Project Hail Mary Trailer Promises Smart, Fun Sci-Fi
Intelligent, entertaining, original sci-fi isn’t dead yet – at least, not if one upcoming movie is as good as its new trailer makes it look. Today, Amazon MGM Studios released a trailer for Project Hail Mary, an upcoming adaptation of the book of the same name by Andy Weir, the author of The Martian. Project Hail Mary focuses on Ryland Grace, a school teacher who is trained to be an astronaut and sent into space to discover a solution to Earth’s impending doom, only to find himself stranded and alone… or so he thinks. Ryan Gosling, Sandra Hüller, Milana Vayntrub, Lionel Boyce, and Ken Leung star in the film, which is directed by Phil Lord and Christopher Miller and written by Drew Goddard (who also wrote the screenplay for The Martian). Project Hail Mary will arrive in theaters on March 20, 2026, and you can see the trailer below:
I’m calling it now: “Rocketman” by Elton John will play in this movie. Seriously, I love this trailer, and Project Hail Mary looks fantastic. I thought The Martian was a fantastic movie, and this seems very much in line with the earlier Andy Weird adaptation by Drew Goddard. It’s seemingly got the same style of humor, one that doesn’t undercut the suspense or dread of the story; in fact, it enhances it by establishing how unprepared and out of his element Ryan Gosling’s character is – which differentiates it from The Martian, in which Matt Damon played a character who survived precisely because he could rely on his training. (“I’m gonna science the shit out of this.”) Now, the stakes are raised – the world is on the brink of destruction because the sun is about to die, along with all the stars in the galaxy – and our only hope is someone who, though he (hopefully) has the scientific knowhow to find the solution, is not an astronaut and has no idea how to survive or operate in space. So, of course, he’ll end up alone in the stars, Earth’s only hope not even being able to take care of himself. That’s a terrific setup, and it sucks you in because of how it marries the macro – we need to save the world – and the micro – our only hope is a scared guy who may not make it. This feels more like classic storytelling than pretty much any of the would-be blockbusters on the docket this summer (except maybe one).
And I get that this isn’t strictly a new story, as it’s adapted from a book. When I say Project Hail Mary looks original, I mean that it doesn’t appear to be derivative of a half-dozen other movies, and it avoids some of the more annoying tropes of the genre. For example, we’ve finally got a sci-fi movie where the Earth is dying that doesn’t involve global warming, and that alone is enough to ensure I buy a ticket. I’m so sick of every other sci-fi film being a conduit for left-wing politics, with smug scientists pondering if maybe we all deserve to die. Instead, The Martian and (perhaps) Project Hail Mary are stories about actual characters that win us over with their personalities and actions. We rooted for Matt Damon to survive on Mars because he was a fun, amiable, often hilarious guy who wasn’t afraid of hard work and kept his humor in dire circumstances. He was a scientist, but one you’d love to have a beer with because, at heart, he was a regular schmo; he just happened to know how to irrigate a dead planet. In Project Hail Mary, we’ve got Ryan Gosling, a school teacher who’s plucked out of a humdrum life to save the world by doing something he has no idea how to do and is scared to death to attempt, not just for himself but for the seven billion people counting on him. And his humor, at least in the trailer, is self-deprecating; he knows he’s the wrong guy for this job, even if he’s the only guy who can do it. I’m already rooting for him, and Ryan Gosling is bringing a similar humanity to the character that Matt Damon did in The Martian. Knowing this is coming from a script by Drew Goddard only reassures me that Project Hail Mary will be a great story. I can’t wait for this one.
Let us know what you think of the Project Hail Mary trailer in the comments!
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