Project Hail Mary (2026)

[Mike Blakesley]

I have not seen the whole movie yet but it looks intriguing.

It is formatted in the "2:1" format, but that's not all, folks. Part of it fills the whole frame top to bottom, but part of it is in a scope-shaped format, so it's floating like a big blob in the middle of the screen. If that's not enough, sometimes the floating box has light trailing off the top or bottom, so it looks a little like a film projector with a poorly-timed shutter, or like there's an aurora borealis behind the screen or something.

Another thing. This movie has the absolute wimpiest Leo the Lion intro of any MGM picture in history. Even at fader 7, he sounds like he's set at about 3. There's one roar, and then the second roar is gone and there's another sound that comes off like he's yawning. It's freaking weird.

And one more: You should play this quite a bit above your normal fader setting, Leo the Lion notwithstanding. It's got a pretty dynamic sound mix.

Why they have done any of this format weirdness, I hope to know when I watch the damn movie....if I can keep from being distracted by it.

[Frank Cox]

It switches back and forth from its flat-ish format to scope depending on whether it's showing current events or a flashback.

It's a pretty good movie overall. Everyone who came to see it tonight said they liked it.

It's a lot more chipper and jocular than I expected to see when the story is about a guy who's lost in space and trying to save the planet.

That format switching stuff definitely wastes a lot of screen area.

[Jim Cassedy]

I have not seen the whole movie yet but it looks intriguing.
. . .Another thing. This movie has the absolute wimpiest Leo the Lion intro
of any MGM picture in history. Even at fader 7, he sounds like he's set at about 3

I was off yesterday so I didn't gettachance to preview sound levels. One of the SF Bay area
hi-tech companies bought out one of the auditoriums to treat their employees to a private
P-H-M show. They had mastered their own custom pre-show and a short to show before the
movie. I got the extra content in Pro-Res, and converted it to DCP . . but the sound was still
extremely loud when I checked it on screen, so I had dropped it quite a few db's in the playlist.
- - I was standing in the back of the auditorium when the MGM lion came on, and I literally
sprinted back into the booth thinking that the cue to bring the volume back up to 'normal'
level hadn't worked. But the processor volume was exactly where I expected it to be.
Once we got past the logos, I did raise the volume a bit louder than our 'normal' setting.
The auditorium was a 'full house' and since it was a private event, and many of the guests
had spent the previous 20-30min down in our bar, there was still a lot of chatter going on,
and, as your observed, it did sound a better with the volume pushed a bit louder.

[Jeremy Weigel]

Watched it Thursday evening at Flix Brewhouse in OKC. Overall I enjoyed it, but the switching of aspect ratios was annoying. Even more annoying was the fact that neither aspect ratio filled the screen top to bottom. I kept thinking the lens wasn't set correctly. Like Mike said, it looks like a floating blob. The presentation I saw was in 7.1 and was great. I haven't been in the theatre business for nearly 15 years, but the projectionist in me is still comes out.

[Jim Cassedy]

I've heard rumors they're already working on a sequel called "Project
Our Father". (Which will probably be in three aspect ratios, in keeping
with the whole Holy Trinity thing. )

[Frank Cox]

The main character is Ryland Grace.

Hail Mary Full Of Grace.

[Mike Blakesley]

We had an older couple at the show tonight. The man had convinced his wife that it was a "football movie."

To be fair, the poster image of Ryan Gosling kinda sorta looks like he's wearing football shoulder pads.

[Mike Blakesley]

Screenshot 2026-03-29 193915.png
We watched this movie today in three segments. We watched the first hour before our matinee, and then the second half after the matinee -- but that got interrupted by my wife getting an important phone call. So we'd like to watch it again at some point.

We both enjoyed it a whole lot. We went into the movie completely cold. I had made sure not to watch the trailers. The only footage I'd seen was the first few minutes, which I looked at pre-opening to test the sound levels.

The story is a pretty simple one at the core. Science has discovered that the Sun is gradually being "eaten" by these strange entities -- I'm not exactly sure what they were -- and the mission is to save the sun, and with it, the galaxy. The story involves a teacher (last name: Grace) who wakes up on a ship traveling through space, but everybody else on board is dead -- and he has faint memories of why he's there and what he's doing. The memories come back to him gradually, including (near the end of the movie) how he got onto the ship in the first place, and are shown as a series of flashbacks.

I don't want to give away too many details because there are a few surprises that I don't want to spoil. But this is a rarity -- a sci-fi movie with some heart. Oh sure, the usual mission (saving the galaxy) is at the base of it all, but there is a surprising human connection element that crops up as the story moves along.

