It’s strange to think that even just 10 years ago that it was considered cinematic suicide to make a movie based on video games.  Hollywood for many years before had tried to take their shot at capturing the zeitgeist that was the video game boom, but any attempt only resulted in colossal failure.  One of the earliest attempts was an adaptation of the Super Mario Brothers video games from Nintendo in 1993.  That film, starring Bob Hoskins, John Leguizamo and Dennis Hopper went completely bust at the box office and went on for years as being the cautionary tale that prevented movie studios from ever making a movie based on a video game ever again.  While there were some smaller attempts to bring video game movies to the big screen, especially in the horror genre like the Resident Evil series, the big studios pretty much refrained from ever trying to tackle video game adaptations again.  That was until the last few years, and specifically with the little blue blur that is Sonic the Hedgehog.  The Sonic the Hedgehog (2020) movie didn’t become a reality very easily, as it famously had to be put on hold and fixed in post after the negative reception to Sonic’s CGI model was shown in the first trailer.  In this case, the studio making the film (Paramount) learned a crucial lesson that when the audience asks for authenticity in the adaptation of their favorite video games, it’s better to take their inputs seriously.  Sonic’s new CGI model was made more in line with how he looks in the games and the troubled film managed to become a surprise hit, even before Covid began to shut everything down.  Since then, Sonic the Hedgehog has spawned a franchise of two more films (and a third one on the way), with each one becoming bigger than the last.  What was learned from the Sonic experience was that it was better for Hollywood to not try to force these game franchises to be more cinematic, but to instead embrace the wild and colorful aesthetics of the games that audiences already love.  And since then, video game movies have boomed and become a new craze in Hollywood.  The Sonic movies continue to do well, and just last year we saw a huge box office run for A Minecraft Movie (2025).  But as far as video game movies go, no one has represented the recent boom better than that lovable Italian plumber, Mario.

Nintendo partnered up with the wildly successful Illumination animation studio (the same people who brought us the Minions) to bring their flagship franchise to the big screen.  The match seemed pretty ideal.  The Mario Bros. games are bright and colorful with simple aesthetics that appeal to a broad audience, which is pretty much the in house style of Illumination as well.  What did surprise a lot of people, however, was the announcement of an all-star voice cast to play the roles of the iconic role of Mario and company.  Some of the casting made sense, like Charlie Day as Luigi and Seth Rogen as Donkey Kong, but others left people scratching their heads; none more so than Chris Pratt cast in the role of Mario himself.  Pratt is no stranger to voice acting, with some standout performances in The Lego Movie (2014) and Pixar’s Onward (2020).  But he was certainly not what everyone expected when they thought of a voice for Super Mario himself.  Even still, the movie hit theaters in the Spring of 2023 and it shattered multiple records at the box office.  The movie would go on to gross over $1.5 billion worldwide, with a full third of that coming from the North American market alone, where it crossed the half billion mark.  With The Super Mario Bros. Movie (2023), Hollywood now could see that video game movies indeed had huge box office potential.  Pretty soon a huge number of other video game adaptations were put into production, including a long awaited live action adaptation of Nintendo’s other massive franchise, The Legend of Zelda.  But, the question for the Mario series was where it was going to go next.  The Mario game series itself has gone through numerous phases itself, as it’s expanded into so many different worlds ever since Mario jumped his way through the Mushroom Kingdom in the original NES classic.  So, for Nintendo and Illumination, it made sense to look at the game that more than any other expanded the reaches to the world of Mario; Super Mario Galaxy.  The interstellar adventure took Mario to many far flung worlds across the universe, and this seemed to be the ideal place to go for a movie sequel.  The only question is, does The Super Mario Galaxy Movie succeed in opening up the possibilities of the Mario movie franchise, or does it double down on some of it’s shortcomings.

The story takes place some time after the events of the first movie.  Mario (Chris Pratt) and his brother Luigi (Charlie Day) have settled themselves in the Mushroom Kingdom and now spend their time helping the citizens of that world with their various plumbing related problems.  On one mission, they come across a pipe located in a desert pyramid that seems to have been taken over by a mysterious creature.  Upon investigating, they learn that the creature is a little baby dinosaur named Yoshi (Donald Glover), who becomes instant friends with the brothers.  Meanwhile in another far off part of the galaxy, the home of the mystical star Princess Rosalina (Brie Larson) is attacked by Bowser Jr. (Benny Safdie), who’s on a mission to steal Rosalina’s power and rescue his father Bowser (Jack Black), who is still imprisoned in the Mushroom Kingdom for his crimes.  One of Rosalina’s star children makes it to the castle of Princess Peach (Anya-Taylor Joy) and tells her that Rosalina has been kidnapped.  Without telling Mario about what has happened, Peach goes out to search for clues about Rosalina’s disappearance, along with her resourceful companion Toad (Keegan-Michael Key).  Mario and Luigi are left to look after the Mushroom Kingdom, which includes keeping an eye on Bowser, who swears that he is reformed.  Unfortunately for them, Bowser Jr. sneaks his way into the Mushroom Kingdom and ambushes them, leading to the destruction of Peach’s castle.  Mario, Luigi, and Bowser manage to escape, but they now have to catch up to Peach so they can warn her that Junior is out looking for her too.  Peach eventually learns that Rosalina is being held captive at the Bowser Planet and she needs to hire a pilot to get her there to attempt a rescue.  Thankfully one is available named Fox McCloud (Glen Powell).  Will Peach and the Mario Brothers manage to save Rosalina in time, or will Bowser Jr.’s plan for the destruction of the universe bring an end to all of them.

