By: Noah Coss and Tommy Steimer

When audiences heard that the creators of Into the Spider-Verse were creating a live-action space movie starring Ryan Gosling based on an award-winning, best-selling book, they were fairly excited. However, since the initial release of Project Hail Mary on March 20th, it has been an absolute knock-out of the park with critics and audiences. Some people are saying that Project Hail Mary has officially dethroned Interstellar as one of the greatest space movies of all time. 

“I think it was really peak because it followed the book really closely. Even when it didn’t follow the book, it added to the movie because there are certain things that book did that I thought would be kind of lame in the movie. They changed it up so it told the story better.” – Amalie Coss [11]

Words just can’t describe how good this film is. Project Hail Mary is a sci-fi space odyssey, starring Ryan Gosling, about a scientist named Grace, who goes to space to save the Sun from dying. During his journey, he meets an alien rock, and they undergo a beautiful story about friendship while witnessing some of the most gorgeous frames to ever be shown in cinema. Now, how they achieved this is also just as breathtaking.

The incredible sets of Project Hail Mary were made possible through the combined efforts of designers, engineers, and set builders. To put it simply, supertalented craftspeople work at the very highest level. Oh boy, did they go to the highest level to build the all practical “Hail Mary” spaceship. Supervising prop modeler Tom Vasovic stated, “There’s layers upon layers of different elements to these sets. There are over 150 practical screens, each driven with its own animation custom-designed for the selected screen.” Production designer Charlie Wood used the ISS Space Station and other international space stations as references when building this impressively realistic, large-scale set. Why spend a year and a half and hire 150 set designers, engineers, and designers to build a practical spaceship set in real life when you could do it with half the budget and green screens? 

This is what makes the film feel so real and why the physical weight is there. When problems happen with the ship and the environment around the protagonist, you feel what Grace feels in a way because of that real set. This also elevates Ryan Gosling’s performance because he has real things to act with. Student at Innovation Academy Jake Roberts [12] stated, “I really liked how practical everything was and how real it made everything seem. I liked how they used no green screen and how Rocky was a physical puppet that Ryan Gosling could interact with.” One of the reasons why it is so easy to get emotionally attached to Rocky is because he is a real puppet. There are so many live action movies where the cute creature companion is made to be fun and lovable, but it’s just an animated CGI model with no deep reason to care about them. Because Rocky is real and with actual depth and character developments, you have every reason to care about him. Rocky thus becomes the emotional core of the film and why Project Hail Mary is nothing like other sci-fi space movies. There are many space movies that have big budget action, world ending stakes, and cool visuals, but lack the depth to their story and set pieces. What sets this movie apart is that the world ending stakes and epic space odyssey are a backdrop to a simple story about two lonely people becoming best friends despite their differences. It never lets the action or eye candy get in the way of its incredible story and really trusts the audience to understand that story.

After many mediocre Hollywood blockbusters, Project Hail Mary stands out as a true masterpiece. The amount of passion and care put into this to make it as practical as it is and to craft a story that is so emotionally gripping, it is a true testament to why we still go to the movies. A crew of passionate people honoring beloved source material while also delivering an amazing film with one of the greatest viewing experiences, is once again putting Hollywood to shame. This is a film that must be seen on the biggest screen possible, because you will not have an experience quite like Project Hail Mary. Amaze Amaze Amaze!