Project Hail Mary
Saving the world isn't going to be easy
Review by Abu Francis
Computer programmer-turned-novelist Andy Weir has got the algorithm down: science and humor will keep us together. In Project Hail Mary – the new film adaptation of Weir’s 2021 novel – astronaut saves the world by collaborating with alien. Together, they stop a virus from eating their respective suns. It’s a fine followup to The Martian, in which astronaut saves himself by growing his own food – and humanity collaborates to bring him home.
Science emerges as the universal language. Numbers don’t lie and some things are just true, regardless of what we’d like to believe. Now, we’re used to characters like Scotty telling Captain Kirk he’ll try rerouting the plasma conduit through the forward deflector shield and, at the climactic moment, the job is miraculously done. In the novel, Weir takes 10 pages to tell how Scotty actually did it. Thankfully, the film version minimizes the long scenes of protagonist Ryland Grace (played by Ryan Gosling) performing long division and numerous experiments to solve technical problems.
Front and center is Weir’s wise-cracking hero Grace and his whimsical relationship with a friendly alien he names Rocky. A cross between The Thing and a Muppet, Rocky is a brilliant engineer from a planet that has produced life completely different and almost incompatible with Earth’s. No sex, no violence, no mano a mano battle to the death to save the world. Math, science and compassion fuel the solving of interstellar problems by our goofy dynamic duo.
The big disappointment is filmmakers’ decision to leave out the Why? of the novel: a crucial conversation from Chapter 26 that is rendered in 15-20 seconds of movie dialogue. The heart of the story is the best 400-word summary of what we face as a civilization that I’ve read recently. Here it is, minus the stage directions:
For fifty thousand years, right up to the industrial revolution, human civilization was about one thing and one thing only: food. Every culture that existed put most of their time, energy, manpower and resources into food. Hunting it, gathering it, farming it, ranching it, storing it, distributing it … it was all about food.
The industrial revolution mechanized agriculture. Since then, we’ve been able to focus our energies on other things. But that’s only been the last two hundred years. Before that, most people spent most of their lives directly dealing with food production.
Do you think the United States — the most powerful military force of all time — is going to sit idly by while half their population starves? There’ll be wars. Fought for the same reason most wars in ancient times were fought for: food. Once the desperate, starving countries start invading each other for food, the food production will go down.
War, famine, pestilence, and death … the Hail Mary is all we have now. I’ll make any sacrifice to give it even the tiniest additional chance of success.
Like most science fiction over the past 80 years, Project Hail Mary is a cautionary tale about humanity using science (and technology) to create a hell on Earth, not a heaven. Can humans think ahead and work together to solve our problems instead of hurling blindly into oblivion? Weir doesn’t touch on religion much, but it’s no accident that spaceship Hail Mary is full of “Grace.” Are we willing to make the necessary sacrifices to save our planet and people from destruction? Hopefully we will be inspired to do so watching two marvelous characters act it out on the big screen.
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