Pop Culture Happy Hour - Project Hail Mary and What’s Making Us Happy

Episode Date: March 20, 2026

Ryan Gosling has teamed up with Phil Lord and Christopher Miller (The Lego Movie and Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse) for the new sci-fi movie Project Hail Mary. It’s based on a novel by Andy Weir (The Martian), and tells the story of a molecular biologist who winds up on a one-way mission into space to save Earth’s population. If that all sounds incredibly bleak, fear not: you can expect quirk, charm, and a cutesy alien creature.Follow Pop Culture Happy Hour on Letterboxd at letterboxd.com/nprpopcultureSee pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences.NPR Privacy Policy

You're listening to Pop Culture Happy Hour, the podcast that keeps you plugged in about the latest and greatest in movies, TV, music, and more. And if you're a pop culture junkie who's not following the show yet, we're thinking you need to fix that right now by following Pop Culture Happy Hour on your favorite podcast app. Next week we'll be talking about the new album from BTS and the sequel to one of our favorite horror movies from the last few years. You won't want to miss it. And now on to Project Hail Mary. Ryan Gosling has teamed up with the guys behind the Lego movie and Spice. into the spider-verse for the new sci-fi movie Project Hail Mary. The sun is dying and the Earth's population is under threat.

The planet's only hope is to send a team on an interstellar mission from which they'll almost certainly never return. If that all sounds incredibly bleak, fear not. While the world may or may not be doomed, you can expect quirk, charm, and a cutie alien creature to boot. I'm Linda Holmes. And I'm Aisha Harris. Joining us on NPR's Pop Culture Happy Hour is our fellow co-host Stephen Thompson.

Hey, Stephen. Hey, buddy. Also with us is Ronald Young Jr. He's the host of the film and television review podcast, leaving the theater. Welcome back, Ronald. Hello, Aisha. Great to be here. So lovely to have you here.

So Project Hail Mary. It's based on a novel by Andy Weir, who also wrote The Martian. A movie I haven't seen since it came out, but I definitely was feeling Martian vibes. So I felt vindicated what I learned after seeing this movie that he also wrote. wrote that book. It's built around a doomsday scenario. A mysterious phenomenon is causing the sun to dim, and Earth is projected to cool significantly within the next few decades. Many people will be wiped out. Ryan Gosling plays Rylein Grace, a molecular biologist who was chased out of the field after publishing a controversial paper about life on other planets. These days, Grace, as he goes by,

is teaching middle schoolers, but his radical views have caught the attention of Eva Stratt, who's leading the international force tasked for preventing the impending ice age. She's played by Sandra Huller. Eva recruits Grace as one of her key experts, and he winds up on a one-way mission into space. Sometime later, Grace awakens from a coma to find he's the only surviving crew member on the ship. Eventually, he makes contact with an alien whose own planet is also under threat. Grace dubs him Rocky. He's voiced by James Ortiz, and kind of looks like a giant crab made out of a rock.

It's kind of cool, kind of cute. They bond and work together to try and fix the solar system. Phil Lord and Christopher Miller directed Project Hail Mary, which is in theaters now. It's from Amazon MGM Studios, so we should note Amazon supports NPR and pays to distribute some of our content. And with that, let's fly off into space here. Linda, give us your initial impression. Well, a lot of people who listen to this podcast know that The Martian is one of my favorite movies of recent years. It is one of my core rewatchables.

When this movie was coming up, I was really nervous about my expectations being too high because I did expect it to have some Martian vibes to it. I also really, really, really like Ryan Gosling, particularly when he gets to be funny. So I had very, very high expectations going into this, which worried me a little bit. But honestly, I absolutely loved it. I thought it was great. I thought it was extremely entertaining. I think they find the right balance of like Rocky is very, very cute and funny, but there's also a lot of other stuff in it. So it never tipped over to me into like just another Rocky is cute and funny scene.

