By Melinda Kern
Elm Staff Writer
“Project Hail Mary” has recently been released in theaters March 20, 2026, and is charming everyone from science nerds to readers alike.
Ryland Grace (Ryan Gosling) is the only survivor of a space mission and has woken up with amnesia and little understanding of why he is alone in space. He was sent to the only solar system unaffected by the microorganism eating our solar system’s sun. Eventually, he remembers bits of earth and his life as he starts to work with a rock-looking alien that is also the last survivor of its ship to figure out how to save both of their planets.
This movie, adapted from the Andy Weir book of the same name, has received outstanding reviews from both critics and audiences alike. Beyond the tragic and heartfelt story, there has been a lot of focus on the practical effects and sets. The use of real sets instead of greenscreen made the interactions between characters and set more real, and the set had a very lived-in quality to it.
Christopher Miller, one of the directors of “Project Hail Mary,” said “What’s fun about the movie is that there is no green screen in the movie whatsoever. Not a single green or blue screen was used. The whole ship was built as a set from the inside. We had a huge section of the exterior of the ship on the outside that we built,” according to Variety.
The practical effects of this movie especially shined with the puppet used for the alien character Rocky. The non-humanoid alien and friend of Grace is one of the most important characters to the story and there was a lot of effort put into developing a Rocky that was both faithful to the book and expressive enough to audiences despite lacking a face.
According to the New York Times, “[Directors] Lord and Miller set about hiring a Rocky puppeteer. They put performers through extensive auditions to discover who would be the best scene partner for Gosling.”
Eventually they chose a puppeteer, James Ortiz, and his design of Rocky for the production. Ortiz, alongside other puppeteers, controlled Rocky in almost every scene the character was present in the movie. Even in shots that do not directly have Rocky in frame but still in the scene, Ortiz functioned as a scene partner for Gosling.
According to The New York Times, the way Ortiz overcame the hurdle of a lack of face for expressions was by focusing on “This sort of birdlike movement of the face… [it] became the language for how to communicate his feelings.”
Looking beyond the aliens of “Project Hail Mary,” the places depicted from space are real for the most part. Although Rocky’s planet, Erid A, is not very accurate to the real life planet, the sun Grace and Rocky visit to try to find the solution for their microorganisms problem, Tau Ceti, is.
According to NASA, “Tau Ceti has long been a popular setting in science fiction, as one of the nearest Sun-like stars… [and is a] G-type star, which is visible with the unaided eye from Earth.”
While alien rock creatures remain a creation of fiction for now, scientific discovery is always in progress. NASA’s Artemis II recently launched on April 1, 2026 and is taking a ten-day trip to do a moon flyby and gather new pictures and data. Between real life and fiction, people are focusing on hope and the stars.
Photo Caption: Ryan Gosling starred as Ryland Grace, who must figure out how to save the Sun.
Photo courtesy of Wikimedia Commons