...and it changed my brain chemistry
"A science teacher wakes up alone on a spaceship. As his memory returns, he uncovers a mission to stop a mysterious substance killing Earth's sun, and realizes that an unexpected friendship may be the key." - IMDB synopsis
Just over a month ago I watched Project Hail Mary - the 2026 movie adaptation of the Andy Weir book. I really didn't expect to enjoy it that much as I did - And now I'm here, one month later, with PHM stuck in my head 24/7!
The movie is a genuinely wonderful story executed in a spectacular way - the writing, cinematography, acting, and music are all Top Notch. You can really tell that PHM was a passion project of everyone involved, and all this love and passion can be felt when watching it, or reading/watching materials related to its making.
So - the movie is Good. I have so many thoughts and feelings about it that it's hard to put into words. I guess the purpose of this blog post is to incoherently gush about its greatness and nerd out about the specific elements that make me go Insane. You're welcome :)
Before I go on, there will obviously be spoilers for Project Hail Mary! - and the whole post will probably only make sense if you've seen the movie. Please watch the movie, I beg you!!
(Or read the book! I'm planning to read it myself - I already know a bunch of book lore anyway, but this essay will only focus on the movie :])
The beautiful visuals
Project Hail Mary has an amazing visual identity. In these kinds of movies space usually feels cold, but PHM's aesthetic makes space warm and colorful; comfortable, even. The mismatched control panels of the Hail Mary, all the rainbow effects and light refractions, and the warm glow of Tau Ceti make the movie's environment feel much less clinical than what you'd expect.
This fits the positive feel of the story very well! And overall makes the movie look more interesting and pleasing to the eye - basically every frame could be someone's wallpaper.
Also, as the movie goes on - space becomes more and more colorful, and Earth flashbacks start to feel more gray and dull in comparison!
Obviously, the huge elephant in the room when talking about PHM's visuals is Adrian - Tau Ceti's Venus. The green is such a beautiful color, and the way it affects the lighting of the Hail Mary is amazing.
Everything is green! Give me more of this green! Make it contrast with the Petrova line's pink! And with the Hail Mary's red emergency lights during Excessive Centrifugal Force!!
I'm Really not a cinematography, ligting, or generally a Visuals person - so I don't have the right words for this. But the movie just Looks so unique, so warm and so captivating.
Just as a side note, I absolutely adore the way the Petrova line is represented visually. The pink glittery cloud is such a beautiful visual - it looks whimsical, instead of dangerous on a star-eating level.
This contradictory depiction - making the Petrova line look SO beautiful - pairs really well with Grace's first look at Tau Ceti's Petrova line (and the discovery of Blip A).
It also creates the greatest (visually) moment of the movie - The Moment.
Both of these scenes are also scored wonderfully. The musical identity of the Petrova line (specifically the line, not Astrophage itself) adds So Much to this amazingly dangerous and beautiful phenomenon.
I could talk about the score of this movie for so long. And in fact - I will!
The music!!
The movies's score is incredbly well put together (made by Daniel Pemberton, who made the Spider-Verse soundtracks, too!) and does an amazing job at conveying the tone of scenes. It jumps from being silly and playful, to mysterious or whimsical, to dramatic, stressful, and triumphant - and it all fits so well together.
Project Hail Mary sounds almost retro, istead of having a big orchestral futuristic-dramatic-space-movie score. It uses woodblocks, sounds of pipes and water, choir voices, and a lot of body percussion to make it sound unique.
(And aside from the amazing score, the soundtrack featured really well-matched songs from all around the world. This movie doesn't focus on just the western world and culture, it tries to represent humanity as a whole. The highlight for me is the feature of Pō Atarau, a Māori farewell song, near the end of the movie - it just sounds so beautiful and moving.)
At its core, the Project Hail Mary sounds incredibly Human (and Eridian) and SO Hopeful.
I could praise every song in the score individually, but that's really not the point of this essay. I still have to feature SOME songs, though! My favourite moments of the movie's score doing its magic are Centrifuge, and Time Go Fishing.
Centrifuge plays during a wonderful, whimsical moment of discovery. Grace remembers the inner-workings of the ship's technology, and the Hail Mary spins to create artificial gravity. This is a change from no-gravity-clumsiness to yes-gravity-science. And it fills me with so much joy hearing it!