To be frank, I was not a fan of the first Mario Bros. Movie.  I felt that it was overstuffed with too many game Easter eggs that was made to satisfy the hardcore fans of the game, but lacked a coherent story to make all of those references resonate.  I cared very little about what was happening, because the movie never allowed for crucial things like character or world building to take hold in the experience.  More than anything, it failed at being anything more than just a glorified commercial for the games.  When they announced that they were making a sequel (which was a no-brainer given the box office success of the first) and that it would be based on the classic Galaxy games, I thought that this made a lot of sense, because the Galaxy games did such a good job of expanding the reach of places that Mario could go to.  My hope was that with this expanded universe that we would actually see more creativity in the storytelling and have a more coherent plot overall, instead of things just being a collection or reference and gag set-ups.  Sadly, the Mario Galaxy does not improve on any of the problems of the first film.  In fact, it just doubles down on not caring about the plot at all.  The Super Mario Galaxy Movie just moves along from scene to scene without regards to things like theme, character motivations, or just tone in general.  Stuff just happens, and that’s pretty much the overall experience of the movie.  The film seems more concerned about throwing every possible reference to the games that they can think of purely to get a reaction of recognition out of it’s audience.  It’s the most “member berries” movie that I have seen in quite some time; even more so than the first film, which at least had to do some work in order to lay the rules for the world they were creating in the film.  For me, this film represents all that I dislike about the house style of Illumination.  They are gag factory more than anything else, with story being an afterthought.  Sure, this makes their movies appeal to the broadest possible audience, and they have the box office success to show for it, but the stories in their movies always ring hollow because there is no thought put into them.  They are the anti-Pixar in this manner, and it makes it all the more frustrating that this is the approach they are taking to bringing the world of Super Mario to life.

One of the clearest examples of the story not meaning anything to the makers of this film is the lack of care put into establishing the characters and why they are important.  The introduction of Yoshi in particular felt rushed and wasted.  Pretty much the way that it goes down in the movie is that Mario and Luigi find Yoshi and he takes a liking to them and now he’s just a part of the team.  This abrupt approach is even called out in the movie by one of the character’s who says, “Okay, so he’s just a part of the group now.”  It’s like even filmmakers knew how lame this intro was.  Mario meeting Yoshi for the first time should feel special, and it sadly is not.  This is a recurring theme throughout the movie, where so many things that should carry a weight of importance just don’t.  Now of course this a Mario Bros. movie, so we aren’t exactly dealing with Shakespeare here.  But, there have been plenty of other animated films made in the past that managed to find some emotional depth in places you’d never expect; The Lego Movie being a prime example.  The Illumination Mario movies just never allow for any of that because they are too busy trying to cram in gags and Easter eggs to please the die hard fans.  They don’t want us to feel, they just want us to react.  Are some of the visual gags clever?  A few do get a laugh, and some of the video game references are clever.  But, that’s all that this movie ends up being.  It makes it all the more disappointing given that there was a lot of potential with this movie.  The galaxy is literally open to explore endless possibilities.  But what we end up getting is movie that never fully commits to a plot thread or a creative vision.  What it just does overall is remind you how much better it was when you were playing the games that these movies were based on, especially the classic Mario Galaxy games.  At least with those you could self insert your journey with Mario’s as he travels from world to world.

The sad thing about the shortcomings with the story is that it wastes what is definitely a talented team of animators.  There are certainly far fewer complaints that I have with the overall look of this film.  Illumination has done a good job of translating that Nintendo style into their own.  Mario and his friends always look on model and always are animated with a lot of personality.  The film also does well in creating a sense of scale for these films.  The Mushroom Kingdom is a wonderfully realized place, and it’s great to see how the animators take things that were originally two dimensional in the old platform games and give them weight and texture to help make this a fully lived in world.  They also do well in crafting the many different new world that we visit across the galaxy.  Mario Galaxy was already a very well detailed game for it’s time, and the movie does a good job of recreating iconic places from the game, especially Rosalina’s space ship/palace.  One thing that I wish they had played around with a bit more is the gravity mechanics that were such a big part of the game.  One of the great innovations of the Mario Galaxy game was the way that gravity worked as a part of the game play experience; where you could jump from one small planetoid to another and the pull of gravity would allow you to make that leap, as well as be able to fully run around the planet, including the underside where you’ll be upside down.  The movie doesn’t get to play around with that game mechanic too much, apart from a scene where Peach and Toad arrive at an underground casino, where characters are walking around the space on the floor level as well as the walls and ceiling, similar to how it worked in the game.  It makes the scene one of the few highlights, and I wish there were more moments like that.  It would’ve been neat to see Mario and his crew make these leaps of faith in empty space to go from one tiny planet to another.  The animation team should be given better material to work with, because they clearly are doing their job right.  For whatever reason, the film’s directors Aaron Horvath and Michael Jelenic (who have returned from the first film) just don’t have the drive to do much more with the Mario Bros. property than what they have.  They follow the Illumination formula to a fault and if there was ever a movie that demanded some bold creative choices, this is the one.

