From The LEGO Movie to Project Hail Mary: Lord & Miller Take on Sci-Fi

Weir’s space adventure novels have become quite a franchise by now. Back in 2015, audiences first met The Martian, the extremely popular, wonderfully funny, and against-all-odds touching adaptation of Weir’s science fiction debut. Ridley Scott took the reins for that movie, and Matt Damon brought Weir’s literary creation, Mark Watney, to life. The Martian was a major hit, and a critically acclaimed one, nabbing several awards in the process. So, it makes sense that Weir fans would get excited when rumors emerged of another adaptation in the works: this time, a film version of his 2021 bestseller Project Hail Mary.

Amazon MGM Studios has now released the first official trailer for the film, and it is, frankly, everything that a new Weir movie needs to be. Running from the first frame to its final shot, the trailer dunks on any questions that might be lingering. This is a blockbuster, a movie for those who like to think hard about physics and survival and humor and heart. It’s science fiction on a grand scale with the potential to work for a wide swath of the audience. It also stars Ryan Gosling and has Drew Goddard on screenplay duties, and is directed by Phil Lord and Christopher Miller. You really can’t ask for much more if you’re looking to watch a major science fiction release.

Amazon MGM began development on Project Hail Mary well before Weir’s book was even available for purchase. The company scooped up the film rights to the novel in advance and secured Goddard for a screenplay. Goddard, of course, also worked on the script for The Martian and was nominated for an Academy Award for his smart and faithful adaptation. It was an easy choice to bring him back on for the next Weir film. The director duo of Lord and Miller might feel like an odd choice to tackle Weir’s rigorous, fact-focused science fiction, but they could also be a perfect one. Lord and Miller have repeatedly proven that they have a deft hand with humor and heart.

Gosling stars as Ryland Grace, a mild-mannered middle school science teacher who wakes up aboard a spaceship with no idea of how he arrived or what’s going on. As the trailer will remind you, no introduction is necessary for audiences. From the get-go, they’re dropped into Grace’s panic. He’s confused and terrified by his situation, and that confusion soon turns into stark terror as he realizes he’s light-years away from Earth. At home, he’s been sleeping in his apartment, and he is clean-shaven. Grace’s memories from Earth filter in as the film takes us on the same journey as he is on. We’re here, he reflects, and the last time, he was there. There is an Earthling with him in this flashback sequence, and she’s introducing Grace to his new assignment.

The Martian, to save the planet. The sun is dying, several nearby stars are dimming, but one—Sol—alone is the outlier. No one can figure out what’s going on, but they have a hunch that an elusive cosmic enigma is behind it all. Grace, a former molecular biologist, might be able to help with that.

Grace, however, is not having any of it. Despite his training, Grace has no desire to be an astronaut, even if he is in space and on a ship. “I put the ‘not’ in astronaut,” he dryly informs the Earthling in one shot. “I can’t even moonwalk!” Grace is no Mark Watney, and none of his recruiters seems to care. One, the efficient Eva Stratt, played by Sandra Hüller, lays it out in no uncertain terms. “If you don’t go, you die with the rest of us. If we do nothing, everything on this planet will go extinct.” It’s not just his own life that Grace is up against, then, but the potential loss of his students, and everyone else on Earth. Grace agrees to the mission.

Grace is launched into space, and the training is on, and it’s not long until he’s on the long journey to his destination. But by the time he’s waking up on the spaceship, with temporary amnesia setting in, it’s abundantly clear that he’s no longer with anyone else. Grace’s other crew members have died somewhere along the way, though details later confirmed in casting show that at least one, a Russian crewmember named Olesya Ilyukhina (Milana Vayntrub), has died recently.

Grace, alone in the galaxy with no memory of his mission or what he’s set out to accomplish, will not be entirely alone for long. He’s going to encounter a space traveler, if not a person. Grace first encounters the object he’s looking for and, to his immense surprise, a living thing: an alien. He’s grown fond of his name: Rocky. Grace’s introduction to Rocky in the trailer is remarkable, a must-see moment of pure joy. Rocky, the non-hostile alien, isn’t anything like what humanity has ever expected. He’s unlike anything at all. “I’ve never seen a creature like you,” Grace says in one memorable recording he leaves for a superior to find after he’s left on the space traveler he’s discovered. “It’s like someone took a bunch of biomorphs and mixed them all together to create the world’s worst doctor’s patch.” Rocky is wonderful, and Grace makes it clear in one shot that Rocky is growing on him. “At least he’s not growing in me, you know?” The trailer also includes one of the best moments of interspecies bonding: Grace showing Rocky how to give a thumbs-up.