This 2012 Channing Tatum classic explains Project Hail Mary's secret

Project Hail Mary joins films like The Martian and Interstellar as a big-budget space epic, but it also plays as a surprisingly effective buddy comedy. The movie marks Phil Lord and Christopher Miller’s first directorial release in over a decade (not counting their on-set replacement on Solo), after a period focused largely on writing and producing projects such as the Spider-Verse trilogy.

Before that shift, Lord and Miller were best known for 21 Jump Street and 22 Jump Street, which rebooted the late-1980s police drama into sharp buddy cop comedies starring Jonah Hill and Channing Tatum. The films lean into role reversals, training and partnership, undercover hijinks back in high school and college, and an abundance of meta jokes about the leads not looking especially young.

Those same buddy-movie mechanics show up in Project Hail Mary. Ryan Gosling’s lonely astronaut encounters a rock-like alien on a parallel mission: both are searching for a cure because their stars are dying.

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