2026 has been a rollercoaster for film lately with good and bad movies being released left and right, for every “Hoppers” and “Iron Lung”, there is a “Scream 7” or “The Bride”. However, once in a blue moon, a movie comes out that takes the internet by storm, and that movie this year so far seems to be Project Hail Mary.
Project Hail Mary is a film directed by Phil Lord and Christopher Miller (The Lego Movie, 21 Jump Street) adapted from the book of the same name written by Andy Weir (The Martian). The film’s plot is about a man named Grace (played by Ryan Gosling) sent on a suicide mission to save the sun from being consumed, which could kill a quarter of Earths population, along the way meeting a fellow traveller and building a bond to save the stars.
Project Hail Mary came out on March 20th 2026, and yet it already feels like it’s the most visually appealing film of the year. There are many scenes in this movie that left us with our mouths wide open. All credit should go to the wonderful effects team of Framestore, and Industrial, Light and Magic (ILM), along with cinematographer Greig Fraser, this film really could be nominated for best visual effects next year, mark our words.
You can tell how much love Gosling has put into this movie with the half a decade he has spent working on this movie. And how much work he has put into the film itself, this being his passion project for years.
The film for me (Andy Yeung) was quite a surprise, after a long time of not visiting the movie theaters, and when I did it was for not that good of movies, seeing this was to say the least a refresher. The visuals of this film were beautiful to me, the most beautiful I’ve seen of a film for the past few years. I could definitely tell Ryan Gosling worked hard on this movie for it to look that good, and the biggest surprise to me was that it wasn’t mostly CGI, there they used practical effects for that.
Online you can see the support and love people had for this film, like on rotten tomatoes with a Critics score of 94% and an audience score of 96%. The many videos, pictures, art and memes I’ve seen of this film is astronomical. This movie touched the hearts of many by not being the usual dark depressing movie shown nowadays that isn’t for kids.
Project Hail Mary was also an emotional rollercoaster, there were many comedic moments that had us laugh, but even moments that had us silent and we’d be lying if we didn’t shed a few tears. Music plays a major role in this film’s impact as well, with the Beatles being important at the end. Often through the movie I (Christian Marquez), often wondered why the screen was getting blurry, before I sat up to get a refund for poor theater quality, it was then I realized I had been tearing up at the peak of this year’s cinema.
Overall Project Hail Mary is a delicacy for the senses, with the beautiful vibrance and score, this movie will for sure be the top of the year, no doubt about it. You can either catch Project Hail Mary in theaters or on streaming depending on the time of this article’s release.
