A feel-good sci-fi adventure. Amaze!

Project Hail Mary is the best movie I've seen in a long time, which is ironic because I put the book down after about two chapters the first time I tried to read it. After seeing the movie, I gave the book another shot, and actually liked it a lot better this time. Project Hail Mary is a solid adventure story that mixes the plucky scientific problem-solving of The Martian (which I also loved—check out my review) with the laughs of a buddy comedy and the feel-good family-friendly vibes of classics like E.T.

Note: Since the movie follows the book (by The Martian's Andy Weir) so closely, I'm going to talk about both generically as "the story" and only note differences when relevant.

The story centers around Ryland Grace, a middle-school science teacher who was formerly a leading molecular biologist. He's recruited by Project Hail Mary, a government project to save the Earth after scientists discover that the sun is dimming. If they don't find a way to stop it, in a few decades, the world will be in a new ice age and climate apocalypse. To solve the mystery of the dimming stars, Grace is sent to a distant star system. There he meets Rocky, the universe's most heart-melting alien. Rocky and Grace are both there for the same reason—to save their respective homeworlds—and their friendship is the emotional core of the story.

When we first meet Grace, he's waking up from a medically induced coma, and finds himself on a spaceship with no idea what's going on, where he is, or how he got there. In these opening scenes, I feel like the movie does a better job. The physical comedy is hilarious (especially Ryan Gosling flopping around on the floor as his muscles adjust), and viewers get context more quickly. The movie trailer also helped a lot to set the stage, I think. The book focuses more on Grace's internal experience. One can really feel his disorientation—how can he remember complex physics calculations and not know his own name? He has to problem solve several layers to figure out what's going on, which is breezed through much more quickly in the film. The book also dives deeper into the science. I personally enjoyed the more fast-paced film version, but YMMV. They're both good for different reasons.

Side note—I don't normally read audiobooks (nothing against them, I just prefer to read with my eyeballs), but I tried out the audiobook version of Project Hail Mary. Narrator Ray Porter is great at representing Grace's inner monologue, and they actually use musical chords to reflect Rocky's language. It's neat.

With Rocky, the story perfectly blends him feeling suitably alien and also immensely relatable. I really liked that neither humans nor eridians were intrinsically superior. Each brought different strengths to the partnership. The puppeteers and VFX team did such an amazing job of making Rocky feel real. I just adored this character so much. I mean, come on, this clip...

While much of the story is just Grace and Rocky, we do get flashbacks to the events on Earth that led up to Grace ending up in space. Central to these flashbacks is Eva Stratt, the leader of Project Hail Mary. Stratt is a complicated character. Some of the things she does in service of the mission are morally gray, and at least one is unquestionably bad. Yet the story (especially the movie version) threads the needle to humanize her so she doesn't come across as a complete villain.

The book version of Stratt is particularly interesting because we see a bit more of the actions taken on Earth, like nuking the polar caps to deliberately cause more global warming. Moreover, she accepts the consequences of her actions. She admits that once the mission is launched, she's probably going to end up in jail. While I don't agree with all of her decisions, I can totally sympathize with her being put in charge of the world's biggest Trolley Problem.

Whether you check out the book version or the movie version (or both!), Project Hail Mary is worth a look. I highly recommend it.

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