And Time Go Fishing/Excessive Centrifugal Force... The stakes, the pressure and the stress during the fishing scene are so high that it's almost unbearable. This score has so many layers - I love the alarm sirens that start in the background as things start to go downhill.
It's been a while since I loved a movie's score so much that I listened to it on its own - and PHM's score is now a permanent resident in my spotify library.
Though I'm incredibly salty that some moments from the movie don't have a corresponding piece in the released score...
- The transition from Invalid Operation into the classroom scene (ArcLight probe flashback) - the chords are so beautiful, please let me listen to this on loop
- Classroom scene - explaining "the dots"
- First Astrophage sample examination in the lab
The latter two are a mix of motifs that appear later on in the score (as part of Time Go Fishing, which I do love) - but the mix is different :(( What I wouldn't do to get a Real Full Score from the movie on spotify...
Also, am I the only one who thinks that Finding Rocky Voice has very Rain World vibes? I don't even have a specific song from the soundtrack to compare it to - the first half of this score just sounds incredibly Rain World-y to me.
But this might just be me...
Let's talk about leitmotifs
I'm a huge fan of the use of leitmotifs in this film in general (of course an UNDERTALE/DELTARUNE fan will praise the use of leitmotifs in a soundtrack...).
Every core idea/theme has its own musical identity that shows up at different points in the score!
For example, there's this specific simple drum rhythm that appears in the classroom, the first Astrophage lab, and during the fishing trip. I'm obsessed with it and have no idea what it means. Are they Astrophage drums? The Mission drums? Let's-build-suspense-and-interest drums??
Even if you don't actively notice this, the brain still recognizes the repeated musical ideas; this makes the movie sound and feel so consistent and coherent, even though we're jumping from whimsy to danger, and from Earth to... as far away from Earth as humanly possible.
The highlight of PHM's musical motifs is the use of the dies irae - a well-known theme of apocalypse and death - all thgoughout the movie. The sound is transported from a minor to a major key, so the dies irae sounds actually positive. A suicide mission turned hopeful?
I notice new details every time I rewatch the movie/relisten to the score. There's so many leitmotifs! And they're used so often throghout the movie to convey specific ideas! I first tried to map out the many musical themes and their meanings myself - for the purpose of this blog post, but I'm not as well versed in music and/or dedicated to the craft as some people are.
There's this incredibly well put together tumblr post analysing the many leitmotifs present in PHM - what they mean and where they appear.
There's also a nice interview with Daniel Pemberton on the music of PHM and why it sounds so Different and unique - it also touches on some of the different musical motifs!
The characters
Project Hail Mary doesn't have many main characters, or many characters in general - but the existing ones are very well written and portrayed in an interesting way. So, let's talk about the big 3!
Eva Stratt
Eva Stratt, the woman of all time. They could never make me hate you.
I'm obsessed with the way she talks, especially during her first appearance. She's so efficient at delivering information! She's so unbothered! She's not good at jokes! And she has such a monotone, direct way of speaking - probably because she's SO Focused on the task at hand!!
STRATT: Dr. Grace, Petrova line samples splashed down last night, I want you to tell me what they are, how they work.
STRATT: I have 347 other biologists in 21 countries mobilising as we speak. So, thank you for your help. I'm glad you didn't die. [Into walkie-talkie] Let's pack this up!
The Hail Mary mission is her whole life at this point, and there's no room left for friendly relationships, banter, or to go even further - being human. She's giving up her humanity to make sure she's the leader and the face of the mission - a figure with incredible power, and the only person to blame if anything goes wrong (and things go wrong...).
This is all on purpose - she's sacrificing herself and her humanity to save as many people as possible. In the end she has to choose between involountarily sending Grace (someone she sees as a friend) on the mission - and letting herself become the villain of the story in his eyes - or doing nothing, and risking the deaths of millions more people. She just wanted to save the Earth, and save as many people as possible.
I think she is Much more morally gray and makes many more questionable choices in the book (?) - which only makes me love her more. Speeding up global warming to delay the dimming Sun's consequences? OK, sure!
Sandra Hüller's acting choices give the character much more depth, and make her SO interresting!
- The Karaoke scene - Stratt letting herself have a moment of humanity and connection with the mission personel, just to end it with a curt "And that is enough."
- How direct, efficient and straight forward she is in her way of speaking
- The "bweep bweep" sound she makes when revealing that Astrophage is the Hail Mary's fuel??
