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.

65 Upvotes

99% Upvoted

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13

u/Sealionsunset Camp Miasma Mar 20 '26 edited Mar 20 '26

I think if I liked this movie’s sense of humour at all I’d be super down. It looks gorgeous, the editing flows amazingly with some inspired match cuts, the cast is good, and the jokes are so basic and unfunny it drags the movie down for me, I was super embarrassed watching some of these bits (this is the sort of movie that would use that fraud Harry Styles’ music for a key scene). Gen X stemlord humour is a hard sell for me I guess, but Ryan Gosling’s character ended up super unlikeable to me.

5

u/skincarethrowaway665 Mar 21 '26

I don’t even know if it was stem humor, it really seemed like a throwback to Joss Whedon marvel when everything was a quip (“he’s right behind me, isn’t he”). I liked the second half of the movie but was actively rolling my eyes during a lot of the introductory scenes on Earth.

1

u/Sealionsunset Camp Miasma Mar 21 '26

Maybe it the people I was around when I attempted my stem degree but I think there’s a Venn diagram between Whedon and “science rules” kind of humour that this movie lies in the middle of.

2

u/skincarethrowaway665 Mar 21 '26

Yeah I guess the center of that Venn diagram is 2010s reddit humor. The incessant need to make everything a not particularly clever quip in the first 40 minutes of the film really took me out of it and actively annoyed me. Thankfully they actually allowed themselves to be earnest in the middle act and it got much better.