I think they kept on the right side of that. There's a physical comedy bit with Rocky when he first visits Grace on the ship that I think is just one of the most delightful little runs of physical comedy and silliness that I have. enjoyed at the movies in quite a while. I do think Ryan Gosling is a very strong dramatic actor, but also genuinely so, so, so funny. And that I think is where this has a strength beyond what The Martian has. The Martian is also funny, but it's not as funny as this. I just had such a great time. I was giggling out loud a lot, which I always welcome, but I was also very moved by this basic story of trying to save humanity. This is a very well-executed adaptation of what Andy Weir does, and particularly at a time when we are seeing so much voluntary reduction in science, scientific capacity,

particularly in the United States, not to mention international cooperation, right? This is a story that I really welcome to give me a scientist who's a hero because he's smart and knows a lot of stuff and is curious and interested in things and open to new friends. Yeah, absolutely. Thank you, Linda. Stephen, how are we feeling about this? Well, it's interesting. I'm really glad, Linda, that you said what you said at the end there, because one movie that this pinged for me, obviously this pings the Martian, I think for some people it may ping interstellar in terms of how ambitious it is theatrically. I know what you're going to say, though. But a movie that it called to mind for me, and you mentioned international cooperation, is a rival. And this film,

is not as emo as a rival. No, but it's capturing some of what I love about arrival, including a long stretch of like arrival, trying to solve the puzzle of how humans could communicate with aliens when there is essentially nothing connecting them. There's no way into each other's languages. And this film tries to kind of wrestle with that at the same time that it's quipping and wise questions.

and injecting these little doses of sweetness and sentiment, and just heaping helpings of problem solving. This is a film like The Martian about problem solving. And so for me, it worked wonderfully. It is also visually stunning. It has this beautiful, sumptuous, only occasionally overbearing score by Daniel Pemberton that I thought was lovely. This film deploys visual effects and music really, really wonderfully. I ultimately loved it, though I have some quibbles with the pacing in the second half. I think it slows down for some stretches, but it picks up where it left off, and ultimately, I found it enormously satisfying.

Yeah, it is a two-and-a-half-hour movie, and I do agree with you, Stephen, and that towards the end, you might start to feel that a little bit. But, Ronald, I am so curious. I think it was a good movie. I think it was a good movie. start there. I read the book, and I think I would have appreciated going into this without the contextual knowledge of the book, because every quibble that I have with the movie has to do with context that I had reading the book that I wondered, I wanted to say, hey, do y'all know about

this? And I didn't want to become that person to be like, well, that's not how they did in the book, because it wasn't a matter of discrepancies between the book and the movie, as much as I was just like, oh, there's more context about why this is happening on the screen. that I felt like was completely missed. There's a couple of things about Rylan Grace's character that kind of explain his arc going on that are echoed in the book. There's something about the flashback scenes

being used as pieces to a puzzle that build out what's actually happening while he's on the ship that I thought was important that watching the movie and having not known any of this, I think I probably would have walked out a bit like this movie was great,

just like everyone else. But I think I was hamstrung with some of the things that happened in the book that I missed watching the movie. But other than that, great movie. And also, if you're going to get Lord and Miller to do a movie in space, yes, make it about friendship. Please make it about friendship.

Please make it funny. And they did all of those things, which I thought was great. Yeah, yeah. That pesky problem of book versus movie, which I totally sympathize with you, Ronald. I am one of those people who did not read the book. Like I said, I didn't even know that this was a movie based on a novel, by the same guy who did The Martian.

Like, because I, I've said this before, I try to go in as blank slate as possible. So I had a good time with this. Ryan Gosling's charm goes so far. There's several men in Hollywood who are around his age and who are around his quote-unquote type who think they have what he has and they do not. And I can imagine this movie being played with one of them and it just not landing. Literally sat there in the theater thinking, you know what, Glenn Powell is not Ryan Gosling.

Yeah, it wouldn't work. I like Glenn Powell. Glenn Powell is not Ryan Glausing. I thought you were thinking Chris Pratt. Chris Pratt is not why Ryan Gloucline. Yeah. Other Ryan wouldn't have worked either. Oh, God, Ryan Reynolds.

No. Thank you. Definitely not. No. Too sarcastic. Too smart me. Yeah. There's something about the way he's able to emit both a sort of sadness and also just

like defeatedness, but also eventually triumph that that arc really, really worked well. And I think the script is very tight and very good about that. And I like the fact that. we don't really ever learn anything about his personal life. There's a version of this movie or this story where it's always like, I have a daughter at home or I have a family at home. It's the interstellar model. Yeah, yeah.

