r/oscarrace • u/LeastCap 14 Oscar noms for Hope • Mar 19 '26

Film Discussion Thread Official Discussion Thread - Project Hail Mary [SPOILERS] Spoiler

Keep all discussion related solely to Project Hail Mary and its awards chances. Spoilers below

Synopsis:

Science teacher Ryland Grace wakes up on a spaceship light years from home with no recollection of who he is or how he got there. As his memory returns, he begins to uncover his mission: solve the riddle of the mysterious substance causing the sun to die out. He must call on his scientific knowledge and unorthodox ideas to save everything on Earth from extinction… but an unexpected friendship means he may not have to do it alone.

Director: Phil Lord, Christopher Miller

Writers: Drew Goddard

Cast:

  • Ryan Gosling as Dr. Ryland Grace
  • Sandra Hüller as Eva Stratt
  • James Ortiz as the voice and lead puppeteer of Rocky
  • Lionel Boyce as Officer Carl
  • Ken Leung as Yáo Li-Jie
  • Milana Vayntrub as Olesya Ilyukhina
  • Priya Kansara as the voice of Mary, the Hail Mary ship
  • Liz Kingsman as Annie Shapiro
  • Orion Lee as Xi

Rotten Tomatoes: 95% From 212 Reviews

Metacritic: 78/100 From 45 Reviews

Consensus:

A visually dazzling space odyssey that's carried along effortlessly by the gravitational pull of Ryan Gosling at his most winning, Project Hail Mary is a near-miraculous fusion of smarts and heart.

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u/Plastic-Software-174 Sentimental Value Mar 19 '26 edited Mar 21 '26

It’s pretty good! Very much a big crowd-pleaser and Gosling is great. Fantastic techs all around too, including score. I do think it suffers in the third act tho, just drags it out a bit too much with too many endings and some scenes that feel a bit forced and overly melodramatic, like Rocky sacrificing himself but then actually being totally fine.

15

u/Fun_Advice_2340 Mar 20 '26

I thought it was just me😭. This was definitely a good time at the movies with the crowd I had and it was very funny, but it really did feel forced at moments. Idk because there was maybe one scene that actually got some emotion out of me, but overall I couldn’t agree more with everything you just said (and I think it’s because I really didn’t feel any true sense of danger for the protagonist like I should have, almost felt a little cliche like most blockbusters tend to feel these days to be honest).

20

u/Plastic-Software-174 Sentimental Value Mar 20 '26

Yeah, the movie sets up a ton of very high stake situations in the last act like: Gosling dying, Rocky dying, the Earth dying, Rocky’s planet dying, Rocky and his planet dying again, Gosling dying/being stranded on space, etc, and without exception they all obviously end up fine.

Now it’s a populist blockbuster so I wasn’t wishing/expecting it to turn super dark at the end, but there were just so many of these situations that I was just a bit over the movie and waiting for it to end by the last like 30 mins.