It may have seemed like a risky move to hand Phil Lord and Christopher Miller—whose only live-action films were a couple of *Jump Street* installments over a decade ago—the keys to a $250 million sci-fi epic; a film that, moreover, carries the stigma of bearing the "Amazon Studios film" label. Yet, this turned out to be the most unexpected choice to top our list of the most anticipated films of 2026, and—as it happens—it has achieved the impossible.
Dr. Ryland Grace—a somewhat hapless schoolteacher with a history of controversial physics theories—wakes up aboard an interstellar spacecraft with fragmented memories of how he got there. Little by little, he begins to piece together a puzzle involving the end of the world... unless he can successfully complete the mission he is supposed to carry out out there—a mission he cannot quite recall...
Directors: Phil Lord, Christopher Miller
Writers: Drew Goddard, Andy Weir
Stars: Ryan Gosling, Sandra Hüller, James Ortiz
Of course, beneath the surface, there are many more elements that make this project work—beyond mere references to *21 Jump Street* or Amazon. The latter has made an impressive financial wager—though one that, arguably, is fully justified: to create this year's equivalent of titles like *Interstellar*, *Gravity*, or *The Martian*—and perhaps even surpass them in terms of capturing the work's original tone and atmosphere. It is a proposition that will undoubtedly spark divided opinions, yet its success will depend entirely on how much the viewer enjoys the charm and signature awkwardness typical of Ryan Gosling’s performances.
Lord and Miller are far more than just their live-action film credentials; they were also the creative forces behind the infinitely innovative *The Lego Movie*—with Lord penning the script for the incredible *Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse*—and both co-wrote the sequels to those films. And that, as if that weren't enough, speaks solely to the directors themselves. The story is the work of Drew Goddard, who also adapted *The Martian*—the novel written by the very same author behind the book on which *Project Hail Mary* is based: Andy Weir.
It is a hard sci-fi epic that undoubtedly evokes a fusion of *The Martian* and *Interstellar*, yet goes far beyond that—and even a step beyond that step—thanks to a series of highly audacious narrative twists and gambits. These are the kinds of challenges that Lord and Miller seem to be the only ones—or nearly the only ones—remotely capable of coherently translating to the screen in a film of this magnitude. It is imaginative, intelligent, and frequently absolutely hilarious—a combination that is nearly impossible to pull off to perfection in a two-and-a-half-hour big-screen sci-fi epic, balancing humor with tension while delivering a deeply moving and immensely satisfying experience.
A key—almost indispensable—element in making it all work is Ryan Gosling, who seems to have been born to play the lead role. He is in top form—much like in *The Fall Guy*—radiating that aura of a reluctant, sarcastic hero with a keen sense of self-deprecation: an innately resourceful soul who—much like Damon in *The Martian*—is forced to draw upon every last resource to survive in solitude, at an immense distance from home. Gosling is at the absolute pinnacle of his career, which is excellent news, as the film rests almost entirely upon his shoulders.
He must navigate incredibly complex situations, oscillating between clumsily fending off automated medical robots on his ship—in a completely comical fashion—one moment, and discovering corpses the next, only to later have to execute a succession of improbably moving sequences as the plot unfolds. He is the heart and soul of this journey; he absolutely nails his performance, giving himself over completely to the character, and gifts us with countless moments that will have us dying of laughter—even as he holds the fate of the known universe, and beyond, in his hands.
Lord and Miller also do justice to the science, integrating all that juicy hard sci-fi characteristic of the novel, yet managing to make it accessible and engaging for a cinematic audience (the didactic explanations and alternative approaches to narrative exposition are worthy of appreciation and applause). At the same time, the visual effects perfectly recreate the film's aesthetic, alternating between tense docking sequences and *in extremis* escapes—in the vein of titles like *Interstellar*, *Gravity*, or *Ad Astra*—and combining them with the kind of innovative visual humor one might sooner expect from a live-action adaptation of Pixar’s *WALL-E*. It is brilliant and jaw-droppingly spectacular in equal measure; emotional and heartbreaking, tense and frankly hilarious. It is everything you could wish for in a cinematic spectacle.
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