And, you know, look, we live in a society. Most people have a family. But, like, I'm glad that this was just about this man who, you know, the weight of the world is literally on his shoulders. And what that does to him, while he also tries to find the connection with this friggin' rock and the rock is great like rocky who is as we've said voiced by it james artis and also is a puppet there's something very tactile about this character that is so refreshing to see in a movie that comes out in twenty 26 that anthropomorphic rock crab is just it has so much expression and so much life to it

and for all the other things and the questions and we can get into sort of the bigger existential as a questions it's asking and what it may be saying about, you know, humanity. I just loved seeing that connection. And it was just very sweet. Like you, Linda, I was giggling and just like giddy and just like, ah, I love this. Well, you mentioned giggling, Aisha. I mean, it is so important that this film is made by directors who know how to direct comedy. The fact that this film is from the people who brought you cloudy with a chance of meatballs and 21 Jump Street really does.

affect the quality of this film in an enormously positive way. These are funny people. And they know how to pace a joke. They know how to pace a comedic scene. They know how to pace physical comedy. And that really levens this film. And it's one of the reasons that a film that is like two hours and 36 minutes long doesn't have that effect that Interstellar had on me where it felt six hours long. And I think that's in part because it is so punctuated with jokes. Yeah, you know, you mentioned Aisha, the ability of Gosling to convey the comedy and also a certain sadness. I think the ability to mix comedy and deep melancholy is part of the leading man formula that often gets really kind of glossed over. It is absolutely a key part of Clooney.

There is a sense of weight on him when he is good, even when he is being funny. there's like a sadness. There's like a kind of a loss of opportunities. And I think Gosling has some of that. I do want to hear what Ronald has to say with the pacing because I was jumping off of Aisha, but Stephen just talked about not feeling like it felt long. And I'm curious because I know Ronald felt like it did feel long. Well, to me, only towards the end.

I think I started to be like, all right, wrap it up. But again, to be honest with you, I thought the ending of the movie felt to me more satisfying than the ending of the book, which is over. for 400 pages long. And by the time I got to the end of the book, I was really like, all right, wrap it up. I was like pretty upset by the time I'm like flipping through those last pages. But if we're cutting off time, I'm like, I'm quibbling. I'm like 10 minutes, 10, 15 minutes.

I'm not talking like a whole 30 minutes. I don't want to want a different movie in that regard. The one thing I will say, though, in terms of Ryan Gosling's character, nothing about his backstory was what I, I didn't want more of him having a family or any of that, which is not in the book. But what I did want more of a stability. that creates kind of room for why he makes decisions later in the movie. There's stuff that's seeded throughout the book that you're like, oh, that's why this thing happens. There's an important conversation that happens between Eva Stratt and Rylane Grace,

Eva Stratt played by Sandra Huller, which I think is really important. And the way it plays out in the book was just, I mean, it blew my mind. I had to put the book down and walk around for a bit. And I felt like it was a little hamstrung in the movie. However, I'm probably the only one who missed that in terms of why it ends up being the way it is. So I don't think it's a big day. I don't think it's going to stop people from enjoying the movie. I will say if you're reading the book right now and you're like, I want to finish this before the movie comes out.

Stop. Go watch the movie. Go back and finish the book. You know, I've been in that position too because sometimes you feel like if you watch them in the right order, then the book feels like an expanded version of the movie. rather than a movie feeling like a bodlerized version of the book. You know what I mean? And both can exist, you know, in the same universe and both can be fine and interesting and fun. One of the things that I really liked about the general shape of this film was that I think they do a really good job with a really hard structure, which is, you know, you have this mix of this story and space.

But when Grace wakes up, he has amnesia and he doesn't remember what happened, but it kind of gradually comes back to him what happened. And I think integrating those flashbacks, especially when there's as much of it as there is in this film, I'm going to say it's, I don't know, 60, 40 space flashbacks, maybe. Yeah. Oh, about that. Yeah. And I think integrating those flashbacks in a way that is at all elegant is really difficult. And I sort of feel like it helps that, as you can imagine, the flashbacks to how he got in this. this position. That's all pretty grim, right? Because it's people being like, uh, the world is dying.

Anyway, the people who are on this mission are probably going to just die in space, right? Yeah. So that's all pretty heavy. And so I think it really helps that so much of the space stuff is Rocky being funny. And if you put this in the hands of an even slightly different, I think, set of writer, the screenplay here is Drew Goddard. Drew Goddard, who's terrific and has written a lot of funny stuff that I have really enjoyed. Yeah. If you put this in a really different director, writer, actor, production designer, all the various creature wranglers, you could get something really cloying in the manner of, like, guy with alien friend. Like, it could really go. With cute alien friend.

Yeah. It could really go in a direction. Mostly. There were moments when I watched this and I thought, this should not work. Yeah. Like, I should be sitting here being like, this is so corny. As Aisha said, they've overly anthropomorphized this little rock guy. Basically, he learns to speak English.

They have a kind of a roundabout way. They give him a voice and teach him to speak English. None of this should work. And then Rocky would do something cute, and I would be like, yay, I love him. I want a Rocky doll after the movie. Rocky is kind of a dog. That's true. He is a dog.

