It hasn’t exactly been the best of times to be part of the Amazon ecosystem of late. They had practically no presence at any in awards season, few of their TV projects have turned up on any third party measurement lists, and Amazon Fresh outright flopped. Don’t even try to get me started on THE WASHINGTON POST. And your guess is as good as any as to when a new James Bond film will actually begin production. And what good is having a trophy wife and a megayacht if you have nothing to celebrate on it, right?
Save for their relative success with Thursday Night Football, one would be hard pressed to have anything positive to say about the company. I certainly have had trouble doing so, and I’m actually a fan of their remaining top management, especially now that they’ve effectively cleaned house during a 2025 that proved to be a year of transition.
So it’s both appropriate and timely that a welcome raft of good news has finally come their way with something called PROJECT HAIL MARY. Forbes’ Paul Tassi offered these encouraging signposts to his readers on Friday night:
Project Hail Mary is now projected to make $100 million at the global box office this weekend, well on its way to both profitability and likely being one of the biggest hits of the year.
Reviews have been in for Project Hail Mary for a little while now, but they have mostly settled. Currently, the movie sits at a 95% critic score and a stunning 97% audience score on Rotten Tomatoes. It just dropped from a 98%, where it would be tied with #1 with one other movie, but now at 97%, it ties a number of other historic films. Here’s the list, at least with those that have thousands of reviews in to be certified:
- Godzilla Minus One – 98%
- Project Hail Mary – 97%
- Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back – 97%
- Spider-Man: No Way Home – 97%
- Star Wars: A New Hope – 96%
- Back to the Future – 95%
- Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse – 95%
- Terminator 2: Judgement Day – 95%
- Dune Part 2 – 95%
- Alien – 94%
- Aliens – 94%
Them’s pretty impressive quantitative and qualitative metrics, which typically don’t go hand in hand. And it’s all the more out of this world when one considers this is anything but a feel-good concept, as GOLD DERBY’s Denton Davidson reminded:
Science teacher Ryland Grace wakes up alone on a spaceship light-years from Earth. As his memory returns, he uncovers a mission to stop a mysterious substance killing the sun, and save Earth. An unexpected friendship may be the key.
THE NEW YORK TIMES’Manohla Dargis was downright professorial in the otherwise tepid outlier review she dropped on Friday:
One of the charms of “Project Hail Mary,” a feather-light science-fiction movie about a heavyweight subject — the end of the world — is how it embraces the seductions of outer space. It’s a nice change of pace, given how space often occupies the darker corners of the human imagination, whether for fictional horrors, as a metaphor for the void, as an exploitable resource or as a fixation of self-aggrandizing billionaires. The directors Phil Lord and Christopher Miller appreciate the terrors of space, but they also get the allure of space and its seemingly infinite potential for beauty, for mystery and especially for play.
Adapted by Drew Goddard from the 2021 novel by Andy Weir (author of “The Martian”), the story finds humanity once again facing Earth’s demise. For a change, it isn’t our fault (yay). Rather, an alien entity that devours energy has begun snuffing out stars like candles. It’s latched onto our sun, activating the Big Countdown to extinction. In desperation, the countries of the world have joined forces to try and find a solution, one of those reassuring premises that telegraphs the movie’s optimism and — given the lack of unity on the human-generated environmental catastrophe we’re facing — comes off as quaintly old-fashioned. It’s easier to suspend your disbelief when it comes to this movie’s science fiction; it’s the multilateralism that’s tough to buy.
Fortunately for Amazon MGM, both a majority of Dargis’ peers and the vox populi are noticeably easier to please, as the commentary behind that stellar RT score reveals:
Critics Consensus :A visually dazzling space odyssey that’s carried along effortlessly by the gravitational pull of Ryan Gosling at his most winning, Project Hail Mary is a near-miraculous fusion of smarts and heart.
Audience Says: One stellar Gosling + one arachnid-ish alien + one Hail Mary mission = lightning in a spaceship.
Indeed, it’s the endearing Gosling, who seems to charm his way into our hearts whether he’s playing over-the-top parody roles like Ken in BARBIE or Beavis on Saturday Night Live or meatier roles like those he received accolades for with THE NOTEBOOK and LA LA LAND, that makes this shine. Even Dargis conceded that:
Weir sent the unpublished manuscript to the actor in 2020 in the hope that he would star in an adaptation. Gosling did just that, and he fits the role impeccably. As an actor, he can go as glib as the movie he’s in (“The Gray Man”) and play persuasively obtuse, as evidenced by his blissfully doltish Ken … He has, though, more range than is at times asked of him, as well as a talent for expressing interiority, for feelings and for thoughts. Gosling can overdo the waterworks, but he’s good at conveying the kind of vulnerability that’s all the more touching when men, in particular, try to hide it.
It is, in other words, easy to go along with Ryland, to want the best for both him and for Earth. The twinned crisis of the global threat and his isolation invest the story and the character with pathos, and his amnesia reinforces Ryland’s helplessness while also establishing his regular guy bona fides. He’s just like us, not an unrelatable brainiac, but a hapless, baffled castaway who, at least at first, is grasping for solutions while sometimes humorously pinwheeling though microgravity like a scrap of wind-tossed refuse. The filmmakers and the actor lean into the comedy of the character’s plight, yet while that’s sometimes a relief and often funny, it blunts the existential terror.
What’s particularly uplifting even beyond the movie itself is the strong message this sends to creatives as a whole, especially ones as diverse and determined as Lord and Miller, who bring their own passions and depth even to established franchises like SPIDER-MAN. Given still more free reign in something even less universe-dependent (even though technically this is adapted from pre-existing IP), they give Ryland a range of depth and appeal that goes down much like vegetables hidden in pasta or potatoes–satisfying, and way healthier than one might have intended to be when indulging.
And at a time when the fates of Warner Brothers’ miracle team of Mike DeLuca and Pam Abdy (not to mention their HBO counterpart Casey Bloys) are in limbo as nepobaby David Ellison fiddles with his pre-existing quirks and priorities–not to mention his massive debt–an outcome like this for what is still technically a legacy studio can be seen as a beacon of light and hope for those who still want to make art and make money in the process. Down the road, a movie with this sort of breadth and strength will ultimately be a rising tide to lift all the boats at Prime Video, which certainly could use a centerpiece tile a bit more inviting than MELANIA.
So, for a change, huzzah for Amazon. Glad for once this sort of Hail Mary was a delivery you completed better than those to my building.
Until next time…