I’ll do my best to keep this short and as not-pessimistic as possible. I get that a lot of people liked Project Hail Mary, and I get that Rocky was fun and cute, and there’s nothing truly structurally wrong with the film. But I was annoyed by this film. What can I say, I’m a hater.
Comparison for Comparison’s Sake
Let’s get the basics out of the way. The movie was fun, the characters were funny, Ryan Gosling was as sexy as ever, and I liked the sci-fi bits. It’s hilarious how, even when portraying a cowardly nerd, Gosling is charming and hot. The supporting characters on Earth were cute, and I liked the loose juxtaposition of the very brave astronauts acting as Gosling’s foil for courage.
The theme of courage was pretty apparent, and I think that the film could have gotten away with not having any flashback scenes at all. The opening sequence of Gosling realizing he was not supposed to be in space and did not want to be here and had fought against it was adequate. The runtime would have suffered, as would have the less imaginative people who would have had a hard time piecing it together, so I’m ok with letting that stand.
Idiots on Twitter are still arguing about the language barrier thing, but let’s not be stupid. Arrival already covered that shit. The language barrier between us and aliens can be considered an acceptable challenge to overcome quickly because that challenge was explored thoroughly by a superior film and can be accepted into general and sci-fi film language. A quick montage is all it really needs anymore, especially in a sci-fi movie.
Rocky was cute, yes.
An Ending of Epic Proportions
Ok so here’s my big issue with this movie. Remember Lord of the Rings? The way that Return of the King ends? It was like, half an hour of ‘so here’s how it ended!’ slow-mo feelgood crap. I watch it every time. I never skip it. It felt good. It was earned. Justified. Satisfactory. In fact, they even cut a lot of that ending from the original books. Y’know what other movie had a really long ending?
This fucking movie.
“Project Hail Mary” should have ended when Gosling discovered that the lifesaving bacteria were eating through the xenon, and that he needed to choose between returning home and saving Rocky. That was the big choice. The big character moment. A selfless, courageous sacrifice. That was Gosling choosing to never return home, to save an entire civilization. The initial choice that he ran from, Gosling had now made the brave choice.
Nope. They kept going.
The next acceptable ending was when Rocky comes out of the dark and finally waves back at Gosling. That was good! We can deduce what happens next!
Nope. They kept going.
Now Gosling is on Rocky’s planet in a little habitat. They had a great ending shot when Rocky comes to his door, and they walk away bantering. That’s a sweet ending, right?
Nope. They kept going.
Ok so now they’re hanging out. Rocky is wearing an atmosphere suit, so it’s clear they built this place for Gosling. Nice lil walk around the artificial beach. Nice. Oh look, an expensive CGI shot explaining how they made the waves. Nice lil crane shot of them walking off bantering. Ok. Roll credits?
Nope. They kept going.
Then we get establishing shots of the planet and the habitat they built for Gosling. So… clearly there’s more. Gosling is commenting on the habitat. They’re discussing if and when he wants to go home. He wants to “think about it”. Nice. Ambiguous. Another great place to end on. A sweet, distant camera shot of Rocky and Gosling sitting at the beach. Friends forever! What a great ending!
Nope. They kept going.
This was where I was really pissed off. The final shot is Gosling teaching a little classroom of excited little baby Rockies. It was cute, yeah, but then Gosling does this excited, triumphant clap and spin of jubilation. Cut to black.
Look. I… this wasn’t earned. I genuinely do not believe that this story, and Gosling’s journey, and all the crap in this movie, earned this ending. They earned a happy ending, sure. They earned it at any of the points before this final one. I have two reasons why I take issue.
Reason 1 is that this movie did not go so far and do so much to deserve and display such a long, long, long ending. We fucking get it. He’s brave now. He’s with Rocky now. He doesn’t know if he wants to go home. Whatever. We get it. Fucking hell shut up!
Reason 2 is that Gosling’s big ‘and now I rest’ trigger was fucking teaching. No offense to teachers, but this was not, at all, Gosling’s calling. He was a scientist. His whole Earth arc was that he had to resign to teaching because he failed at science, and got a second chance at science with the ‘let’s save the world’ gang. Gosling’s life’s calling was never set up to be teaching, it was science- if anything. In fact, the whole career thing wasn’t even a focus of the movie. He didn’t really reminisce about his students, or use his teaching skills with Rocky, or use any elementary school science callbacks to crack a big problem they were facing in space. It was completely irrelevant to the rest of the movie. Why the fuck is he so happy to be teaching?!
Conclusion (And I Can Promise I’ll keep it short)
(Because I don’t have much more to say)
(and also because c’mon who wants to read a three-page review that’s trashing a generally well-loved movie?)
(I hope some people. I like validation.)(I don’t need the validation, I just like it.)
(Please don’t tell my therapist that I’m seeking external validation.)
The movie was fine, dude. If you liked it, great. I was ok with it up until the very end. The first very end. Not the third or fourth or second or fifth very end. The first very end. And you may disagree that this movie was fine with all of the ending fluff, or you may bring up the book, or that the book fans would have been mad about it if they’d scrapped the ending. To counter that final point, I simply point you towards the ending of Lord of the Rings.
I rate this movie
YMMV
I saw it in theaters. I’d like to bring to attention that I had the restraint to not make any football-related puns, jokes, or allusions during this review. I also did not sneak in a boob joke.
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