Project Hail Mary, or: Saving Private Hollywood?

The WEIRD Hollywood society launched a Hail Mary movie into the dead zone of its current crisis, turning a popular hard Sci-Fi book into a never-ending collection of comic relief reels totalling 2.5 hours. And it did not exactly stick the landing.

It started innocently enough. When I read the interview Perri Thaler, from Science, did with Wendy Freedman, an astronomer at the University of Chicago, I became genuinely interested in the Project Hail Mary movie. The science sounded fascinating — the kind of premise that makes you feel slightly smarter just for knowing about it. I had not been in a movie theater in a while, and when I started spotting the posters at bus stops and some colleagues mentioned they wanted to go, I joined them. What followed was completely unexpected.

But before I get to that, let me dwell for a moment on the title — because, as it turns out, it is something of a foreshadowing. The term "Hail Mary" has two primary meanings: it is a traditional Catholic prayer to the Virgin Mary, which in a Latin American context would certainly carry weight — even though the movie is decidedly not religious, despite the deliberately ambiguous title of the book. In Spanish, the movie was translated as Proyecto Salvación, which barely plays with a biblical concept but at least avoids the direct reference to the Virgin Mary. The second meaning is rooted in American football: a "Hail Mary" is a slang term for a desperate, long pass made in the final seconds of a game when victory seems unlikely. In both the movie and — I am told, since I have not read it — the book, the phrase is used in this sense, metaphorically implying entrusting a desperate situation to divine intervention, depicting a last-ditch mission to save humanity.

For the non-American audience, this is not exactly a household expression. And it is a little strange that a supposedly global mission — clearly commanded by the USA — would be named "Hail Mary," given that China, Russia, Japan, and India are all involved: countries with Catholic minorities or near-zero enthusiasm for American Football. I suppose that had this secular project been commanded by India, they would have called it Project Sticky Wicket. Or perhaps, had the author been Chinese, the book might have been called The Three-Body Problem or The Wandering Earth. We will never know.

Anyway, armed with all this cultural baggage and a generous dose of anticipation, I settled into my seat. What followed in that theater was everything but hard Sci-Fi — which made me wonder whether Perri Thaler had interviewed Wendy Freedman about the book and not the movie. Which brings me to the real question lurking beneath the title of this post: is Project Hail Mary itself a Hail Mary — Hollywood's desperate, last-second throw to save its own failing game?

From my very personal experience, the film felt like a long spin-off of Guardians of the Galaxy, starring the new Amazon action hero, Ryan Gosling. It was like watching hours of Instagram reels of Ryan's condescending interactions with his intelligent pet friend. No plot development, no climax, not even particularly funny after the 1001st remake of Laurel and Hardy. The movie seemed to reset every five to ten minutes, offering brief reprieves from the comedy through music and flashbacks designed to elicit a few "awws" — supposedly heart-melting moments and attempts at empathy towards our main character. A very WEIRD person: Western, Educated, Industrialised, Rich, and Democratic. Okay, maybe an American middle-school science teacher is not very rich — but I would argue he is there mostly by choice, inasmuch as he is apparently a famous former molecular biologist who is abducted by NASA from his classroom to save humanity. A privilege that roughly 12% of the planet's population could even imagine.

And the longer the film went on, the more a certain shape began to emerge. If this was some kind of "MAGA" movie, they are certainly going in the right direction: backwards. American hero; dead Chinese and Russian astronauts; the Black characters reduced to sidekicks, also killed, or barely present as backdrops with almost zero agency. And because it has to be inclusive, they sprinkle in a few seconds of Mercedes Sosa and some Beatles — because where on earth were the British all this time, right? I am sorry, but what I witnessed was excruciating. And speaking of WEIRD: apparently I was one of the very few people who found this movie, to say the least, boring. The special effects, the cinematography, the props — all genuinely impressive. But let us be honest: the movie is bad.

