Project Hail Mary has defied my expectations more than any other blockbuster released in the last year. Based on the novel by Andy Weir, who also brought us The Martian, it revolves around school teacher and biologist Ryland Grace, played by Ryan Gosling who wakes up abord a space vessel suffering from amnesia. The first surprise is that Ryland’s amnesia is not really the point – this is not The Bourne Identity set in outer space. A series of flashbacks that comprise most of the first act provides us with a clear explanation – in the near future, the sun, along with other stars in the Earth’s vicinity, has started to dim, due to the Astrophage, a single-celled organism that consumes radiation, raising the prospect of imminent, catastrophic global cooling. When a distant sun is discovered that doesn’t appear to be cooling, despite the presence of the Astrophage, European Space Agency administrator Eva Stratt, played by Sandra Huller, appoints Ryland as part of a team to investigate the star. The catch: current technology means that there is only enough fuel for a one-way mission, meaning that Ryland and his colleagues have to sacrifice themselves for the future of the planet. When Ryland wakes up to discover that the other astronauts have perished in deep hibernation, he makes a choice to carry on the mission in cosmic isolation.

The biggest surprise in the film for me came in the tonal shift from the first to second acts. The first act, which largely focuses on Ryland’s time on Earth with occasional scenes in the spaceship, is very much of a piece with the tone of The Martian. Despite writing in the science fiction genre, Weir’s affinity is ultimately with the western – he loves the perky, can-do monologues of men on the frontier, and both of these stories initially lend themselves to that. After all, The Martian was a space western, with Matt Damon as its lone protagonist, while Ryland’s total isolation naturally lends itself to monologue. However, this monologic quality suffuses the Earthbound scenes as well, where the constant perky commentary and sardonic chirpiness becomes exhausting quickly, making all the characters feel like kids who are playing with toys. I wanted much less slapstick in this opening act, which felt defensive or deflective, suggesting that directors Phil Lord and Christopher Miller weren’t really confident in themselves to generate real beauty, suspense or, indeed, humour. There’s also something a bit tiresome about Weir’s nerdy space western vibes – it reeks of a certain dorky white male anxiety, encapsulated in Damon’s diatribe against disco in The Martian.   

All of that is to say that Lord and Miller’s insatiable perkiness keeps emotional connections at bay in the opening act – and yet that all changes when Ryland meets a spider-like alien in a ship drifting near the distant sun. This creature is fundamentally different from humans in many ways – in terms of its appearance, its technology, its language – but when it learns to communicate with Ryland it turns out that the two of them are in the same position: they have travelled to the star to explore why it has resisted the Astrophage and they have both woken up alone in a ship full of dead colleagues. A beautiful friendship now ensues as Ryland and Rocky (as he names him) tentatively get to know each other and bridge the differences between them. If the opening act feels like boys playing with toys, then Rocky takes that toy-like quality and turns it into something more emergent and wondrous, thanks to the way that he offsets Ryland’s (and the film’s) monologic qualities, since one of his unique attributes is exquisite hearing and penetrative vision, meaning that Ryland can no longer speak aloud any more without Rocky comically interjecting and commenting: “He has perfect hearing…he can see through walls…personal space is at a premium.” All the snarky energy of Weir’s trademark monologues blooms into a space sitcom, or even space screwball, in which Ryland and Rocky are perpetually talking at mild cross-purposes, as Ryland uses his video logs to Earth for passive-aggressive but essentially affectionate ramblings about how difficult Rocky is to live with, even as he becomes indispensable.

Taking that screwball analogy one step further, just as screwball films turned upon what Stanley Cavell described as a pastoral interlude – a retreat into the (usually New England) wilds that restored the couple’s relationship – so Project Hail Mary finds its pastoral interlude in outer space, except that what is being reinvented here is not marriage but the entire nature of relationality itself. For the impoverished human relationships of the first act, their sardonic closure of intimacy, now become the canvas for a profound reinvention of connection that goes beyond the normal ties of family, nation and society. Lord and Miller’s space pastoral turns into a manifesto for finding common ground across the most radical of distances, as the fate of the Earth turns out to depend upon a cosmic act of empathy. While the twist that Eva Stratt effectively drugged and abducted Ryland for the mission doesn’t necessarily annul their relationship – she insists that “This may feel like me betraying you but it’s actually me believing you,” and he does end up sending the critical scientific data back to her – it nevertheless plays a role in the more remarkable twist of the film: that Rocky turns out to be the most profound relationship of Ryland’s life. Hence the beautiful final act, which takes time to flesh out the beats and tics of Ryland and Rocky’s relationship – Rocky providing Ryland with the fuel he needs to get home, Ryland returning to save Rocky, and Ryland eventually becoming a teacher again on Rocky’s home planet. Apparently a four hour cut of the film exists and it’s hard not to assume that it must further elaborate these rhythms of the friendship, which could be a feature length film themselves.

For all those reasons, I found Project Hail Mary to be an utterly unique blockbuster, one that is destined to become a beloved classic, and poignantly addressed to our current moment. At a time when global politics seems to be so broken, when climate change feels all but apocalyptic, and people have resorted to deeply tribal forms of individualism, whether of family, identity, or belief, Lord and Miller’s film offers a utopian balm: a Hollywood protagonist whose raison d’etre doesn’t come from the contours of our world but from a friendship formed halfway across the galaxy and the altruistic pleasure of teaching an alien species who have welcomed him into their midst. Among other things, it made me realise how rare it is to see great films about friendship as an ethos, as the foundation of a good life. Given that Rocky often feels like an AI entity too, there’s a profound message here about the importance, in a world in which all information has become fungible, of relationality itself. For Project Hail Mary, the future depends not on how much we can know, or how closely we can align with an interest group, but on empathy – a value so powerful that Charlie Kirk, to take one notable example, described it as one of the core problems of our time, but that in Lord and Miller’s manifesto, is the only way to a future.