Yeah, it's true. You keep talking about him as a rock guy or a crab guy. You didn't see anthropomorphized rotissory chicken. Oh, God. No, that's not cute, though. I don't want to think about that. No, no. Rock crab.

Rock lobster. That's a hater talk, Stephen. He looks like a rotisserie chicken. He's a dog. He was just hungry, Stephen. That's true. I'm hungry enough, everything looks like a rotissory chicken. It's basically a story of a man and his dog.

I mean, it's a dog scientist. The dog has enormous amounts of skill. So I don't want to be the dude being like the book again, but contextually, the book really does lay out that Rocky is very smart. And then Rocky is like a very advanced scientist. I'm talking visually the look is a guy and his dog. That's what I'm talking about. I get it. No, you're absolutely. But I know Rocky deserves his dignity.

He's an engineer. He's brilliant. He just doesn't look like you and me. It's okay. But he just also like runs around in his little ball. He's so cute. Oh my gosh. Well, Ronald, I did want to also ask you just before I started taping you had you had some

other thoughts of just like existential quibbles. And I'm curious. Look. If you wanted to. So I feel like when I sit down at the movie and the first thing I see is Amazon MGM Studios, you know, presents the movie that I'm about to see. Amazon, which is founded by Jeff Bezos, who also founded Blue Origin. And Jeff Bezos having a vested interest in space, to me, it feels like to watch his other company present a two and a half hour dip into space in which the problem is solved by leaving Earth. a quarter of the Earth's population, possibly dying, is solved by leaving Earth and going into space.

It felt like as a person watching this, I was making that connection like, ooh, I don't know how I feel about that, even though I am having a good time at this movie. I don't know if they were thinking of that connection as this movie was being made. I just, I don't know. It's just something that I thought about. Yeah. I think, you know, for me, the way that large corporations function and the way that large corporations I mean, other corporations, mergers with media companies and things like that. One of the things that has really happened is that the way that tech in general is currently operating in society, for me, complicates a lot of scientist hero stories, space hero stories.

It complicates any effort you might make to have like an AI movie. And I think all of those come with a lot of extra, like perhaps context that is not desired by the writer of the original stories. No, because I don't think that, Andy, we are meant to be, you know, calling into mind any of that context when he wrote the book. And yet here we are. But, like, there aren't that many movie studios that aren't in some way connected to something that could give you weird feelings about the way that they approach a science movie, a hero space movie, et cetera. No, that's fair. And just to clarify it, they're not trying to send everyone into space. They're trying to send, like, a handful of people who, can possibly fix it and then help her. Yes, yes. Three heroes in a rotissory chicken, the alternative. Rotissary chicken rock.

No, but I completely understand that. And that is the sort of larger issue, right? It's just the art and commerce has always been fraught. There's a lot of tension. And especially now when we, as you said, there's just been so many mergers and acquisitions and interests and entities and what ultimately comes out and gets made is not always necessarily tie to how it gets put out there into the world, or at least like not intentionally. So I understand you and I hear that concern. And also at the same time, I'm just like, you know what? If one or two

people have to go out into space to save the rest of us, I'm okay with that. As long as it's not me or anyone that I love and care about. Well, we want to know what you think about Project Hail Mary. at Facebook.com slash PCH and on Letterbox at letterbox.com slash NPR Pop Culture. We'll have a link to that in our episode description. And up next, we're going to be talking about what's making us happy this week. Welcome back. And a reminder, if you're not following our show yet, hit that follow button on your preferred podcast app and stay plugged in on all things Pop Culture Happy Hour adjacent, including what's making us happy every week. Which brings me to Ronald. I'm going to start with you. what's making you happy this week?

Okay, so being a pop culture commentator, critic, enthusiast, I feel like there's a lot that I watch, but every now and then you miss something or you start it and you don't finish it. So for years, I've been meaning to get back to this one show, BoJack Horseman, which is on Netflix. I'd watched the first season when it came out years and years ago and then never finished it. And I recently just started going back and just binging through the whole thing.

I'm somewhere around season four. I think I'm out halfway. And man, what a great show. Just in case you missed it. The wordplay is great. The animal jokes are very funny. And it has a very dark, gooey center that if you are into thinking about existentialism and the nature of life and what we're all here for, as I am want to do, I feel like it's a show that will scratch a lot of itches for you. So I'm enjoying it now and I think it's evergreen content.

