‘Project Hail Mary’ Shows What Real Heroism Looks Like
Project Hail Mary, a new science fiction film starring Ryan Gosling and based on the eponymous book by Andy Weir, posits an utterly absurd, fantastical notion: What if global human society were, on the whole, rational and moral?
The title refers to a ship built, as the name might suggest, as a crazy last-ditch attempt to save the world. Despite the clichéd premise, it is set up with such care, attention to detail, and painful moral relevance to current events that it succeeds brilliantly.
In the film, it turns out the sun has been colonized with a spacefaring single-celled organism deemed “astrophage.” This organism absorbs such stupendous quantities of energy that it is meaningfully dimming the amount of sunlight being received by Earth, causing a global cooling effect that will very soon severely damage if not destroy human society.
Just like in Weir’s previous hit The Martian, when disaster strikes, all the key global governments come together, pool their resources, and send all their top scientists to work on it. They figure out how the astrophage works, how it reproduces, and—given that one can make it emit the energy it absorbs—how to use it as a fuel for a spaceship. In the process, the scientists learn that the dimming is affecting every star in the neighborhood except one: Tau Ceti.
Thus the Hail Mary mission: Build an interstellar ship, put three top experts on it, fly it to Tau Ceti in a one-way mission (not enough time to generate enough fuel for the return voyage), and see if they can figure out why it appears to be immune to the astrophage.
This multitrillion-dollar global collaboration, which 30 years ago would be little more than a plot convenience, is today completely preposterous. We don’t have to imagine what the present American government would do if faced with a threat to global climate: They would deny it was happening and/or make it worse intentionally, while also starting a disastrous war of aggression for no reason that spikes global energy and food prices. That has been precisely the Trump administration policy regarding renewable energy and fossil fuels, with its repeal of Joe Biden’s climate program and deranged war on Iran.
Not that long ago, for all its manifold flaws, global society was capable of working together in the common interest.
Yet the utter unreality of the mission did not break my suspension of disbelief. Rather it made me mourn for what has been lost—or destroyed. Not that long ago, for all its manifold flaws, global society was capable of working together in the common interest. The ozone hole, rapidly dwindling whale populations, acid rain, freedom of navigation—in these and many other instances, the nations of the world came together, temporarily set aside their differences, and did what was in the best interest of humanity. We don’t do that anymore because a small minority of right-wing zealots are pulling the temple down over everyone’s heads, including their own.
At any rate, the film opens with the Hail Mary arriving at Tau Ceti, with Ryland Grace (Gosling) waking with amnesia from the medically induced coma he had been put into for the voyage. The other two astronauts did not make it; he’s the sole surviving passenger. We learn that Grace previously had a promising career in microbiology that he threw away by starting fights with colleagues, and ended up a middle-school science teacher.
Grace discovers another ship has arrived at Tau Ceti, this one from a system called Erid, populated by silicon-based life forms who look like dog-sized spiders, and whose home planet has an ammonia atmosphere at about 200 degrees Celsius. Just one Eridian astronaut has survived, too, an engineer whom Grace calls Rocky. The ship is made out of “xenonite,” a magical material that is nearly indestructible and can take any shape.
Together, these two must figure out what’s going on at Tau Ceti and apply it to their respective crises. It transpires (spoiler alert) that the astrophage is from Tau Ceti, as part of a whole ecosystem, including predators, that keeps its population in balance. Hence they must find the predator (a space amoeba) and somehow use it to save their homes.
PROJECT HAIL MARY IS ONE OF THE RARE FILMS that is quite a bit better than the book. It does miss out on some of the best aspects of Weir’s writing—namely, the extremely gripping plotting based on elaborately worked-out scientific premises—but it gains some much-needed emotional maturity.
Weir, to be honest, is a mediocre writer. Grace should be a compellingly flawed main character—we learn later that he was only put on the mission because the original science officer and his backup were killed in an accident, and that Grace not only refused to agree to replace them, but had to be forcibly sedated and bundled onto the ship; not exactly your classic Hollywood protagonist. But Weir’s writing is so clunky and hackneyed that the character doesn’t quite land.
Gosling’s performance, by contrast, is much more convincing. And the moral core of the film is illustrated considerably more deftly when Grace, gradually shaking off his amnesia, recalls a conversation (which does not appear in the book) with one of the astronauts. “I’m not brave,” Grace says, “I don’t have the gene.” The astronaut replies: “There is no gene … You just need someone to be brave for.”
Rocky both demonstrates this idea and becomes that someone for Grace. As they attempt a risky sampling mission to figure out what eats the astrophage, the Hail Mary goes into an uncontrolled spin and Grace is knocked unconscious. Rocky breaks out of his xenonite containment vessel, rights the ship, and drags Grace back to the Mary’s robotic medical bay. Doing this, Rocky almost kills himself, as for him an Earth environment is deadly cold and oxygen is violently toxic.
By the end, Grace discovers a very ordinary bravery of sacrificing oneself to help others.
Later, Grace returns the favor. While breeding astrophage predators that can survive on Venus, they accidentally breed into them the capacity to get through the xenonite containers. After Grace and Rocky split up to go back home (the Eridians handily having brought along a huge surplus of fuel), the amoebas subsequently get into one of the Mary’s astrophage tanks and eat them up. Grace manages to save the other tanks, but Rocky has no such option, because his entire ship is made of xenonite. So Grace sacrifices his trip home, sends the amoebas and data back to Earth in small probes (the original plan), turns the Hail Mary around, and saves Rocky and his entire civilization.
I found it a moving and, for a Hollywood film at least, shockingly realistic view of heroism. Grace is not some stoic badass saving the world by shooting people by the hundreds. He is just some guy whose number came up—and when that happened, he initially tried to chicken out. Yet by the end, he discovers a very ordinary bravery of sacrificing oneself to help others. (In thanks, the Eridians build him a huge terrarium of sorts where he can continue being a science teacher to the local children.)
Others might think such a pean to saving the world—or two worlds—through the power of friendship is a little corny and melodramatic. But maybe that’s exactly what the real world needs at the moment.
We live in an age of brutish, evil stupidity. A near-illiterate president whose briefings consist of two-minute snuff film montages is wrecking the entire political-economic system America itself set up after the Second World War. A racist drunk is running the military into the ground. Delirious cranks are in charge of the public-health bureaucracy and are doing all they can to spread disease and death. A foreign billionaire and his pack of teenybopper fascist psychopaths stole AIDS and tuberculosis medication from tens of millions of people, 780,000 or so of whom are already dead.
One reason for that, I suspect, is that too many believers in traditional American values of liberty, democracy, and equality “lack all conviction,” to quote another cliché. Joe Biden, for instance, had four years in office to remove Donald Trump from the political chessboard and he didn’t have the stomach for it. Too many forgot that the relative harmony of the postwar settlement was not some natural outcome of everyone doing whatever they want through the self-regulating market, but a system that was built at colossal expense in money and blood. Now, the ideological descendants of the same people who wrecked the pre–Second World War global order and got 100 million people killed in the process are pulling the same trick.
In that context, a superbly made film about how it is worth dying on behalf of solidarity, cooperation, and friendship—even if your friend is a rock monster who breathes ammonia and speaks in songs—hits like a truck.
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