How Project Hail Mary Uses A Unique Format To Pull Off The Story’s Best Trick
“We wanted it to feel like there’s a little bit of effort in it.”
There’s no question that Project Hail Mary will be a stunning science fiction film, but it looks even better in IMAX. Last week, directors Phil Lord and Chris Miller screened a selection of clips from their upcoming film on the biggest screen possible, teasing a breathtaking adventure following Ryan Gosling’s hapless Ryland Grace and his alien companion Rocky. Hail Mary follows this unlikely pair as they labor to stop a new ice age from destroying their respective home planets, and that task will bring them to stunning new worlds.
The minds behind Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse certainly have the visual element down pat here: Hail Mary takes its heroes to massive green planets and realms where only infrared light is visible, and its latest trailer teases a bit of that splendor. But the tone of Project Hail Mary is also set to subvert expectations. “It’s a bit of a genre defier,” Miller told the audience after the screening. “It’s thrilling, it’s dramatic, it’s emotional, it’s funny...”
And it’s largely scientifically plausible, thanks to a story by Andy Weir, the author of The Martian. Weir penned a novel that gets way into the weeds of interstellar travel, the science of suns, and alien communication. Project Hail Mary is even more ambitious in that it straddles two timelines. Though the novel begins when Grace wakes up from a coma as the only surviving scientist on his vessel, the titular Hail Mary, the story frequently flashes back to his life on Earth, charting the beginnings of the world’s top-secret mission. It’s a lot of story for any film to tackle, forcing Lord and Miller to get creative with their adaptation.
Hail Mary’s space scenes take full advantage of the IMAX effect.
“We keep going back and forth between Earth and space as Grace is remembering more of how he got up there,” Miller explained. “Figuring out how to transition that story and make it still move forward was tricky both in the script form and then also in the editing.”
Ultimately, Lord and Miller opted for an aesthetic shorthand. Greig Fraser, the cinematographer behind genre hits like The Batman and Dune, helped craft two distinct looks for each timeline. Scenes that take place on Earth are grounded by a traditional widescreen ratio and a slightly glossier finish. “It’s a memory,” Lord added, “so it’s more limited, it’s compressed, it’s idealized, it’s cleaner.”
Grace’s adventures in space, meanwhile, take up a much bigger frame. Fraser shot those scenes in the full IMAX aspect ratio, opting for a grittier film stock: “We didn’t want it to feel super easy to capture, like it’s a pain in the neck to shoot space,” continued Lord. “We wanted it to feel like there’s a little bit of effort in it... Some part of the realism was also not making space slick. It’s messy.”
But Hail Mary also looks absolutely breathtaking, however messy its intent. Perhaps it’s because almost anything looks amazing when shot on IMAX and projected on a screen as tall as a house: even the mundane, sitcom-esque scenes that depict Grace and Rocky’s early friendship are jaw-droppingly cool. Style will walk hand-in-hand with substance in the upcoming film; a great story from Weir and visuals from Fraser could make this the definitive space epic for a new generation.
