Red Light and Karaoke: On the Surprising Beauty of Project Hail Mary
The most mesmerizing scene in Project Hail Mary (2026) occurs roughly in the middle, when Ryland Grace (Ryan Gosling) and his alien companion Rocky reach the planet Tau Ceti e and find themselves surrounded by astrophages, the single-celled organisms that feed on stars and whose path they’ve been following across the universe. The film takes a moment to revel in the beauty of the astrophages, illuminated in luminous, wondrous red, the cells appearing as little balls of light, Grace in his space-suit floating in the middle of it all like a human under the ocean surrounded by bobbing jellyfish.
The scene is particularly striking in the way it combines two recognizable aesthetics we associate with science: the visuals of cell biology, specifically the images of organisms we might see under a microscope, but cast across the void of space. It is the microcosm layered atop the macrocosm, and it hits you how alike the two look, the cells and the stars, confirming that they really are made of the same matter. The fact that none of this was CGI and that the filmmakers actually created this effect through physical LED lights only heightens the breathtaking magic of the scene.
Of course, the astrophages are also deadly, symbols of the impending destruction of the universe. In this sense, there is a certain macabre beauty to the scene, the way we’re meant to find enchanting the very thing that’s destroying us. It made me think of Don DeLillo’s novel White Noise, in which the characters can’t help but find the new sunsets beautiful even though they know they’re caused by the toxic chemicals that have spilled into the atmosphere and might eventually kill them all.
Project Hail Mary has just enough moments like this one to make it a more interesting film than it might appear to be on the surface. On the one hand, much like The Martian from 2015, another Andy Weir novel adapted by screenwriter Drew Goddard, Project Hail Mary feels like a throwback to the Obama era, a celebration of science and the human spirit whose faith in institutions is so out of touch with our current political reality that it feels more fantastical than the Eridian spaceship Grace discovers. Like an episode of The West Wing or the movie Contagion, both The Martian and Project Hail Mary refuse ultimately to indulge in any kind of doomerism and instead posit that human beings, and in this case aliens too, are capable of coming together to solve the necessary technical problems. As a technocrat would argue, even a problem like climate change can really be boiled down to engineering.
But such a reductive summary does a disservice to Project Hail Mary, which, with scenes like the one described above, transcends its technocratic ethos into something much more visually sublime. A lot of the credit here must be given to cinematographer Greg Fraser, who previously worked on Dune and The Batman. Under his photographer’s eye, even a karaoke scene becomes something approaching the divine.
On that note, let’s discuss that karaoke scene and more broadly the character of Eva Stratt, played with a cold magnetism by Sandra Hüller. In another movie, she would be a stock character, the one-dimensional representation of authority guiding Grace through his training and delivering curt lines of exposition. Instead, Hüller turns her role into something achingly complex and manages to make the Harry Styles song her character sings a lament for the fall of human civilization. The scene is so well done, the crowded bar, Hüller’s face illuminated by the light of the screen behind her, and you can hear in her voice an awareness of death. The movie often hits you on the nose with its ideas of faith (Grace, Hail Mary, etc.), but in this moment, the power comes from the way Hüller conveys her character’s lack of faith, her fear that this may be the end for them all. The steely facade has briefly cracked, and for a moment, underneath, we see the doubt.
And then, of course, there is the ending of the whole flashback storyline, which is very artfully arranged so that it’s juxtaposed against the film’s larger climax, when we discover that Grace did not in fact heroically volunteer on this one-way mission but instead had to be drugged by Stratt and put on the shuttle against his will. We thus learn that, far from being an extraordinary hero, Grace is actually just like us, a genuine everyman too scared to do the heroic thing when the moment finally calls for it. I found myself thinking of soldiers drafted into the U.S. army during World War II, young men who might not have actually felt brave, scared to death as their boats approached the Normandy coastline. The choice to make Grace an unwilling hero surprised me in how complex it was and how much it undermined the easy liberal spirit of the rest of the film.
In the end, of course, the movie can’t quite live with this tonal complexity and has to have Grace tell an aged Stratt over video that she had been right to do what she did. The more interesting approach would have been to have Grace reflect on the dark knowledge of his own unwilling sacrifice, to stew in what it meant, to let it complicate our narrative of heroism. Likewise, the epilogue of the film gives Grace too comfortable of an ending, especially with its suggestion that he will eventually make it home.
But the film’s power doesn’t come from such pat resolutions or easy victories. Instead, the most moving moments are the scenes of genuine thematic tension, when the very idea of liberal optimism is turned on its head. Year from now, I’ll probably forget the way the movie actually ended — but I’ll always remember the buried anguish in Hüller’s echoing voice and that image of an astronaut floating in red light.
