Sorry, Ryan Gosling, But This Is the Real Star of Your Movie

Let’s get something straight right out of the gate: Project Hail Mary, Phil Lord and Christopher Miller’s adaptation of the novel of the same name by Andy Weir, is not a particularly faithful adaptation of its source material when it comes to the science. Apologies to all of my fellow sci-fi nerds who were looking to watch a man look through a microscope and crack jokes for several hours, but this only has a few scenes of the former. Nevertheless, the film makes up for what it’s missing in terms of the science details and emphasis on problem-solving by capturing the book’s heart. Where the book spends pages upon pages exploring how the teacher-turned-astronaut Ryland Grace (Ryan Gosling) discovers the makeup of the mysterious microorganism “Astrophage” that’s threatening our sun, the measures that are taken to preserve life on Earth while a solution is found, and the particulars of how the eventual titular interstellar mission to save all of humanity comes to be, the film spends this time focusing on its great strength: the adorable alien Rocky. A spidery and smart yet still silly rock-covered being from a planet far from our own who is also trying to save his species from Astropha