The movie’s cast is also a mixed bag.  One of the things that I think is another of Illumination’s faults is that they tend to value marquee names for their voice roles over actors who would be clearly better as the character.  In some of the cases, they do get it right here in the Mario movie.  Charlie Day is honestly the best possible choice for Luigi, and Jack Black was the biggest scene stealer of the first film with his hilarious take on Bowser.  Both Day and Black return here, and are still doing great work as these characters, especially Jack Black who continues to be the MVP.  But, I’m sorry, Chris Pratt just doesn’t work as Mario.  His performance just lacks what the character needs, and all I hear is just Pratt reading the lines and not trying to get into the character of Mario, and it’s distracting.  I was hoping he would improve between movies, but alas his Mario still feels out of place with the rest of the movie.  Illumination also extended it’s search for marquee names for all of the new characters too.  Brie Larson, who is a Nintendo fan girl in real life, does make for a good choice as Rosalina.  She brings a warmth to the character that is welcome.  The only problem is that she isn’t in that much of the movie, acting mostly as a human McGuffin to motivate the plot and not much else.  Perhaps the best new addition to the cast is Glen Powell as Fox McCloud, aka Star Fox.  If his presence here is a slick way to back door pilot a Star Fox movie spin-off I wouldn’t be upset because I thought Powell did a great job embodying the character, tapping a little into his Top Gun: Maverick (2022) experience.  Benny Safdie is a little surprising as Bowser Jr., because he’s trying to put on a cartoonish, juvenile style voice to play the part and it’s not what you’d expect from an actor like him.  He does alright, though I would’ve liked to have heard a bit more menace in his performance.  But of all the new cast in this movie, none is more baffling than Donald Glover playing Yoshi.  You would never in a million years know that Childish Gambino was playing Yoshi in this movie unless you saw his name in the credits.  He’s just doing an impression of the high pitched Yoshi voice that we all know from the games and that’s it.  There’s no trace of Glover’s actual voice at all in the film.  It sounds fine, but I have to ask, why?  It just read to me that Illumination was just looking for another celebrity name they could throw on the marquee, but I worry that it sends a bad precedent because chasing after celebrity names takes away chances for professional voice actors to have the opportunity to have their name on a big movie like this.

Frustration is honestly the feeling I get when I come away from these Illumination Mario movies.  They have the potential to be really good and do justice to the source material that they are based on.  But Illumination seems to be an animation studio built more around commerce than creativity.  Their movies are meant to be easily digestible by the broadest audience possible, and they offer nothing more than than.  But, the Super Mario games deserve so much more than that.  Nintendo’s Game studio has always given Mario and his franchise the greatest amount of care, because he is the face of their company.  That’s why the Mario games always represent innovation in the gaming community, because they are the ones where Nintendo tests out all of their newest game mechanics.  They know that Mario games sell well, and that’s why they trust their little plumber friend to be the best showcase for all the new innovations.  The Mario Galaxy games, with their breakthrough gravity mechanics, was an especially great demonstration of Mario’s ability to change the direction of gaming in general.  Mario is a character that deserves to have movies that reflect that sense of innovation.  But Illumination never makes anything that innovates in the animation industry, unlike it’s contemporaries like Disney, Pixar or Sony.  They just deliver us the movie equivalent of empty calories.  Sure, the movies look nice thanks to a talented team of animators, but that’s all the movies offer.  All I can say is thank God they are not giving this treatment to The Legend of Zelda, which is one of my favorite video game franchises.  That is getting the live action treatment, which it honestly needed to do the games justice.  There’s nothing wrong with doing an animated version of Mario Bros., but I feel like an animation studio such as Illumination, which has some low standards when it comes to quality of story, is holding the Mario franchise back.  Imagine Mario with this kind of animation, but backed up with the strength of story like what we saw with The Lego Movie.  Sadly, The Super Mario Galaxy Movie does nothing to improve on the last film, and may in fact have even dropped the ball even more.  But, of course nothing I say will make much of dent on what will likely be a huge box office win for both Illumination and Nintendo.  If what you want is a nice easy to digest movie based on the Mario Bros. games, you may end up getting what you wanted in this movie.  But for me, I would’ve rather spent my time playing the video games again.

Rating: 5/10

Author Andy Weir has become of the most surprising rising stars in the world of science fiction literature.  Fifteen years ago, he was a programmer living in a two bedroom apartment in Mountain View, CA writing short stories for free on his website in between gigs at AOL and Blizzard.  In 2011, he began to self publish chapters of what would end up being his first novel on his website, and his readers convinced him to take his work to a publisher and make it available to a wider reader base.  That novel would turn into The Martian, a heavily researched and detailed account about how an astronaut stranded on Mars manages to survive the conditions on the Red Planet before being intercepted by a rescue mission.  The Martian was a critical and commercial success, becoming a best-seller and launching Weir into a new career as a novelist.  The book also captured the imagination of Hollywood too, and the novel was quickly adapted into a 2015 blockbuster film directed by Ridley Scott and starring Matt Damon.  Weir quickly went to work on his next novel, which would be a much more high concept science fiction story called Artemis (2017), which was less grounded in real science as The Martian was.  Several years later, Weir would write his next novel, a project that incorporated the high concept strangeness of Artemis, but also would have the grounded foundation of real science like The Martian.  That book would be Project Hail Mary; a story about a lone scientist out in the cosmos who is humanity’s last hope for survival in a future where the Sun is dying.  The book won acclaim from readers everywhere, and the book was a finalist for the prestigious Hugo Award.  Of course, just like The Martian, Hollywood was interested in adapting this novel as well.  Screenwriter Drew Goddard, who also adapted The Martian, would return to tackle the adaptation of Hail Mary to the big screen as well.  But, instead of seeking out someone of Ridley Scott’s caliber to direct, the executives at MGM decided to look outside the normal pool of likely filmmakers.

