“Project Hail Mary” shows nightly at The Eclipse in Breck from March 25-29.
There’s a moment near the end of Ryan Gosling’s new sci-fi blockbuster, “Project Hail Mary,” that will either make you cheer or groan. It’s the moment when Rocky taps back.
Rocky is an alien from Erid, a planet in a far-off solar system. Gosling’s character, Ryland Grace, calls him (it?) Rocky because he’s made of rock. You can’t blame the guy for a lack of imagination when he’s hungover and alone on a doomed space mission. This sentient rock walks on blocky appendages like a spider and clicks like a dolphin, when he’s not crafting metallic puppets or rolling around in a hamster ball.
Why is Grace hanging out with Rocky a dozen light years from earth? Because a different alien has infected our sun and he — the human guy — is humanity’s last, best chance of survival. He also looks like Ryan Gosling, which can’t hurt the apocalypse PR tour.
We learn Grace is a brilliant yet disgraced molecular biologist teaching middle school science until he is guilt-tripped into saving the world. Who guilt trips him? The government. Which one? All of them, we’re told, represented by a German bureaucrat who makes a walking rock seem more huggable.
The same alien substance killing our sun is also our only hope for reaching Tau Ceti, which happens to be the only star in the universe not infected by the substance. You know this substance must be bad because it’s black and oozy on microscope slides. It’s also powerful enough to melt a metric ton of metal and propel a spaceship at nearly the speed of light.
You might wonder: How can this cataclysmic alien substance be harnessed for fuel in a ship that, as far as we know, is also made of metal? Did Grace discover a new alloy on his lunch hour?
There’s a quirky scene with duct tape, plywood and Skittles that allegedly explains the ominous star stuff. But really, we shouldn’t ask too many questions. We’ve got more important things to do, like witness the universe’s first human-rock bromance.
That’s right. Humankind’s first encounter with intelligent alien life is Ryan Gosling teaching a rock spider a few dance moves. There’s also an ode to “Close Encounters of the Third Kind” – the first time Rocky taps back – followed by mishaps with a tape measure, a shoutout to Meryl Street, and a viewing of the seminal earth masterpiece, “Rocky,” which the alien Rocky watches through translated sound waves.
If it sounds like I’m hating on the cutest sci-fi buddies since “The Mandalorian,” I’m not. This film earns a lot of genuine, intentional laughs, mine included. Gosling shows he’s a talented physical comedian as he ricochets through zero-G. James Ortiz, the puppeteer behind Rocky, proves there’s a difference between weightless CGI and motion-capture animation. Rocky truly feels alive.
Communication is core to this film, but anyone who’s spent time overseas or in NYC will tell you: Translation is one thing, understanding is another. Does a sentient boulder truly understand what Stallone is mumbling about love, boxing and raw-egg smoothies?
Maybe Rocky does. He most definitely understands the power of a tap, and whether you groan or cheer the last time he taps back, a feeling is a feeling. Maybe that is what they’re trying to tell us in 156 minutes of movie – feelings are the glue that holds the universe together.
“Project Hail Mary” comes from a novel by Andy Weir, the same engineer-turned-novelist who wrote “The Martian.” That story also had a witty, wayward astronaut rushing to duct tape his way out of calamity, using just enough science to pass the sniff test. Both share big ideas about loneliness, companionship, ingenuity and bravery. They also share a screenwriter, Drew Goddard.
Except here, in the orbit of Tau Ceti, Goddard loses something in translation. I’m no scientist. I’m not checking the math. But the best examples of sci-fi give you a strict internal logic to follow. Tell me a human can travel many light years from earth and I’ll believe you, just so long as you don’t turn around and tell me it will take the same guy less than half as long to return. And don’t send him on a foolish spacewalk simply to manipulate my feelings in the third act. Why should I care for your stranded astronaut if the rules of the story abruptly change?
For as long as people have been looking up, we’ve wondered what first contact would be like: H.G. Wells gave us terror and chaos, Steven Spielberg wonder and fear, “Starman” a love story, “Contact” and “Arrival” revelatory awe, like the kind James Cameron must feel when he’s deep in the ocean.
I appreciate what Weir and Goddard are going for here. Fictional aliens almost always reflect our own desires and shortcomings. If you believe “Project Hail Mary,” we’re just a bunch of apes and boulders bumbling around to get things right. Half of us will cheer that idea. The other half will roll their eyes, believing there’s a little more to life than that.