Project Hail Mary Finally Reveals Its Heartwarming Space Alien
Rocky is here to melt our human hearts.
Although Andy Weir’s famous 2011 debut novel, The Martian, had a title that suggested extraterrestrial life, that lonely astronaut tale was about humankind, specifically, the race to rescue Mark Watney. But Weir’s 2021 book, Project Hail Mary, which also focused on a lone astronaut, Ryland Grace, did something that is very difficult for hard science fiction stories to pull off convincingly: give us a straight-up alien that we love and believe in. This alien is a huge spoiler in the story of Project Hail Mary, so if you haven’t read the book, be warned: the new, epic trailer for the movie version of the story has fully revealed the beloved alien that makes this story something special. So, spoilers ahead!
Ahead of the 2026 Super Bowl, directors Christopher Miller, Phil Lord, and Amazon MGM Studios revealed the final trailer for Project Hail Mary, and in it, we finally meet the alien that makes Ryland Grace’s (Ryan Gosling) adventure so special, Rocky.
Final Project Hail Mary Trailer Reveals Rocky
Unlike the previous trailers for Project Hail Mary, the new trailer fully explains that not only is Ryland Grace on a mission to save all of humanity, but that along the way (about one third into the book), he meets another space traveler, an alien that he knicknames Rocky. In the book, Rocky is a rock-like alien who communicates via musical notes, and Ryland has to figure out how to communicate with the creature in order to save his planet and Rocky’s.
Why Rocky Could Be the Best Sci-Fi Movie Alien in Years
Meet Rocky!
Voiced by James Ortiz, the character of Rocky is an alien astronaut from 40 Eridani, who, like Ryland Grace, was sent on a mission to discover why several stars are having energy sucked away by a single-celled organism called Astrophage. Like Ryland, Rocky is alone and has journeyed to the star Tau Ceti to figure out why this star, of all the nearby stars, is unaffected by Astrophage.
But the thing that makes Rocky so great in the book is the adorable way that he and Ryland connect and form a bond over the course of their journey. What starts as a startling meeting turns into a deep inter-species friendship, which is nearly unrivaled in contemporary science fiction stories.
In creating Rocky, author Andy Weir invented a character who is deeply alien, but still has all the qualities of someone we want to love and root for. If anything will make Project Hail Mary a memorable film, it will be the connection between Rocky and Ryland. And, in this trailer, there’s every reason to believe the movie will pull it off. For readers of the book, this tone is perfect, and Rocky might be even more charming on film than he is on the page. (Gosling is also perfectly cast in the role of Ryland Grace.)
Will Project Hail Mary go down as one of the best alien-makes-friends-with-a-human movies of all time? Right now, with this trailer, all signs point to a big yes.