Who MGM ultimately settled on was the directorial team of Chris Miller and Phil Lord.  Lord & Miller as they have been more widely called have been one of the more unconventional teams of filmmakers working in Hollywood over the last decade.  The two started of in animation, working on the cult adult animation series Clone High before getting their first feature film at the still fledgling Sony Animation Studio called Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs (2009).  But, they didn’t just see themselves as animation directors.  Instead of working on a sequel to Cloudy, they opted to jump into live action, and were given the job of directing a movie adaptation of the 90’s crime drama series 21 Jump Street (2012).  But their Jump Street film wouldn’t be just a simple one-to-one adaptation.  It would be a self-aware, comedic adaptation that matched the duo’s irreverent sense of humor.  The movie was a hit with audiences, and it led to them moving over to Warner Animation, where they would create the surprise hit, The Lego Movie (2014).  With both 21 Jump Street and The Lego Movie, Lord & Miller created a reputation for themselves as being filmmakers who could take bad movie ideas and turn them into beloved classics.  But, since the sequel 22 Jump Street (2014), the duo have not directed a film together until this year.  One of the reasons for this is the bad experience they had as the original creative team behind the Star Wars spin off movie Solo (2018).  They left their lucrative gig at Warner Brothers because they were eager to work in the Star Wars franchise as long time fans, but Lucasfilm didn’t like their approach and they were fired halfway through filming and replaced with Ron Howard in the director’s chair.  Now freelance again, Lord & Miller returned to Sony Animation, where they helped to produce the enormously popular Spider-Verse series, which also earned them their first Oscars as the film’s producers.  They would continue to work on many other projects throughout the 2020’s, including a brief revival of Clone High, but the sour taste of the Solo experience left them reluctant to step back into the role of directors again; unless the right project came along.  Surprisingly, MGM was interested in their involvement in this adaptation of Project Hail Mary, and now we have our first Lord & Miller directed film in nearly a decade.  The question though remains if was indeed worth all that wait?

Project Hail Mary takes place mostly many light years away from planet Earth.  On a space ship hurtling through the cosmos, Ryland Grace (Ryan Gosling) wakes up from a medically induced coma that has kept him in hibernation throughout the multiyear journey in far reaches of space.  He has no memory of who he is or why he’s on the ship, but he uses his scientific mind to quickly piece together what mission he was meant to undertake.  Flashbacks help to fill in the blank spots of his past.  Ryland became part of a top secret department made up of leading scientists from all over the world, led by a stern but encouraging project leader named Eva Stratt (Sandra Huller).  A groundbreaking discovery uncovers the terrifying secret that microscopic parasites called Astrophage are absorbing the energy of the sun and causing it to dim.  The dimming is resulting in the plummeting of temperatures on Earth, which could lead to the extinction of all life on the planet, including humans.  Ryland became the first scientist to document and understand the properties of this mysterious single celled organisms, and his research makes him one of the most valuable minds in the agency’s team.  Their research has shown that what is happening to our Sun is happening to stars all over the local cluster, except for one, Tau Ceti.  The mission becomes clear; a team of astronauts must travel to the Tau Ceti system and discover why it has not been infected like all the other stars around it.  The amount of energy that Astrophage gives off when it consumes electromagnetic radiation and Carbon Dioxide also proves to be a good source of fuel for near light speed propulsion, so the engineers on the team manage to create an engine for just that purpose using the very thing that’s destroying their world as the key to humanity’s survival.  Many years later, Ryland finds that he is the last surviving member of a crew that died during hibernation.  He makes it to the Tau Ceti system, but he learns that he’s not alone, as an alien space craft intercepts his.  Though imposing at first, Ryland finds that the life abord the craft are in the same situation he’s in; trying to help save their planet as well.  He makes contact and finds an alien being that looks like it’s made of stone.  Ryland makes attempts to bridge the communication gap, and even gives his new friend the name Rocky.  It then falls on Ryland and Rocky to put their minds together to help stop the Astrophage and save their respective worlds.

We’ve had a lot of amazing space based movies over the last decade.  Christopher Nolan delivered his IMAX screen spectacular with Interstellar (2014), and of course there was the already mentioned The Martian from Ridley Scott as well as Alfonso Cuaron’s Gravity (2013).  Ryan Gosling also is no stranger to space based epics, as he got to play legendary first man on the Moon, Neil Armstrong, in the film First Man (2018).  One of the reasons why we’ve had so many of these types of movies lately is because the vastness of space and interplanetary travel lends itself very well to big screen spectacle.  You even see it be a major part in epics fantasies like the Star Wars and Dune franchises.  These movies especially seemed designed for the grandeur of the big screen.  This is something that we’ve known since the days of Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968).  Project Hail Mary follows in the footsteps of these space based epics, and is intended to be a major crowd pleaser.  For the most part, it succeeds in what it hopes to accomplish.  It’s an incredible spectacle that really need to be seen on the big screen to fully appreciate.  It also does a great job in grounding it’s scientific concepts in ways that make sense to the average viewer, without also insulting the true science that forms it’s foundation.  But, the movie also seems to hold us at a distance, which unfortunately undercuts the effectiveness of the story.  The way the movie is structured is that it tells the story in a non-linear way, cutting away from the main story of Ryland in space to show us why and how he got there.  While all the individual scenes are fine on their own, the way they are structured together kind of makes the pacing of the film feel a bit uneven.  The main plot, involving Ryland and Rocky forming their bond and working together to solve the mystery behind the Astrophage is definitely the best part of the movie, but every time the movie cuts back to the past, it felt like the momentum of the main story was being halted.  I understand that it’s supposed to be like in the book, as Ryland slowly pieces together his memory, but it just felt like a whole different movie was trying to force it’s way into another one.  It just made the whole experience feel awkward and keeps a pretty good movie from becoming a great movie.

