When I first sat down for “Project Hail Mary,” I was a little worried because of the many kids I saw in the audience. I knew that the book was written by Andy Weir, who had previously written “The Martian,” which was a great book-to-film adaptation. It was not easy to read or watch with kids. 

I wondered if I had too high of expectations, considering it is an Amazon Prime film which tends to be very mediocre or too basic with how they try to make a film. They previously had a rough time making “Crime 101”, which was a messy boring film with a stacked cast. All these things combined felt like I was going to be underwhelmed by the film and distracted by kids crying or screaming because they are bored. 

Once the movie started, all my previous thoughts went out the window and everyone in the audience was silent. It is not a film that hesitates to get started because it tells a story using flashbacks between the main conflict of the film. 

The solar system is in trouble of dying slowly from a life form taking energy from the sun, and humans need to find the cure from a different solar system. After a bit of unfortunate circumstances, Ryland Grace (Ryan Gosling), a high school teacher, ends up floating through space by himself, trying to find the cure until he meets a new lifeform to work with. 

When we meet the new lifeform named Rocky, the film becomes intimate with their interactions compared to an environment that is very vast. Grace and Rocky slowly learn how to communicate, sleep and work together, leading to this film exploring ideas of how humans connect with those who they do not relate to in a general sense.  

Rocky is now one of my favorite characters in the category of CGI friends who do not exist such as Grogu, (“Mandalorian”), “Wall-E” and Rocket Racoon (“Guardians of the Galaxy”) because I forgot that he was not real in sections of the film. It also helps that he is co-starring with Ryan Gosling. 

Gosling has an amazing way of getting the audience to connect with his character regardless of the film, which made it easier to believe in Grace’s and Rocky’s connection. In “Project Hail Mary”, this really works because he is the character with almost two and a half hours of screen time. It felt easy to invest in seeing the triumphs and made it much more devastating when something went wrong for Grace. 

It is intriguing how character driven this film is. When the visual language, which would be the selling point in any other project because of how bewildering it is in this film, comes second to our main characters. 

It is important to note that the visuals in this were so gorgeous that I started crying because Cinematographer Greig Fraser understood the beauty of being human being allowed to see these breathtaking vibrant colors, being able to build visual connections with abstract ideas, and Fraser takes full control of every frame. 

It feels like Greig Fraser was always working towards a full-fledged space film after working on both parts of “Dune” as lead cinematographer. He takes full advantage of IMAX 70MM Certified cameras again by having Earth scenes be in a 2.39:1 aspect ratio (AR) which is the standard AR for most motion pictures. Space is in a taller 1.43:1 aspect ratio which has 52 percent more image than 2.39:1 when screened in 70MM.  Films such as “Interstellar,” “Dune Part Two” and “Dunkirk” used this format to make the audience more engaged in the theater. The choice to use it for “Project Hail Mary” gives something so wide and empty to feel that much scarier by letting it take up more of the screen.  

One of the other most important things in this film is the set designed by Charles Wood, who really makes the ship feel alive. Wood made a ship that felt like a big mansion, leading certain scenes to feel lonely and empty, such as when Grace first wakes up from his coma alone but in scenes where there is a lot going on, the ship can feel very claustrophobic compared to the vastness of space such as when Rocky decides to run around the ship.  

Overall, the different elements of film mixed to create one of the greatest films I have seen in a while and what might be in future critic’s conversations for top five sci-fi films of all time. I give “Project Hail Mary” 5/5 stars because I truly believed in the Hail Mary, and I bawled my eyes out for what was an hour of the runtime. I will rewatch this a couple of times before it leaves theaters, and I will hopefully be showing this to all my friend’s kids in twenty years because it teaches them how to build connections with someone who they may not be able to relate to.