Andy Weir’s novel Project Hail Mary is an enormously entertaining sci-fi page turner with a brilliant narrative structure and endearing characters. But it’s also quite sciencey—full of brain-bending speculative physics, chemistry, and molecular biology. It puts the “science” in science fiction.
After reading the book, I was skeptical that a movie adaptation could thread the needle between saying enough about the story’s science and not getting bogged down in it. And would the visual depictions of the novel’s Eridian aliens, interstellar spacecraft, and distant galaxies be cheesy or believable?
Amazingly (or in the film’s parlance, “Amaze! Amaze! Amaze!”), the movie more than does justice to the book. It elevates it, adding immersive layers to the compelling story in ways only big-screen cinema can.
It’s an instant sci-fi classic. Funny, moving, awe-inspiring, thrilling. And for Christian audiences, it’s the rare PG-13 movie that’s clean and wholesome without being cheesy (apart from one sexual innuendo only adults will get, the movie could be rated PG). It’s a mainstream Hollywood blockbuster that families can enjoy together without fear. How refreshing.
But the film is edifying not only for what it doesn’t depict but for what it does. This is a redemptive story, beautifully told. As the title and the main character’s name (Ryland Grace) might suggest, Christian ideas infuse this film’s worldview, even if they’re not explicitly invoked.
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