Hope and Friendship in Space

This piece discusses key moments from Project Hail Mary. If you have not seen it yet, you may want to experience the story first.

Somewhere along the way, I’d convinced myself that the finest alien encounter stories were the ones that left me staring into the philosophical abyss. The truly memorable ones, I thought, explored consciousness, language, identity and humanity’s place in the universe. Watching Project Hail Mary made me realize how narrow that expectation had become. Sometimes, science fiction can also simply tell a wonderful story about friendship.

The Not so Classic Hero

Ryland Grace doesn’t fit the mould of a classical hero. He certainly isn’t eager to answer the call to adventure. If anything, he’d much rather be left alone to work on whatever scientific puzzle currently has his attention. When Eva Stratt ultimately has him drugged and placed aboard the Hail Mary because he’s the only person capable of completing the mission, it confirmed something that I’d suspected until the reveal: Grace never chose to become humanity’s last hope.

Yet that isn’t the whole story either. Calling him a reluctant hero doesn’t quite capture what makes him so compelling to me. Grace is better described as a curious wanderer. There’s something wonderfully untethered about him. He drifts from one problem to the next, absorbed by the joy of understanding how things work. He isn’t driven by glory or duty so much as curiosity. And once life has placed him somewhere, he has an almost matter-of-fact determination to do the best he can with the situation he’s in. It doesn’t matter to him if it was aboard an interstellar spacecraft or on an alien world.

These traits are I think what defines Grace. Curiosity. Loyalty. And a stoic acceptance of wherever life happens to take him. He never stops trying to save Earth, but he is not so attached to returning. Instead, he throws himself into helping Rocky, and when fate leaves him on Erid, he does what feels most natural to him: he becomes a teacher again. It’s a strangely beautiful ending for someone who has always seemed more interested in discovery than destination.

Maybe that’s why I found Grace such an endearing protagonist. I quite like the character. I think I recognized something of myself in him. The restless curiosity; the desire to disappear into interesting work, to keep exploring whatever lies ahead, and to trust that, wherever life eventually leads, there will still be meaningful things to learn and people worth caring about.

Rocky is Very Human

Rocky is in many ways the Eridian mirror of Grace. He transforms Project Hail Mary into what is essentially a buddy-scientist movie.

By the end of the story, Rocky feels remarkably human. And I think that’s exactly the right choice. Project Hail Mary isn’t trying to imagine an utterly unknowable alien consciousness in the way Solaris or Arrival does. Instead, it’s asking a different question: what could friendship look like between two intelligent beings who evolved on entirely different worlds?

Rocky is alien enough where it matters.

He perceives the world through echolocation, breathes a completely different atmosphere, has a radically different biology, and communicates through musical chords rather than spoken language. Yet beneath those differences, he’s instantly recognizable. He’s funny, endlessly curious, fiercely loyal, occasionally stubborn, quietly proud, and willing to risk everything for the people he cares about.

So the farewell between Grace and Rocky landed very hard for me. And when Grace realizes Rocky is in danger and turns the Hail Mary around to rescue him one last time, I had throw my hands in the air to celebrate that moment of reunion. The movie perfectly captures that bittersweet feeling of parting ways with someone you’ve come to know well, with the knowledge that yeah sometimes you gotta say goodbye.

Ryan Gosling gives Grace the precise level of awkward warmth the role needs. He comes across as intelligent and funny without turning the character into comic relief, and vulnerable enough that his quieter moments land just as well as the larger emotional ones. I was only mildly disappointed that it wasn’t Matt Damon. Then again, if history tells us anything, he’d probably have made it back to Earth.

The Science

Since the film’s release, I’ve seen plenty of discussion about whether the astrophage is scientifically plausible, whether the orbital mechanics hold up, or whether one plot device or another could really work.