Despite that, there is still a lot to like about the story of the Project Hail Mary.  Just like The Martian, the movie takes it’s time to give us details about what the problem is and how our heroes must solve it.  While it’s science is a little more on the fictional side that the far more grounded Martian, it’s nevertheless treated like something that actually could be scientifically true.  Just like The Martian, it’s great to see a movie treat science so respectfully.  At a time when scientific literacy is at a low point, it’s great to see movies like this show why it’s essential for the fate of humanity to “science the shit” out of our current problems.  But the movie doesn’t treat it’s audience as idiots either.  It does go out of it’s way to be true to real science as possible.  There are some leaps of logic at times, but none that come across as insulting to the audience’s intelligence level either.  Lord & Miller assume that their audience has the basic understanding of how space based physics work.  Sometimes they even play against your expectations, like how objects move in the vacuum of space, or moments when they play around with the complete silence of space as well.  Of course, Lord & Miller use their background in comedy to help lighten many moments in the movie, and some of their best gags are reserved for those subversions of how physics work in space.  At the same time, they don’t undermine the seriousness of the situation either.  As far as their filmography goes, this movie is probably the most dramatic film that Lord & Miller have made.  It shows that they are indeed branching out as filmmakers, not just confining themselves to comedy alone, even if it is their strongest suit.  One wonders what might have been with their version of Solo.  Were they really that bad of a fit for Star Wars?  This movie does prove that they were capable of pulling off the spaced based spectacle on the big screen, and they could even take themselves a little bit more seriously in the process.  Regardless, I hope some of that experience is what helped to fuel their approach to this film, which while uneven still demonstrates a strong step forward for these two filmmakers.

One of the things that was central to making the movie work as a whole was the casting of Ryland Grace himself.  The movie for the most part is almost entirely a single-hander, with his only co-star being an alien creature without a discernable face.  It would require an actor with a lot of charisma to hold a movie like this together almost completely solo.  Ryan Gosling proves to be the right guy for the job.  Gosling embodies this charming everyman quality that makes it easy to like him on screen with not much interference.  Given that he’s by himself for a good chunk of the movie, you need that everyman quality to center the movie in something grounded and genuine.  He can be aloof and funny, but we also buy him as a man who seriously is trying to think his way out of a problem.  Some readers have raised concerns that Ryan is too handsome an actor to play Ryland Grace, as the character in the book is described as being more of a plain looking, out of shape guy.  And while there are attempts to make Gosling look a tad more plain in the movie, it really doesn’t matter in the long run.  We just need to believe in him as this character; someone who will use his mind to science a way out of this situation.  Of course, what a lot of people are going to talk about is the on screen chemistry that Gosling will have with the alien Rocky.  Rocky may be the movie’s greatest triumph because of the limitations on how he is able to communicate.  He’s a stone based creature that walks around like a crab and has no discernable facial features.  And yet, he’s incredibly expressive, showing emotion through pantomime, often imitating what Ryland does to show he’s friendly.  What’s remarkable is that Rocky was actually an on-set physical puppet for many scenes, puppeteered by James Ortiz, who also provided his the voice of Rocky’s computerized translator.  Obviously for some of the more complex movement scenes, Rocky’s puppet was switched out for a digital model, but you really have to give credit to the movie for actually going out of their way to build a real puppet for the film, which I’m sure Gosling really appreciated as an actor needing something to react to on set.  And though her presence in the movie is minimal, Sandra Huller also brings a great presence in what is her debut in a Hollywood studio film after a distinguished career working in German cinema.   It may not be a big cast, but they manage to carry this movie very well, even through it’s big epic moments.

Of course what a lot of people are going to discuss about this movie are the visual.  The film is grandiose in scale, but it also manages to capture the small moments pretty well in between.  Most of the movie takes place on the space shuttle Hail Mary, and the production team did an excellent job of making the sets for the shuttle look true to life as possible.  The filmmakers certainly must have done their research with how space stations are built and function, and also included theoretical plans about how such facilities would work in the near future.  Of course, the movie also plays around with theoretical science as well, especially in the way it imagined what Rocky’s own space ship would be like, and how it functions.  The planets of the Tau Ceti system are also incredibly realized.  To create these visuals in a way that does the vastness of space justice, it’s easy to see why Lord & Miller got Oscar winning cinematographer Greig Fraser on board, given that he’s been the one who’s photographed the Dune movies for Denis Villeneuve.  The movie uses two types of film formats.  The scenes on earth are shot in the standard scope widescreen aspect ratio of 2.39:1.  But all the scenes in space (which is roughly 70% of the film) was shot on 70mm IMAX.  If you are lucky enough to see the movie projected in 70mm IMAX (as I was), you are seeing the movie as it was truly meant to be shown.  The vastness of space can only really be appreciated in the IMAX format.  Greig Fraser does an incredible job of capturing both the emptiness of that void, as well as the overwhelming scale of the planets once these space ship arrive near a celestial body.  Fraser also does a great job of shooting the interior spaces of Ryland’s space shuttle.  The movie does a nice job of playing with perspective sometimes, where Gosling moves around the spaceship contrary to where we expect the floor and ceiling to be; a trick also used very well in 2001: A Space Odyssey.  The visual effects team should also be applauded because it also appears that a lot more practical effects were used on this film than what we’d expect.  The Rocky puppet is one thing, but it’s also clear that a lot of scenes of the two space ships were done with real physical models as opposed to CGI; another nod to 2001, but also something that Christopher Nolan also made extensive use out of for Interstellar.  Lord & Miller clearly wanted to make this film feel grounded, and it’s great to see that they didn’t just rely on heavy usage of CGI to do the job.  It works so much better to make this story believable when what you are seeing are real, physical things shot on camera.

