The latest Phil Lord and Chris Miller film, “Project Hail Mary,” touched down on March 20, adapting Andy Weir’s 2021 novel of the same name. This is the second time one of his works has been brought to the big screen, following 2015’s “The Martian,” and like its predecessor, “Project Hail Mary” promised to be another tense, existential survival story. 

However, this film’s passive direction lands it as something far more tired: a digestible blockbuster that rarely risks depth, settling into a stale and frictionless experience, directionally floating through space.

The film follows Ryland Grace (Ryan Gosling), a reluctant astronaut who awakens alone on a spacecraft with no memory of how he arrived there, slowly uncovering his mission to save Earth from extinction. The narrative alternates between his present-day struggle in space and a series of flashbacks on Earth explaining how he got there. 

In theory, this dual structure should build tension and emotional context, but in practice, it feels arbitrary and disruptive. The film constantly abandons momentum for exposition, cutting between timelines that serve little purpose beyond guiding the audience step-by-step through the plot. There is no layered narrative that emerges when the two threads begin to inform each other’s stakes and emotions – this is merely two shallow storylines awkwardly stitched together. 

To the film’s credit, there is a clear commitment to practical effects. The spacecraft interiors feel tangible, and the puppetry work – particularly in the creation of its alien companion – is strikingly impressive. These moments offer a rare sense of physicality in a genre increasingly dominated by weightless digital imagery.

But that tangibility never translates into emotional or thematic substance.

Despite centering on the extinction of all life, “Project Hail Mary” never conveys real stakes. The film consistently undercuts its own premise with an overreliance on humor – not quite the hyper-online irony of recent blockbusters, but still a steady stream of obvious quips and visual gags. 

Moments that should carry weight are immediately softened, if not outright dismissed. There is no sense of scale, no sustained tension – just a checklist of problems to be solved that the film never really convinces you won’t be solved. You spend much of the film simply waiting for the obvious to occur. 

This tone is embodied in the central performance from Ryan Gosling, whose character is framed as both an underdog and the most capable person in the universe – a contradiction the film leans on without ever interrogating. Every obstacle is met with intuitive brilliance, every setback quickly resolved. The result is a protagonist who feels less like a person and more like a narrative convenience. 

The introduction of an alien companion initially promises something more compelling through their charming relationship, but it quickly devolves into a lightweight buddy dynamic that lacks the depth to sustain the film. What could have been a profound or challenging encounter with the unknown instead becomes another vehicle for easy humor and convenient solutions. 

In many ways, the film feels defined by what it avoids. It gestures toward the philosophical and emotional territory explored by films like “Arrival” or “Interstellar,” but never commits to that level of inquiry. Its world-ending premise is treated as an isolated problem rather than a lens through which to explore humanity, existence or the present moment. 

Perhaps there is a beauty to this type of optimistic comfort sci-fi that effectively delivers a narrative and then gets out, confining your filmgoing experience to the few hours you spent at the multiplex. However, I believe audiences should ask more of their cinema; they should desire cinema that resonates deeply with them and challenges them beyond the moment they leave the theater. 

While “Project Hail Mary” has done all of those things for many people, films like it continuing to become the most culturally pervasive works this medium has to offer is a step in the wrong direction for thoughtful, meaningful filmmaking. 

The film is technically competent but creatively hollow. There are flashes of something more grounded and interesting, particularly in its practical craftsmanship, but they are consistently overshadowed by a need to remain accessible, light and unchallenging. “Project Hail Mary” is science fiction stripped of urgency, scale and meaning. It is a story about saving the world that never makes you feel like it’s in danger.

A structurally messy, tonally weightless and ultimately unremarkable blockbuster. 4/10.