Ryan Gosling, who is onscreen either alone or with a bunch of special effects most of the time, proves himself a terrific actor with this movie. He does an outstanding job. The movie's unfortunate early-spring release date pretty much means this show will be forgotten by Oscar season, which is too bad -- I think he deserves a nomination.

The rest of the cast shows up in the flashbacks, where we gradually learn the lengths people will go to to ensure the success of a mission they feel is essential. Grace grows a lot as a person as the story unfolds, and learns that his "purpose" in life might be something other than he originally believed.

The movie has a ton of callbacks to other sci-fi movies, like E.T., Close Encounters, The Martian, Gravity, Passengers, and a little bit of 2001 as well. There are probably more I'm not thinking of, because I'm not a huge sci-fi fan.

The best part of the show, for me, was the sound. The mix is extremely good. Fine use of bass and surrounds. There's also a very immersive score that adds to the grandeur of the proceedings. I'd like to watch it again just to listen to the music.

The show seemed a little drawn out to me, especially the last 45 minutes, but that's a minor issue. There is so much detail on the screen, and a ton of no-gravity scenes that must have been a challenge to film -- so it's completely engaging.

I'll give it a solid four out of five stars. People coming out of the show are almost universally raving about it. It's bringing in a lot of senior citizens, which is kind of odd. The oddball formatting wasn't really too much of a distraction once the movie got going. Sci-fi fans should be very satisfied.

If you are running this, make sure you're playing it at at least 6.5.

[Frank Cox]

You'll understand more about this story if you read the book. It goes into a lot more detail about the "why" of what they're doing. For example, the movie doesn't explain why Rocky builds the initial wall in the tunnel using several different bricks; the book makes provides the reason (and it's a good one, too). Also, the last 45 minutes make more sense if you have read the evolutionary explanation in the book.

Ultimately, it's a good movie but I'm glad I read the book before watching it.

[Harold Hallikainen]

The movie has a ton of callbacks to other sci-fi movies, like E.T., Close Encounters, The Martian, Gravity, Passengers, and a little bit of 2001 as well. There are probably more I'm not thinking of, because I'm not a huge sci-fi fan.

Also not a huge sci-fi fan, but I am reminded of Silent Running.

[Lyle Romer]

My wife and I both enjoyed this movie. It was nice to see something that wasn't another superhero movie with a story that had some uniqueness to it. I like that it was "light" sci-fi that didn't get too bogged down in the "science" aspect. The light hearted humor aspect made it fun. It probably could have been trimmed by 20 minutes or so. The ending was a bit too long especially since i drank too much caffeinated liquid and my bladder felt like it was going to explode.

The aspect ratio changes were unnecessary and a little annoying. Although people can be dumb, I think that the vast majority of the audience can figure out what scenes are in the past and present without the aspect ratio changing If they can't then they aren't going to understand the aspect ratio changes anyway. Why is there always a border around all sides of the picture? Shouldn't the base ratio go to either the side or top of the imaging chip?

I definitely would recommend this movie. It was entertaining and worth the money to experience on the big screen. The number of movies in the last few years that I'd make that statement about is pretty small..

[Marcel Birgelen]

I didn't read the book when it came out, I opted to read The Three Body Problem instead back then, even though that had been around for a while. I'm generally a science fiction fan, but pretty selective in what I qualify as good science fiction... So I had some light hopes for this one and I'd say it generally delivered pretty well on the promises. I also agree with Mike that the sound mix of this movie was pretty great... Last time I remember thinking something like that was with Dune 2, back in 2024 already. Together with the pretty visuals, this really is a must-see-it-big movie.

The aspect-ratio changes have been commented on pretty heavily and I still don't get it why such big budget productions pay so little attention to this... But heck, it's an Amazon movie, we got already more than most of us expected.

B.t.w., I really liked the Adam Savage (ex Myth Busters) "behind the scenes" video. I think it's pretty spoiler-free, so I can link it here. Definitely worth a watch if you're a bit of a geek like me and into how those movies are being made:

[Mike Blakesley]

We had a customer last night who was seeing the movie for the third time. The first time was at our neighboring theater, where they inexplicably opened it on one of their smaller screens (14 foot width). Then he was in Regina, Canada last week and saw it at the Imax there, and then he came and saw it at our place. He's a major "movie buff" and is interested in presentation, so I made sure to explain to him about the aspect ratio changes.

[Harold Hallikainen]

Thanks for posting the behind the scenes video! Wow! No wonder it costs so much to make a movie...

[Frank Cox]

All of the little models in that video remind me of a video I saw some years ago about the making of the Space: 1999 television series. They had made plastic models for their moonbase and spaceships using parts from model kits like rockets and fighter jets that they used for scenes of flying around or exploding, or static external scenes of the moon's surface with the moonbase and the ships on it.

The folks who do that stuff are amazingly artistic and practical designers.