There is certainly a lot to like about Project Hail Mary, and I have no doubt that this will be a winning film for most audiences.  It’s got a positive message about teamwork and making personal sacrifices for the sake of saving others.  It’s also a beautiful looking movie that demands to be seen on the biggest screen possible.  But also I felt coming away from the movie that it lacked that certain element that could have made it even greater.  I feel like it’s fundamental flaw resides in it’s uneven pacing.  The movie is 2 hours and 36 minutes long, and I feel like it could have worked better if it maybe reduced those flashback scenes to a minimum.  The problem is that those flashbacks end overstaying their welcome and they don’t really add much overall to the story other than providing context.  There are some nice flashbacks in there, especially the karaoke scene with Eva, but what we learn about Ryland as a character is mostly found in his scenes out in space, and that ultimately makes the flashbacks superfluous.  The main thrust of the story is Ryland and Rocky, and that’s where the heart is.  Whenever it cut away from the their story to one of these flashbacks, I felt that momentum of the movie got halted, and it reduced the overall experience.  It needed consistency in it’s pacing, and that was found mostly in those space scenes.  That’s why I feel that it didn’t work as well as The Martian did as an adaptation of Andy Weir’s writing.  The Martian has a much clearer and linear line in it’s storytelling, and that’s what helped it to be a much briskier film overall, even with the near identical run time of 2 1/2 hours.  Even still, Lord & Miller are showing a lot of growth as filmmakers, and this movie shows just how well they can handle big spectacle in a live action movie.  Their handling of the Ryland and Rocky storyline is especially well done.  If anything, that the thing that most audiences are going to take away from this film, which is the surprisingly charming bromance between Ryland and Rocky.  Project Hail Mary follows in the footsteps of some major cinematic classics like 2001, Gravity, and Interstellar, and while it may fall short in terms of the execution of it’s story, it still nevertheless does justice to the visual legacies of those films as spectacles.  I have my misgivings about how the story was told, but I certainly recommend seeing this movie for the big screen spectacle it offers.  It’s movies like these that bring us the closest to sailing through the stars.

Rating: 7.5/10

It’s been a tumultuous road in the 2020’s for Pixar Animation.  They were caught up in the massive disruption of the Covid-19 pandemic, with their spring 2020 release of their movie Onward (2020) getting shut off once theaters began closing for the lockdown.  Then for the next 3 releases on their line-up, the powers that be at their parent company Disney decided to skip theatrical releases altogether and take their movies directly to streaming. Pixar wouldn’t see the big screen again until the release of the Toy Story (1995) spin-off film, Lightyear (2022), which was a highly divisive film that alienated longtime Pixar fans.  While a lot of Pixar’s problems were out of their control, such as with the pandemic, they were nevertheless determined to keep their high quality standards up at the studio, but internal pressures were also taking their toll.  The re-shuffling of management at the top of Disney, with the much disliked Bob Chapek lasting only 2 disastrous years as CEO before being replaced by his predecessor Bob Iger who came back to clean up his mess, also negatively affected Pixar.  During Pete Doctor’s tenure as head of the studio, Pixar has unfortunately seen massive layoffs come down on them from Disney’s corporate offices, and it has affected the creative culture that helped to fuel Pixar’s rise.  Doctor has tried the best that he can do to keep Pixar humming along through all the turmoil.  Despite the falling box office, audiences are still approving of Pixar’s output, with their movies often getting strong critical and audience scores.  Elemental (2023) managed to survive a disastrous opening weekend and become a modest hit through strong word of mouth.  And Pixar did have it’s biggest hit ever a year later with the box office phenomenon Inside Out 2 (2024).  But a year later they suffered their biggest box office failure ever with Elio (2025), which became their first non-pandemic affected film to ever fail to gross over $100 million.  It seems that Pixar’s only saving grace now is in making sequels to their past hits, and that in itself is yet another demoralizing blow to the studio.

It’s disheartening to see Pixar having to justify it’s existence now by banking on their already established franchises, but sadly they are at the mercy of the accountants over at Disney.  The corporate offices aren’t taking into consideration the quality of the story or the animation.  What they look at is the fact that Elio lost Disney a lot of money, while Inside Out 2 made all of the money.  That’s why the future line-up of Pixar Animation is so sequel heavy, with movies like this summer’s Toy Story 5 in the works as well as Incredibles 3, Coco 2, and Monsters Inc. 3 all coming in the years ahead.  Now, of course Pixar is no stranger to sequels.  In the past, they have put out four Toy Story’s and three Cars film, plus sequels to Finding Nemo, The Incredibles, Monsters Inc. and the aforementioned Inside Out 2.  But in between all of these sequels, they have continued to also put out original movies, and these are the ones that more often have the longer staying power.  In fact, the eras that seem to define Pixar the most are when they are trying new things.  The 2000’s was the time period where Pixar was at their strongest, with movies like The Incredibles (2004), Ratatouille (2007), Wall-E (2008) and Up (2009) helping to define Pixar as not just another animation studio, but as a brand that defined quality.  The 2010’s saw them still continue to perform strong, but they also seemed to be relying a bit too much on sequels to help boost their box office.  However, their justification for these sequels was that it would help keep them financially secure so that they could keep experimenting with their untried new ideas.  Sadly, the pandemic cut short what would have been a planned roll out of nothing but originals for a solid five year run.  Onward, Soul (2020), Luca (2021), and Turning Red (2022) all were movies that came from new original ideas from first time filmmakers who were being promoted through the ranks at Pixar (except Soul, which Pete Doctor made himself).  Because none of these movies got the big screen exposure that they deserved, they unfortunately have muted Pixar’s reputation as an innovator, and now they are sadly trying to play it safe.  There is one last original film coming this year from Pixar that could help salvage the studio and prove that they can still prosper on original ideas.  The only question is whether Hoppers (2026) can be the movie that can do that?