People with backgrounds in different scientific fields have certainly found plenty to pick at online. Laboratory scientists have pointed out questionable biosafety procedures, unbalanced centrifuges, and some rather enthusiastic handling of biological samples. Engineers have raised eyebrows at Grace’s improvised electrical work, physicists have debated the spin-gravity mechanics, linguists have questioned aspects of the language learning, and others have wondered whether an advanced spacefaring civilization could really remain ignorant of radiation. Even smaller details, like Grace disappearing from his teaching job without anyone seemingly worrying about substitute lesson plans, haven’t escaped notice ¹.

Honestly, I don’t find myself particularly invested in that type of debate anymore. I think that’s one part of me that’s changed in the recent years. Most of those criticisms are perfectly reasonable, and in many cases they’re correct. But they also strike me as deliberate trade-offs. The writers aren’t trying to painstakingly simulate every scientific discipline. The film clearly respects science. It treats the scientific method as a way of understanding the universe rather than as a source of magic. But it never lets scientific realism become the point of the story. The science exists to create interesting problems for curious people to solve, and more importantly, to create the circumstances for Grace and Rocky’s friendship to blossom. In my view, that’s exactly the right balance. I’d much rather watch a film that bends reality a little in service of a memorable story than one that gets every equation right but forgets to make me care about its characters.

Speaking of the science, I thought that the visuals throughout the film were spectacular. I’ve always been drawn to the aesthetic of space films and Project Hail Mary captures the alien beauty of planets, stars, and cosmic phenomena remarkably well. The Petrova line, in particular, is mesmerizing. My favorite visual sequence is when Grace ventures outside the Hail Mary to collect astrophage samples from within it. Watching the astrophage drift past as countless shimmering points of purple-pink light evokes the sense of otherworldly awe and beauty that explorers are drawn to. I would definitely have had a moment just like Grace did if I was there.

Closing Thoughts

Something I really admire about Project Hail Mary is that it never takes a cynical or depressing turn despite the high stakes. By the time Grace reaches Tau Ceti, humanity has almost certainly endured years of hardship. The Sun has been dimming for over a decade. Crops have likely failed. Economies have collapsed. Millions may already have died. To make matters worse, Grace wakes to discover that the two people who actually volunteered for the mission are dead, leaving the one man who never wanted to be there to carry humanity’s hopes alone. It’s a cruel irony.

But there’s no lingering despair, no wallowing for too long. Grace grieves. He panics. He feels lonely and overwhelmed. But once those emotions have had their say, he returns to the problem in front of him. Observe. Experiment. Learn. Try again. That’s the spirit that runs through the entire film. It isn’t a naïve optimism that everything will somehow work out; it’s the enduring conviction that, as long as there’s still something you can do, that’s where your attention belongs.

Even the moral compromises the film asks us to accept such as that of Stratt forcing Grace onto the mission, come from that same place. Faced with an existential crisis, humanity chooses action over nihilism. Imperfect, uncomfortable, morally messy action perhaps, but action nonetheless.

Watching it reminded me of one of my favorite lines from Haikyu!!. When Tanaka Ryūnosuke finds himself overwhelmed by his own limitations, he doesn’t magically become more talented overnight. Instead, he asks himself a simple question: “Do I really have time to be looking down right now?” ² I think Project Hail Mary carries much the same philosophy. Most of us aren’t extraordinary heroes. We’re ordinary people trying to solve the problems in front of us with whatever abilities we happen to have. The situation may be frightening, unfair or heartbreaking, but if there’s still work to be done, then just get to it.

I don’t think Project Hail Mary has replaced Solaris, Arrival or Contact in my mind. Those remain some of my favorite explorations of what meeting another intelligence might mean. But this film reminded me that not every first contact story has to leave me staring into the philosophical abyss. Sometimes all I want is a feel good movie about two scientists becoming buddies and saving the planet. And Project Hail Mary gave me exactly that.

Footnotes

1. Hank Green. “Project Hail Mary’s Science Mistakes” YouTube, March 29, 2026, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=beC8FvROWdQ ↩

2. Lessons From Anime. “Anime’s single most motivating line (Tanaka Ryūnosuke)” YouTube, 30 April 2024. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HR0tggNVxXc ↩