Damon’s protagonist stranded on Mars is quick to assess his situation, process his fear and anger, and get to work on a solution, because the alternative is to die in space. This leads to him getting a lot of goofy pleasure in his peril, living as a “space pirate” and jamming out to some Donna Summer when the mood takes him. His video logs are incredibly detailed, giving constant status updates, because he needs to keep reassuring himself and his distant colleagues in order to steel himself for the challenging task ahead.
Grace is, as we often see, the exact opposite. He’s not a coward, but he’s consistently reticent about what’s being asked of him, and despite his intellect he’s rarely sure of himself or his course of action. He needs a companion to keep him focused and give him a reason to keep going. For him, the same sarcastic wit that Watney employed as a form of personality enhancement is more of a defense mechanism, something he has to rely on as a sort of crutch to keep himself centered. This is evidenced by the fact that he hardly makes any logs at all, and when he does, they’re largely done in montage form, and he jokingly complains about Rocky like he’s a quirky roommate. He almost never gives a report on the actual mission, because a) he’s still remembering what the mission is as we go, and b) he finds out early on that it’d take 12 years for an actual message to get back to Earth, so he doesn’t see the point. Grace and Watney are two sides of the same coin, and it is kind of fascinating to see these different takes on the reluctant astronaut survivalist.
On the whole, this is what a “popcorn” film should be. Is it an epic space opera that will one day become timeless? Hardly. But could Project Hail Mary spark that love of interstellar fantasy that inspires the next Steven Spielberg or Neil deGrasse Tyson? It’s hard to argue against it. If nothing else, I think I need to start reading Andy Weir’s books sooner rather than later.
Grade: B+
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