Hoppers tells the story of a spirited young woman named Mabel Tanaka (Piper Curda).  Mabel is passionate about nature, which was passed down to her from visits to a special secluded glade outside of town with her Grandma Tanaka (Karen Huie).  Unfortunately, the glade is about to be paved over for a new beltline freeway, promoted by Mayor Jerry (Jon Hamm), who Mabel has had a longtime beef with.  Mabel has tried every tactic to slow down the construction of the freeway, but to effect.  She then comes up with the idea of reintroducing the beaver population into the area, with the hopes that their construction of a beaver dam will help bring the wildlife back.  However, when she finds a beaver in the wild, she sees it behaving very weirdly.  She follows it to a secret laboratory at Beaverton University, where she attends school.  There Mabel finds her professor Dr. Sam (Kathy Najimy) has created a top secret program that allows human consciousness to be transferred into robotic animals, which has allowed them to better observe the behavior of animals.  Seeing this technology as a perfect way to communicate directly with the animals in nature, Mabel puts herself into the machine and transfers her mind into that of a robotic beaver.  She manages to make it to the woods outside of town, where she quickly realizes that she can understand everything the animals are saying.  Not only that, but she also learns there’s a code that they all live by called Pond Rules.  Confused by their social order, a couple of the animals called Ellen the Bear (Melissa Villasenor), Tom Lizard (Tom Law) and Loaf the Beaver (Eduardo Franco) decide to bring Mabel to the Pond where she can talk to King George (Bobby Moynihan), the leader of their animal community.  George turns out to be a welcoming leader who respects Mabel’s passion about saving their community from human development.  But, Mabel wishes to stop Mayor Jerry’s plan once and for all, so King George summons the Animal Council, which includes the Bird King (Isiah Whitlock Jr.), the Amphibian King (Steve Purcell), the Fish Queen (Ego Nwodim), the Reptile Queens (Nichole Sakura), and the most feared member, the Insect Queen (Meryl Streep).  Mabel makes her case to the Council, but they unfortunately take the wrong conclusion and decide that Mayor Jerry must be “squished,” leading Mabel to realize that she may have gone a tad overboard in her crusade.

The one thing that helps Hoppers to stand out is the fact that it not only is an original idea for a movie, but it also is one that never once goes down a familiar path.  One of the great things about Pixar Animation is that their ideas for movies have always been atypical, and embraced original concepts that may have sounded too weird at first.  That’s why you had movies where Monsters power their energy grid off the screams of children, or a rat becoming a gourmet chef by puppeteering a human by pulling on his hair.  They are a studio that has always embraced weird ideas and it’s what has made their movies feel so fresh over the years.  Hoppers thankfully embraces that oddball spirit, and even goes a step further.  What I particularly loved about Hoppers was the fact that it was so unpredictable.  The concept itself is not the strong point of the movie.  The idea of our main character doing a body swap to put their mind in the body of an animal is nothing we’ve never seen before.  In fact, the movie itself points this out with Mabel herself saying this is just like Avatar (2009), to the chagrin of Dr. Sam.  But it’s what the movie does with that set-up afterwards where the story really shines.  The story doesn’t just follow plot points, it just kind of unravels in an ever escalating series of chaotic situations, each more bizarrely inspired than the next.  It has a very stream of conscious flow to it, where one bizarre idea flows into the next, and that made the movie all the more enjoyable because it always kept us the audience guessing what may happen next.  And yet, in typical Pixar fashion, it doesn’t lose track of the heart at it’s center.  There in fact is a strong through line of Mabel learning to be more responsible with her activism and finding better ways to inspire others to follow her lead.  The friendships she builds along the way are also a strong point of the movie, especially the bond she makes with King George.  The movie also delivers a potent message about conservation and living in communion with nature that thankfully naturally flows out of the story and never feels heavy handed.

If the movie has a flaw, it’s that it doesn’t really find it’s footing until midway through the film.  The pacing in the first half of the movie is a bit too frantic, making it difficult at times to connect with Mabel and her plight.  I’d say it’s at the point where King George enters the picture close to the mid section of the movie that things start to settle, and that’s also the point where the movie begins to let loose and defy convention.  One of the most surprising things about Hoppers is just how funny it is, and I don’t mean in the usual Pixar family friendly way.  Hoppers‘ sense of humor can get surprisingly dark at times, to the point where I was shocked that Disney allowed them to get away with some of these gags.  Not that this is adult humor that is inappropriate for children, or something that may end up traumatizing little kids.  It’s just so surprising that this movie was allowed to be as weird as it is.  There’s a bit with a shark that especially had me giggling in the theater.  There’s also another moment where something is “squished” that may be the darkest gag that Pixar has ever put into one of their movies, and it got a massive reaction out of the audience I was watching the movie with.  This is the thing that I think may be the difference maker for Pixar with Hoppers; the fact that it didn’t try to play things safe and just repeat formula.  While many of their recent slate of films have all still had a lot of heart and charm to them, Pixar also really hasn’t taken this big of a swing either.  By embracing a wildly stranger tone and sense of humor, Hoppers really does feel the most like the Pixar of old, where the attitude was more centered around “anything goes.”  When they were creating the original Toy Story, the Pixar creative team actually threw out much of their original script because it was too formulaic, and they instead went with the philosophy of making something that isn’t aimed at all audiences, but rather aimed at what they themselves would want to see, and that in turn made their movie funnier and more daring in the flow of it’s story.  From that point, Pixar followed this ethos for a long time, making sure they only put the work into the movie if the story felt right.  Hoppers feels like the best implementation of that idea from Pixar in a long while.