- Hyping Grace up; always prompting people to applaud him and trying to make him more confident
... did anyone say Grace?
Ryland Grace
Ok, so. Ryland Grace. Representation of all cowards and criers (...me). My view of the character might be skewed because of all the fandom interpretations of him, and the common trend among tumblr users to "give Ryland Grace every problem ever" for fun. He's kind of become a character you project your issues onto, and that makes it difficult to remember who he Actually is, lol.
Best qualities include:
- He's a coward, runs away from any challenge
- Generally Scared
- Has intense social anxiety
- Cries all the time and is very emotional
- Wants to live, desperately
- The epitome of "Accidentally Became Important At Work And It's Ruining My Life"
I'm kind of joking about him being such a pathetic-wet-cat of a person (all the cowardice and crying), but it's a genuinely interesting aspect of the character!
For most of the movie (up until the last flashback, when Grace remembers that he was forced on the mission) Grace operates under the belief that he's ultimately a brave person. That back on Earth, he rose up to the challenge and volounteered himself to join the mission and help save Earth, even though he wasn't one of the original volounteers.
Then he finds out that he had the option of joining volountarily - and declined. So he had to be forced - screaming, crying, begging, and running away from the Hail Mary.
This is why in the scene immediately following the flashback, when he's saying goodbye to Rocky:
ROCKY: You are very brave.
GRACE: No, I don't know about that...
But in the end, he did find someone to be brave for, and someone he would die for: Rocky. I love the detail of Grace erasing his "Who am I" whiteboard to write down the plan to save him. Because he's already figured out who he is - he's Rocky's best friend, and his only hope right now.
Returning to save Rocky is - in my opinion - Ryland Grace's first Truly Brave moment of the movie. His every other risky, brave, or heroic action up to this point gets mudded by the fact that he believed that He Was Always Brave.
So if Earth Ryland was brave enough to volounteer for the mission - then he would also be brave enough to take off his helmet in uncertain atmosphere, or risk his life to retrieve the "predator collector" from Adrian's atmosphere. But that's not who Earth Ryland was, and that's not who Space Ryland is. He's just putting on a brave face - and doing what he thinks his Earth self would do.
And that's why his sacrifice to save Rocky after he gets all his memories back is so impactful. Grace finally knows that he would never do this sort of thing on Earth, but he still actively and consciously chooses saving Rocky over returning home.
I don't know - I honestly just latched onto Grace and I don't fully know why. He's like a dog to me. Maybe it's the emotional aspect of the character, and how scared he is. Maybe I just like Ryan Gosling's acting.
Rocky!
He's the highlight of the movie, and a nicer character to end the post on :) There's not much to say - Rocky is my best friend and I see myself in him. Autistic non-human character with funky speech patterns and movement? Sign me up, that's me!
I really like how dynamic he is - love his energetic, fun, and incredibly bossy/irritable personality. An eccentric engineer who's great at his job! My inner monologue has started copying his speech patterns... Though I've already been saying "question mark?" to indicate questions for longer than I remember. I've always been silly at heart. Thumbs up babey.
On a more serious note, there's also the important juxtaposition of Grace's Relationship with Stratt vs with Rocky:
GRACE: Can I think about this?
STRATT: You have three hours.
GRACE: Can I think about it?
ROCKY: Yes, think about it long time.
Many such examples. But I'm not getting into that right now! This essay is already twice as long as I'd originally planned, lol.
Waiter, waiter! More movies like this, please!
The combination of joy, whimsy, humor, beautiful visuals, amazing score & sountrack, amazing acting, high stakes, stress, urgency and above all - HOPE - that this movie provides is incredible.
I need more movies structured like this. More beautiful cinematography, impactful scores, actors that genuinely care about the project and give it their all, more practical effects and physical sets - I need more movies that are the passion projects of everyone involved. Because you can Feel all the love and passion put into it.
And I also need more stories in the affectionately named "cosmic hope" genre. Which reminds me of some other space-related hope-in-the-face-of-the-unknown story... something about football? (foreshadowing for the next blog post? If the inspiration strikes again soon?)
... and I will also be talking about Project Hail Mary again, I fear.
To anyone reading this - thank you for getting this far! I'm not really expecting an audience for this essay as I wrote it mainly for myself, lol! But if you're also a PHM fan, or if you've watched the movie because of this recommendation - feel free to write a comment and share your thoughts!