So that's Bojack Horseman, which is available on Netflix. Wow, Ronald, wait until you get to the end of that show. I'm telling you. I have qualms already. I'm like, do I finish this? Mentally, emotionally, prepare yourself. But I will say every year I watch the Christmas special for BoJack Horseman, so I highly recommend that as well. So glad you mentioned BoJack Horseman. All right, Stephen, buddy, what is making you happy this week? So these are loud and frenetic times. And in loud and frenetic times, I sometimes turn to music that calms my nerves, kind of settles my spirit, and a record that I've kept coming back to in the last few weeks.

It's one that just came out a little while ago. It's by an Austrian musician and composer named Manu Delago, working with a musician named Max Z.T. Now, Manu Delago plays the hand pan, which is like a steel drum you play with your hands. It produces this kind of soft ringing percussion. Max Z.T. plays the hammered dulcimer. Combined, they make this music that is so soothing and calming and lush and sweet. The track that I want to play a little bit of has a title that is perfectly suited to the vibe here. It's called Love All.

So that is Manu Delago and Max Z.T. They have a beautiful new record out together. It's called Deuce. Thank you so much, Stephen. Linda, what is making you happy this week? Well, Ayesha, motivated by the good reviews that I have seen for the Fall and Rise of Reggie Dinkins, I have been motivated to go around reminding people how funny I think Daniel Radcliffe is, which because he started off as Harry Potter for a lot of people, even though he very quickly, you know, Justin started doing all kinds of other really interesting and cool stuff. And I think that's well established now and no longer news to anyone. I think his participation in comedy is still sometimes a little bit under the radar for people, like flat out comedy.

So I wanted to recommend two things. If you are not familiar with Daniel Radcliffe's very, very good work in comedy. One is The Lost City, which is a 2022 romantic comedy with Sandra Bullock and Channing Tatum. Daniel Radcliffe plays the villain in this movie. He's very funny. I love it. A great movie. Also, the movie What If?

which is a romantic comedy starring Daniel Radcliffe and Zoe Kazan from 2013. Oh, right. That one also includes McKenzie Davis and Adam Driver. And he is so good in this romantic comedy, which upends some of the traditional things that are played to be, like, you know the stuff in rom-coms where you're like, that would not actually be good if someone did that? Yeah.

This is a movie that sort of knows some of that and forces the characters to reckon with it. And he's very funny in it and so charming. And Zoe Kazan is so good in it. And Adam Driver has his best line reading of his career, comedy-wise, in my opinion, is in this movie. It involves saying, I just had sex and I'm about to eat nachos. And so if you are still looking to enjoy more of Daniel Radcliffe being really funny, I encourage you to find both Velocity and What If, known in some other countries as the F word, but in the United States, it was released as What If? This is some weird, the Al Yankovic story erasure. And I was going to say farting corpse movie, I'm sure.

Swiss Army Man. Oh, yeah. Both good additions. Both good additions. I love these picks. So thank you for that. Well, what is making me happy this week is that recently I appeared as a guest on the podcast, Guide for the Film Fanatic. This is hosted by Jason Bailey and Mike Hall.

It's inspired by Danny Perry's 1986 book of the same name. But when I was on that show, I got to choose Splendor in the Grass, which is what is making me very, very happy. This is, of course, Elya Kazan's 1961 melodrama about horny teens and sexual repression in 1920s, Kansas, right around the time of the stock market crash. I love this movie so much. You've got Natalie Wood and Warren Beatty. They're playing these young lovers who kind of crumble under the weight of their parents' expectations and societal norms. And there is so much chemistry, so much heat between these two. Also got a screenplay by William Inge. And what I loved about what we talked about on the show is that it's like a very refreshingly progressive movie about therapy and teen angst

given the time that it was made in and also the period that it's set in. It's very just like empathetic and sympathetic about young love and what that can do to a person. So yeah, Slender in the Grass, if you haven't seen it or if you haven't seen it in a very long time, I highly recommend it. It's just such such a lush and rich movie all these years later. And you can find that available for rent online. That is. is what's making me happy this week, and that brings us to the end of our show. Ronald Young Jr., Stephen Thompson, Linda Holmes. Thank you.

This was such a pleasure. Thank you. Thanks for having me. This episode is produced by Hufso Fathema, Liz Metzger, Kala Latimore, and Mike Kassif, and edited by our showrunner Jessica Reedy. Hello, Kamin provides our theme music, and thank you for listening to Pop Culture Happy Hour from NPR. And if you're not already following the show, do that right now.

I'm Aisha Harris, and we'll see you all next week.