Project Hail Mary

My latest is live at Sojourners

Project Hail Mary absolutely dominated the box office this weekend, a rare feat for a non-franchise film. It’s received rapturous reviews, and rightly so. The film has a good bit of God talk in it, but I didn’t explore that. Instead, I reflected on how the film depicts the necessity of empathy for human survival. The full article is live at Sojourners. You can read the first bit below, then head over to Sojo for the whole thing!

Project Hail Mary Knows Empathy Isn’t a Sin

During a global press conference for Project Hail Mary, director Chris Miller explained that when he and his co-director, Phil Lord, make films, they’re not “building Macs”—Apple’s slick, impenetrable white computers.—they’re making PCs: films where “you can see how it works, you can get into it, and you can see the wires.” This PC aesthetic is apparent in watching the film, a sumptuous visual feast with awe-inspiring cinematography and frenetic editing. But this exposed- wire philosophy also drives the plot and heart of Project Hail Mary—a story of duct tape, musical chords, and the hard, holy necessity of empathy.

Based on the bestselling novel by Andy Weir, Project Hail Mary introduces us to Ryland Grace (Ryan Gosling, making a case for being the most capable physical comedian of his generation), a dorky middle school teacher drafted to save Earth from “astrophage,” a microscopic star-plague eating the sun. If Grace cannot find a cure, humanity will go extinct within a generation. Our only hope lies more than 11 light-years away, at the one star immune to the infection.

Grace is way out of his depth—he’s much more at home explaining photosynthesis than piloting a starship. But Grace is humanity’s only hope. And yes, his name matters: In a universe of cold physics, he must find the “grace” to navigate a connection he never planned to make.

To read the rest, head over to Sojourners!