I Finally Watched Project Hail Mary

“You have to watch it. It is so up your alley, it’s not even funny. They basically made this movie for you, Rachel, just watch it.”

Well, I finally watched it, okay? And darn it all, my friends were exactly right.

For anyone who may not know, Project Hail Mary follows Ryland Grace, who wakes up completely alone on a spaceship with no clue how he got there. He has to piece together who he was before and why he’s there. Oh, yeah, and he makes contact with an alien who teams up with him to complete his mission.

Per usual, there will be spoilers, so if you’re like I was and you haven’t seen this movie yet, approach with caution.

Project Hail Mary is a story about loneliness, connection, and humanity.

While Ryland clearly cares deeply about his students back on Earth, it doesn’t appear that he has very many friends. He tries to befriend his Hail Mary team members, but just when things start looking up, they, y’know, send him on a suicide space mission against his will. (To be fair, they had their reasons.) The project leader points out that he has “no children, no immediate family members, not even a dog.” She even cites this as a reason why he’s best suited for the mission—when he dies, no one will miss him.

But Ryland’s life wasn’t meaningless just because it was lonely. He may not have had the traditional life that many adults his age had. He may have been almost painfully awkward and lonely.

But the film shows us that his life was still worth fighting for. And it also shows us that no matter how alone he believed he was, more people cared about him than he thought. People did miss him when he was gone.

The value of his life wasn’t in how many friends he had or in anything he could do. His life mattered simply because he was human.

But he still ends up in space with two dead crewmates and no memories, even more alone than he was on Earth. He sorts through their belongings, unpacking photo after photo of them with people they love. Meanwhile, he has one photo of himself, alone. Even as he holds a funeral reminding his crewmates how loved they were, he can’t say the same of himself.

I highly doubt that any of us are stranded on a spaceship. (And if you are, maybe message me, I have a few questions and concerns.) But loneliness is weird like that. No matter how close you are to other humans, it’s easy to feel like you’re lightyears away.

Tagging on to my previous post about Spider-Man: Brand New Day (read that post here), this also feels like a particularly poignant problem for young adults, when it feels like all our friends are growing up and moving on and leaving us behind.

Enter Rocky.

An alien ship contacts Ryland, and he slowly learns how to communicate with the lifeform aboard. The alien, whom he dubs Rocky, is also alone in space, and has been for forty-something years. Eventually, the two figure out they were sent into space for the exact same reason.

But it doesn’t happen right away, and it takes a lot of misunderstanding and miscommunication to get there. Ryland and Rocky come from two different planets. But they come to understand they have the same mission.
They might have the same loneliness, too.

Yeah, so the movie is about them trying to save the world with the power of friendship.  

As Yao—one of the other astronauts on the Hail Mary team—says early on, “You just have to find someone to be brave for.”

Ryland doesn’t suddenly become brave and selfless because he’s just that good, no matter how good his intentions. Ryland becomes more brave and more selfless through his connection with another lonely being.
Sometimes the bravest thing you can do is reach out to someone. To do the work to really know someone.

My teen years were isolated due to circumstances that were beyond my control. Even today, it’s easy to get too deep inside my own head, to withdraw even from the people I care about most. That loneliness still sneaks up on me.

I’ve spent years with people being there for me when I’ve needed someone most. And now, like Ryland, I’m slowly growing into a phase where I can be there for others in the same way.

If you feel lonely and isolated and lightyears away from everyone right now, let Project Hail Mary encourage you to reach out to someone, even if they seem universes away. To embrace the weird and the awkward of getting to know someone, with all its misunderstandings and miscommunications.

And if you do have a good support system right now, let Project Hail Mary encourage you to give as much as you take. Sometimes allowing someone to be there for you is the biggest gift you can give them. But you also can be there for someone else. To sacrifice something of your own if it means you can show up for someone else.

Sometimes the bravest thing you can do is connect with another being.

Have you seen Project Hail Mary yet? You probably have. I get it, I’m late to the party. What did you think? Let me know in the comments below! 

Hi, I’m Rachel! I write young adult fantasy. I write the novels I needed growing up—the novels I still need. Novels for the weird little girls and the women they’re becoming.

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