When the world needs to send someone to space, they depend on Ryan Gosling. He’s done it twice now: initially in 2018, portraying Neil Armstrong in director Damien Chazelle’s First Man, and now in 2026 in Project Hail Mary. His first venture might have been one giant leap for mankind, but it’s much more quaint than his follow-up trip. Instead of a three-day journey in the name of human advancement, he’s eleven light-years away from home, the fate of the world depending on the success of his mission.

Gosling was also incredibly internal as Armstrong, perpetually reluctant to display any emotions as he performs the world’s most dangerous mission. While making his historic strides on the lunar surface, he chose to commemorate the moment by letting go of the bracelet made by his young daughter, who died years earlier from a brain tumor. Here, as Ryland Grace, he’s a bumbling bufoon, comedically vomiting, slurring his speech, and losing his balance as he awakes from hypersleep. He talks back to the computer attempting to console him, questioning how and why he got on this ship.

Normally, I’d simply say that these are two vastly different ways of telling a generally similar story, with neither being the objectively right or wrong path. There are no absolutes in art, but Project Hail Mary definitely feels as close as one could get to an incorrect answer. It's the worst type of crowdpleaser, its overeagerness at becoming the be-all and end-all entertainment product quickly turning into desperation, as if there's a five-second ticking time bomb on the film print that can only be restarted each time you're smitten by its "charm."

Phil Lord and Christopher Miller return to the director’s chair after a twelve-year hiatus, which included being fired and replaced by Ron Howard for Solo: A Star Wars Story and creatively leading the two animated Spider-Verse films. They have an extreme mile-a-minute approach to their stories and the humor laced within them, seemingly inspired by Adam McKay and Will Ferrell’s early days of Anchorman and The Other Guys. McKay grew out of his juvenile era, coincidentally harnessing Gosling’s persona in The Big Short. Lord and Miller haven’t matured and yet want to appear like grown-ups, always infantilizing their narrative and audience.

It’s a classic have your cake and eat it too scenario, except, surprisingly, the cake isn’t even well-baked. The humor solely consists of the subversive quips the Marvel Cinematic Universe drove into the ground, trying to convince us it was cooler than its inherently silly concepts. What is Ryland’s response to the awe-inspiring view of outer space? A quip. What does he do when he makes contact with extraterrestrial life? He quips. How does he provide the emotional background for his character? He quips. Are you laughing yet? I sure wasn’t. I was exhausted by this love-me-or-I 'll-die style of humor, something that Hollywood has increasingly pigeonholed Gosling into doing once it was discovered that he was funny. Gone are the days of interesting performances in Blue Valentine or Lars and the Real Girl, replaced by the increasingly diluted goofy masculinity of Ken from Barbie.

You wouldn’t know it by Ryland’s or the film’s demeanor, but Project Hail Mary is about a very serious subject. A mysterious infrared line known as the Petrova line is slowly dimming the sun, causing Earth’s temperature to cool by about 15-20° over the next few decades. Crops will fail, thick sheets of ice will form on the oceans, and hundreds of wildlife species will die out. Ryland works as a middle school science teacher, trying to put on a brave face as he inspires the next generation. Unfortunately, kids these days are just as plugged into the news and rumor mill as adults, aware that humanity’s handling of greenhouse gases over the last half-century proves that there probably isn’t much hope for this situation.

That is, until Sandra Hüller shows up one day as Eva Stratt, leader of the international task force to stop this threat. She recruits a reluctant Ryland because of his past as a molecular biologist, believing he has the skills to produce a workable solution. Ryland’s theory proves to be correct, placing him aboard a spaceship on a one-way mission to a faraway star. Once there, he comes in contact with a spider-like alien seemingly made of rocks, which he dubs “Rocky.” It turns out that Rocky’s alien species is in the same boat, so the pair must work together to save all life in the universe.

For as much as Rocky is treated as the second coming of Baby Yoda, which means no harm will come to him, as that would threaten future merchandise sales and memeability, he is skillfully performed and voiced by puppeteer James Ortiz. To circumvent the fact that the atmosphere on Ryland’s ship would kill him, Rocky is placed in a hermetic bubble, rolling around as he pleases. His language is made from vibrations, the long process of translating it into English offering several moments of humorous wordplay.

Just as a blank check was written to get Ryland to his destination, so was it by Amazon MGM to bring this novel to the screen. Greig Fraser, cinematographer for the Dune films and The Batman, once again employs the epic scale of IMAX, the entire spectrum of light sprawled across the vastness of space. His camera often appears to be in zero gravity, rotating and swerving around the expansive sets.

Still, putting $200 million worth of lipstick on a pig doesn’t allow it to evolve beyond its nature. Project Hail Mary wallows in the filth of mediocrity, treating its audience with the shallow showmanship of a used car salesman. It’s one small step in the pantheon of blockbusters, one giant leap backwards for blockbuster filmmaking.