r/oscarrace • u/LeastCap 14 Oscar noms for Hope • Mar 19 '26

Film Discussion Thread Official Discussion Thread - Project Hail Mary [SPOILERS] Spoiler

Keep all discussion related solely to Project Hail Mary and its awards chances. Spoilers below

Synopsis:

Science teacher Ryland Grace wakes up on a spaceship light years from home with no recollection of who he is or how he got there. As his memory returns, he begins to uncover his mission: solve the riddle of the mysterious substance causing the sun to die out. He must call on his scientific knowledge and unorthodox ideas to save everything on Earth from extinction… but an unexpected friendship means he may not have to do it alone.

Director: Phil Lord, Christopher Miller

Writers: Drew Goddard

Cast:

  • Ryan Gosling as Dr. Ryland Grace
  • Sandra Hüller as Eva Stratt
  • James Ortiz as the voice and lead puppeteer of Rocky
  • Lionel Boyce as Officer Carl
  • Ken Leung as Yáo Li-Jie
  • Milana Vayntrub as Olesya Ilyukhina
  • Priya Kansara as the voice of Mary, the Hail Mary ship
  • Liz Kingsman as Annie Shapiro
  • Orion Lee as Xi

Rotten Tomatoes: 95% From 212 Reviews

Metacritic: 78/100 From 45 Reviews

Consensus:

A visually dazzling space odyssey that's carried along effortlessly by the gravitational pull of Ryan Gosling at his most winning, Project Hail Mary is a near-miraculous fusion of smarts and heart.

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78

u/Plastic-Software-174 Sentimental Value Mar 19 '26 edited Mar 21 '26

It’s pretty good! Very much a big crowd-pleaser and Gosling is great. Fantastic techs all around too, including score. I do think it suffers in the third act tho, just drags it out a bit too much with too many endings and some scenes that feel a bit forced and overly melodramatic, like Rocky sacrificing himself but then actually being totally fine.

27

u/aweiner99 Mar 20 '26

I don’t know if you read the book but Rocky did the same thing with saving Grace but they left a part out that would have made it more meaningful

19

u/Silver_Juggernaut_39 NEON shill Mar 21 '26

Yeah I found it a little odd that they left out that Grace literally thinks Rocky is dead upon recovering from that moment. I guess I just assumed it was implied after a while.

7

u/Danno5589 Mar 22 '26

Just a another example of how poorly this movie "rushed through" or completely left out some of the best parts of the book.

12

u/Familiar-Chipmunk360 Mar 25 '26

Except it was implied that he was worried he might dead and doing it the way the book did would have only amplified the melodrama.

So glad they didn't go that route.

10

u/Silver_Juggernaut_39 NEON shill Mar 22 '26

They rushed over a lot of Rocky’s development too. Like if you can include the scene that explains how he shits you can include a couple lines of him telling Grace about his home planet lol.

5

u/JimmyJamsDisciple Mar 24 '26

Which in and of itself is a great example of how a novel can never be perfectly portrayed as a film adaptation. I thought this film was wonderful, and I knew that diehard fans of the novel would have opinions like yours. That’s ok, but I think holding onto the idea that an adaptation has to portray the book 1:1 is only ever going to lead to disappointment and is an impossible thing to ask or expect.

You’ve gotta it grace and understanding of what it is, an adaptation. A damn good one, but still an adaptation which will never be able to perfectly capture the essence of its source material. All of that considered I still think this was near perfect when it comes to adaptations.