The day Ryan Gosling had to save the world

BarcelonaAfter traveling to the Moon (First man), falling in love up to three times with Emma Stone (in Crazy stupid love, La La Land and Gangster land) and being a professional behind the wheel (Drive), a replicant (Blade runner 2049), a clumsy detective (The nice guys) or a plastic toy (Barbie), Ryan Gosling was due to become part of a special category of Hollywood star: that of actors who save the world. But unlike Tom Cruise, Bruce Willis, Arnold Schwarzenegger or Will Smith, he does it from a less heroic place: in Project Hail Mary, which premieres on Friday, Gosling is a man who wakes up on a spaceship with no memories and no idea what he's doing there all alone, sleeping next to the corpses of the other two crew members. Little by little, he realizes that the ship is on a desperate mission to collect information from the only known star that has not succumbed to the epidemic that is extinguishing all the stars in the galaxy, including ours. A mission that is clearly too much for someone who was a science teacher at a high school on Earth.

The first blockbuster of 2026 combines elements from many emblematic science fiction films, starting with 2001: A Space Odyssey or Close Encounters of the Third Kind, to which there are direct references. The scientific ambition of Interstellar or the communication processes between alien species in Arrival also resonate, but above all the adventurous spirit and emotional science fiction of Spielberg's E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial, as the heart of Project Hail Mary is, basically, the story of friendship between its protagonist and the rocky, faceless alien he finds when his ship reaches its destination and discovers another special ship that is also trying to solve the enigma of the star that does not go out. In a way, the film manages to articulate the drama of a world on the verge of extinction, the sense of wonder of great science fiction, and the Chaplin-esque humor of a Gosling dedicated to slapstick comedy in a fun, witty, and emotionally driven buddy movie – and also a little too long, to be fair.

Project Hail Mary adapts the second novel by Andy Weir, whose debut novel, The Martian, Ridley Scott already successfully adapted. The two films share the weight of science in the plot and a protagonist alone in space who has to devise ways to survive in adverse circumstances, solving problems as they arise. They also coincide in a rather bright and optimistic tone, as well as in Drew Goddard's work as a screenwriter adapting Weir's book. In the case of Project Hail Mary, this is put at the service of the direction of Phil Lord and Christopher Miller, two geniuses of modern entertainment cinema who until now had shone above all behind animated films such as Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs, The Lego Movie, and the Spider-Verse diptych.

A success with a taste of revenge

Their only spectacular failure, however, was resounding: hired to direct the film about young Han Solo, they were fired halfway through filming because their spontaneous and improvisation-based directing style set off alarms among Lucasfilm executives, who rushed to replace them with the artisanal reliability of Ron Howard. In this regard, "Project Hail Mary" has a taste of self-vindication, the cold revenge of directors who know how to respect the material they are working with –the adaptation is very faithful to Weir's novel– and bring it to life through very fresh and engaging performances, with Gosling as the center of gravity and special mention to a superb Sandra Hüller, the German actress from Anatomy of a Fall and The Zone of Interest, who in her Hollywood debut even dares to sing Harry Styles at karaoke.

The other key to Lord and Miller's work is visual effects without excessive CGI, heavily based on physical elements: in fact, the alien co-protagonist (Rocky, with the energy of a hyperactive puppy) is a mixture of digital techniques and a figure manipulated by a team of puppeteers, whose supervisor (James Ortiz) has ended up lending his voice to the creature, as the puppeteer Frank Oz did many years ago, in a galaxy far, far away, with Yoda in the Star Wars saga.

The consummation of Lord and Miller's revenge was completed last weekend with its premiere in the United States and other territories, which grossed over 120 million euros globally, a figure higher than expected. Project Hail Mary is, along with Oppenheimer and F1, the third-best post-pandemic opening for a film that escapes the domain of franchises and intellectual properties; and it is, therefore, a vote of confidence from the public in family cinema based more on the talent of the stars and directors than on consumer loyalty to brands.

IMAX and format dance

The film's success is also a triumph for advocates of cinema understood as a spectacle for the big screen: the film has been specially designed for IMAX theaters, which in the United States have accounted for 20% of the gross of Project Power. In Catalonia there is only one IMAX theater (at Cinesa Diagonal Mar in Barcelona), which will screen it, as conceived by Lord and Miller, in a more square format (1.90:1) for the space scenes and in a more panoramic ratio (2:39:1) in the flashbacks of Earth, a rare fluctuation of formats that in the standard screens of the rest of the cinemas would have to be resolved with a special configuration that incorporates black bars on the sides for the present scenes and upper and lower margins for the flashbacks. All in all, it will be a small challenge for the projectionists, so if anything strange is detected during the screening, it is recommended to alert the person in charge of the room.