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When I finished watching it I was like, "that was kind of boring, and the space stuff was confusing, and it moved too slow"

And then I stayed up until 6 am, in that time I thought about the movie and all of the different aspects of it, and I realized the actual genius of it.

The protagonist who doesn't want to be there. He literally fights tooth and nail because he doesn't want to be a part of the mission, and he is forced into it anyway. He's forced into it and the worst part is that there wasn't really any other choice. It was either "you do this or everyone is fucked", like some kind of hyped up version of the trolley problem. And the fact that he is deemed as "expendable" simply because his life doesn't revolve around others, because he doesn't have a wife or kids or anything. It's just interesting to see that as humans, our worth is viewed through the lense of "what purpose do you serve to others?" And if you don't serve a "significant purpose" to anyone, then obviously your life is less meaningful than the lives of others, even though as humans we all have equal worth.

The fact that Ryland is a sacrificial lamb who truly does not want to die. He does everything he can to not die AND it ends up working in the end (which is another genius aspect of it all. He actually gets a happy ending, unlike the over done "doomed sacrificial lamb character who doesn't make it because they never had a chance" trope)

Oh and of course the protagonist making friends with the alien creature. The fact that Ryland and Rocky are literal opposites of one another, one being a human and the other being an alien from a different planet, and yet they manage to find similarities in each other. They bond over their shared struggles (each of their respective suns dying), they bond over shared traumas, they build a friendship based on their similarities even in the face of polar opposition. Rocky decides to help Ryland live even if it makes his return to his planet slower (and yk that isn't an easy thing for him, considering how long he has been away from his mate), he does whatever he can to make sure that Ryland will live. And in the end Ryland does everything that he can to make sure that Rocky will live, he literally chooses to save his friend over going back to earth, which was what he wanted most.

And he got a happy ending. Well, he got the happiest ending he could have gotten. He didn't get to go back to his home on earth, but he got to live, and he got to spend his time with his bestfriend on a different planet, and he got to continue onward with his teaching. Even though he didn't make it back to Earth, he still got everything he could've wanted, just in a different font.

Anyways the point of this extremely random and probably nonsensical post is that I went into the movie thinking "I'm probably not going to like this, it's a complicated space movie" but it ended up being so much more than that. Project Hail Mary is one of the first sci fi movies I've ever watched, and it completely surprised me. I didn't understand most of the actual science parts of it but I still enjoyed it because of every other aspect, the movie is so much more than a cool space movie.

Grace going “oh!! But!” and teaching them about starfish, to their absolute delight