Ryan Gosling's humor drives the year's first big 'blockbuster'

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 driver (Drive), a replicant (Blade runner 2049), a clumsy detective (The nice guys) or a plastic toy (Barbie), Ryan Gosling was already 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 salvation, which premieres on Friday, Gosling is a man who wakes up on a spaceship with no memories and no idea what the hell he's doing there 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 gather 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 big for someone who, on Earth, was a high school science teacher.

The first blockbuster of 2026 brings together 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 from 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 salvation 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 some ways, 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 committed to slapstick comedy in a fun, witty, and emotionally driven buddy movie – and also a bit too long, to be fair.

Project Hail Mary adapts the second novel by Andy Weir, whose debut novel, The Martian, Ridley Scott had already successfully adapted. The two films share the weight of science in the plot and a protagonist alone in space who has to ingenious himself 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 who adapts 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 notable failure, however, was a resounding one: hired to direct the film about the 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-affirmation, the cold revenge of directors who know how to respect the material they work with –the adaptation is very faithful to Weir’s novel– and give it life through a very fresh and stimulating performance, 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, very much based on physical elements: in fact, the alien co-star (Rocky, with the energy of a hyperactive puppy) is a mix 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 globally grossed over 120 million euros, a figure higher than expected. Project Hail Mary is, after Oppenheimer and F1, the third-best post-pandemic opening for a film that escapes the dominance of franchises and intellectual properties; and it is, therefore, a vote of confidence from the public in a family film based more on the talent of stars and directors than on consumer loyalty to brands.

IMAX and format dance

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