Space, Science, and Survival: Project Hail Mary’s First Trailer Drops

The Martian, a dramatic, humorous, and oddly affecting adaptation of Andy Weir’s best-selling debut novel of the same name, made its debut in 2015. Matt Damon played the part in Ridley Scott’s feature, which did well at the box office and received good to great reviews, as well as a few prizes. Fans of intelligent and character-driven science fiction had every justification to be interested in the rumor that Weir’s 2021 book Project Hail Mary would soon be given the cinematic adaptation treatment.

In a first trailer for the film, Amazon MGM Studios has confirmed our suspicions about the new adaptation’s approach to survival, STEM, and comedy, which borrows from Weir’s original creation and its 2015 adaptation. For the entire length of the preview, from the first opening visuals to the last, it’s abundantly clear that this is a science fiction journey that will need a great deal of brainpower and a considerable amount of budget. Ryan Gosling will co-star in the project with a screenplay by Drew Goddard and a directorial team composed of Phil Lord and Christopher Miller. So, if this trailer doesn’t have you overjoyed, it may simply be because you haven’t yet downloaded your spacesuit.

The project was first worked on by Amazon MGM Studios before Weir’s novel even had a publishing date. The media company secured the rights to Project Hail Mary in 2020, a year before the novel’s anticipated debut in 2021. Amazon MGM assigned Goddard to adapt the work for the big screen in the same year. Weir fans will remember that Goddard was the man behind the clever and faithful Martian adaptation screenplay, which earned him an Oscar nomination. Bringing Goddard back for the upcoming Project Hail Mary was a shrewd move. Lord and Miller are responsible for the direction, and although they’re not precisely the first names that come to mind when you consider hard sci-fi films, the two did a lot with humor and humanity in films like Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs and The LEGO Movie.

The film stars Ryan Gosling as Ryland Grace, a relatively mild-mannered middle school science instructor who finds himself on a spaceship, unable to recall how he came to be in this situation. Project Hail Mary wastes no time in getting to the meat of the matter in the trailer, as Grace is awakened and is quickly overpowered by confusion and terror. He rapidly comprehends that he is many light-years from Earth, a far cry from his house and the classroom. A return to Earth isn’t in the cards for Grace, as the film’s first half appears to be flashbacks, with the audience learning that he is a clean-shaven, past-Ryland Grace. The now-docile Grace appears to be having a typical day in the classroom before an invitation to a more daring and important mission is thrust upon him: the possibility of saving the world.

Saving the world from an extinction-level event is the problem at hand. One star system—presumably, the Earth’s sun—is failing, and it’s not alone. Three others in the same proximity are dying, with one outlier. No one knows what is causing this to happen, but there is reason to believe that a new kind of cosmic science is responsible. Grace’s background as a molecular biologist may be the solution to the problem.

Grace is less than enthusiastic about being wooed to come on board. “I put the ‘not’ in astronaut,” he confesses in one segment. “I can’t even moonwalk!” But that argument falls on deaf ears for Eva Stratt, a character played by Sandra Hüller. Her pitch is clear: “If you don’t go, you die with the rest of us. If we do nothing, everything on this planet will go extinct.” Grace is still on the fence, despite the risk of losing his class and the world. A few minutes of speed-paced space training later, and he’s on his way. When he awakens on the ship, however, the memory of training with someone has been dimmed by temporary amnesia, but Grace soon realizes that he is utterly alone. His fellow crew members have been dead for some time, a fact that is corroborated by the addition of Milana Vayntrub to the cast as Olesya Ilyukhina, a Russian crewmate.

The loneliness doesn’t last long, however. Grace eventually discovers another vessel and, to his astonishment, a wholly new species of life. Rocky, as he becomes known, is not a frightening extraterrestrial in the classic maniacal alien killer sense of the word. “He’s kinda growing on me,” Grace remarks in a vlog addressed to anyone who may eventually come across it, “At least he’s not growing in me, you know?” Rocky learns how to give the thumbs-up in a scene that should be familiar to science fiction film enthusiasts as two drastically different lifeforms form a momentary friendship.

Space Drama with Guts and a Sense of Humor

Expectations for Project Hail Mary, based on the film’s trailer, will be an emotional, humorous, and suspenseful ride full of human (and non-human) drama and action. And while that is the case, there’s a lot to say for the simple fact that Gosling and Weir may both pull it off, which was so much fun and even touching about The Martian. The trailer’s addition of Lawrence Bird, the young Oscar winner from the excellent series Euphoria, as Stone, a young member of the Genesis space mission, is a nice touch.