I do not go to the cinema often. It is expensive, and people seem to forget they are surrounded by other human beings — they talk, they check their phones, they crinkle things at maximum volume. I also happen to live in a small town where the only options are blockbusters. The last two times I have been to the cinema, I walked out having watched two Hollywood films, and both of them were horrible. The other was Superman — or, as Mariano called it, Loserman — which I had wanted to see for its apparent commentary on Palescrania and Rusiael (again, Mariano's inspired contributions). Setting aside its more explicit critique of invasions and the humanism of Superman the immigrant, watching a Hollywood movie is, most of the time, deeply disappointing. Fast-paced, stuffed with recycled dialogues and a thousand tropes, and suffering from what some people have begun calling the reelification of cinema.

many filmmakers want their films to feel like a series of interconnected reels rather than a coherent film [...] If there ever was a franchise made for this reelification, it's one that has inspired endless reels and memes: Deadpool. I saw Deadpool & Wolverine expecting a strong emotional core like the first film. Instead, I got more of the other things it is well known for: fourth wall breaks, irreverent humour, bromance, meta-commentary, over-the-top action, parody, satire, and pop culture references. (Is the rise of reel-films killing or creating a new form of cinema?)

Perhaps people who attend the cinema regularly have gradually accepted — even come to enjoy — this kind of Hollywood entertainment. But as someone who goes twice a year at most, it is alarming that the bar has sunk so low, that we are supposed to be moved by great visual effects and catchy songs and the same old common places. Like the bromance between Grace and Rocky. Oh, the irony. The main character of Project Hail Mary is called Grace. You get it? Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee? You know — like the prayer. Am I overexplaining the obvious, or will one of the movie's many reels explain it in 45 seconds with a joke?

The density of tropes and jokes was unbearable — like watching one-minute reels non-stop for over two hours, the story resetting itself every ten minutes or so. Sci-Fi? No. WALL-E is Sci-Fi, to give one example. This is a comedy wearing a Sci-Fi costume, loosely based on a bestselling book. The impressive performances, the effects, even the friendship story — all of it fades into oblivion because the actual storytelling is horrendous. And by horrendous I do not mean body horror — that, at least, would have been interesting. Two days before, I had watched The Ugly Stepsister: a 2025 Norwegian black comedy that reinterprets the classic 1812 Grimm's Cinderella from the perspective of Elvira, one of the titular stepsisters, stepping firmly away from the Disney version and closer to Charles Perrault's darker 1697 original. It is, by far, a much better film than Project Save Hollywood. It tells a story that evolves gradually, builds suspense, reaches a proper climax, and has an actual ending. The non-Marvel Amazon movie is closer in spirit to Deadpool or Minecraft than to Interstellar or Arrival.

I really think the 2026 adaptation of Project Hail Mary missed the mark by trading intellectual depth for what feels like a series of high-speed Instagram reels. In the book, the science was the heartbeat of the story Which is precisely what I read in the Science interview— but the film simplifies it to the point where discoveries lose all their weight. Instead of the methodical, step-by-step problem-solving I loved in The Martian, solutions here simply appear out of thin air: less real science, more movie magic.

Rocky's portrayal was equally disappointing. The practical puppetry is impressive, but the film leans far too heavily into the "adorable alien pet" archetype. By making him so emotionally human and loyal, he ends up feeling like a variation of Groot or E.T. rather than a genuinely alien being. All the fascinating details about his biology and culture — his sleep habits, his relationship with food — are filtered through such a human-centric lens that any possibility of real, gritty intercultural confrontation simply evaporates.

And perhaps most frustrating: the film clings stubbornly to the trope of the lone white male hero. Despite being framed as a global mission, the Chinese and Russian astronauts are sidelined almost immediately, leaving Ryland Grace as the singular saviour of humanity. The film claims to celebrate international cooperation, but all real agency belongs to Eva Stratt, and the global effort is little more than background noise to an individualist narrative. Between the hyper-paced flashbacks and the forced sentimental humour, the movie feels less like an organic emotional journey and more like a calculated product. From a global perspective, it is hard not to see these so-called "achievements" as the same tired clichés we have been sold for decades.

Now, perhaps some people would say I am being unfair. But I do not think a $300 million movie that is well received by most people would even blink at this post, or be aware of its existence at all. So no — this is not about being fair or unfair. It is about being honest about what we are consuming and paying for. It is like normalising eating junk food and convincing yourself it is good because they keep adding sugar and MSG while quietly removing all the nutritious ingredients. If health is not an issue, sure — keep consuming rubbish.

Hollywood threw its Hail Mary. It did not reach the end zone.