Project Hail Mary works because few can give Ryan Gosling's range

Phil Lord and Christopher Miller say Ryan Gosling was an easy yes for the lead of Project Hail Mary because he came to them with the material and can deliver the many facets the role requires. They were fans of his work — particularly Nice Guys — and expected to get the variations necessary for a movie that asks one performer to use all of them in a single picture.

Their protagonist, Ryland Grace, differs from other lost-in-space heroes. He isn’t in a hurry to get home: he has no family or partner waiting on Earth, and he remembers so little of his deceased crew that he feels mainly the basic human empathy for lost lives.

That distance makes his bond with Rocky, an alien on a similar mission, especially poignant. Lord notes that, while many space films focus on a lonely spaceman, this story follows someone who is lonely on Earth and finds the greatest relationship of his life in space.

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