One of the reasons why the humor in this movie hits so well is because the voice cast does such a great job of bringing character and personality to the film.  Piper Curda brings a lot of passion and energy to the character of Mabel.  She may come across as too strong in the beginning, which may be a result of the first half’s awkward pacing, but Piper manages to nail the more heartfelt moments later on in the film when Mabel goes through her realization phase in the story.  But perhaps the one who stands out the most in the film is Bobby Moynihan as King George.  Moynihan is no stranger to voicing cartoon characters, and in fact he’s been in a couple past Pixar films already in minor roles, such as Monsters University (2013) and both Inside Out movies.  Here he now gets to play a featured role for the first time for Pixar, and the Saturday Night Live alum makes the most of it.  He brings so much warmth to the character of King George, making him a bright ray of optimism in an often cynical world.  He might actually be my favorite character from a Pixar movie in a very long time, just based on his upbeat demeanor that both is funny in contrast with Mabel’s sharper edges and also in how he constantly tries to make the best out of impossibly bad situations.  Moynihan embodies that perfectly in his vocal performance, managing to deliver on both the more hysterical and tender moments with the character.  The remainder of the cast also delivers some great moments, and in typical Pixar fashion, they always look for the voices that are best suited for the characters, rather than chasing after a big marquee name.  Jon Hamm does a great job voicing Mayor Jerry, allowing him to be more than just a stock antagonist for the film and even finding ways to be as silly in his performance as the rest of film.  It’s also hilarious how they end up using Meryl Streep in the film, given how prestige she brings with her.  Just like the movie itself, it’s great to see the cast letting loose in their roles, embracing the oddball vibe that pervades the story.  But, Pixar also manages to make their roles work in service of the story as well.  It’s one thing that I always appreciate about Pixar movies, where you feel like the voice actors are embodying the characters, and you never get the sense that this was just a quick job in a recording booth for them.

Hoppers is also a visually impressive movie as well, which for Pixar is standard practice.  A lot of naysayers of recent Pixar have lamented over how the studio has changed their style in recent years, particularly with their character animation.  This has been dubbed the “bean mouth” era of Pixar by some critics, as Pixar has used a simplified character modeling style where the characters (particularly human ones) have open mouths that appear bean shaped.  This can be seen in movies like Luca, Turning Red, and Elio, where the human characters are very much more stylized and simple in design that Pixar characters of the past.  I for one don’t mind this kind of style, because one I find it charming and two Pixar isn’t the first animation studio to try to update their house style.  Look at their sister animation studio Disney, which has updated their house style many times; even in Walt’s era this was true, with Sleeping Beauty (1959) looking vastly different from Snow White and the Seven Dwarves (1937).  Hoppers continues this trend with the “bean mouth” style, and it honestly helps to make the movie look even better.  I love the highly expressive faces that these characters make, and their more stylized look fits better with that manic nature of the humor in this movie.  One of the best visual ideas in the movie is how characters appear different through the perspective of hopping from human to animal.  From the perspective of the humans, all the animals (including the robotic ones) looking like animals, with beady eyes and expressionless faces.  But once the characters transplant their consciousness, or find a way to communicate with the animals, the faces on the animals change, with big expressive eyes and human like mannerisms.  It’s a simple visual idea, but one that works very well and also helps to enhance some of the comedy, especially when the perspectives suddenly change.  The movie is also colorful and beautifully detailed.  This will be a movie that’ll play especially well on home video, especially if people have HDR set ups on their TV sets.  But, it should definitely be experienced on a big screen first, because it’s a beautifully immersive experience.  It’s great to see that even through the ups and downs of Pixar’s fortunes, they still haven’t lost their edge as visual artists.

It may not be the absolute pinnacle of Pixar Animation overall; seriously this studio has the highest bar to clear of any animation brand in the world.  But, Hoppers is probably the most assured and daring movie they have made in quite some time.  I’ll need to stew a bit longer over where I would rank it among the best of Pixar’s films, but for what it is, I definitely say that I had a lot of fun watching this movie.  The thing I appreciate the most is that it refuses to stick with formula and go by the Pixar playbook.  The way this movie unfolds, with each twist and turn being unexpected is what really helped to make this movie so entertaining.  In an animation industry that has been hit hard by layoff and facing the existential threat of AI, it’s inspiring to see Pixar defying the headwinds that’s pushing them towards just coasting on their brand.  Pixar has always been an industry leader, setting the bar high, and they should indeed continue to be challenging themselves by taking chances.  It’s certainly seems like Hoppers is an unexpected example of this, because on the surface a movie about talking animals seems like the most formulaic movie idea of all in animation.  And yet, Hoppers throws out convention at every turn and makes this a movie that truly does feel unlike anything you’ve seen before.  I love the bold swings it took to make it funnier at every turn, and not be afraid to go a little dark at times.  This is the same kind of spirit that fueled Pixar’s rise in the first place, and it’s inspiring to see a little bit of that still alive at the Emeryville, CA based studio offices.  Whether we can still see that spark of creativity inspire more original ideas in the future remains to be seen, as Pixar’s upcoming slate seems to be very sequel heavy.  My hope is that Hoppers manages to do well enough to convince Disney that there needs to be more original films sprinkled within all these sequels to help keep the spark of originality going, both at Pixar and at Disney’s own studio.  For the time being, Hoppers proves to be a genuinely pleasing surprise that I think represents the best of what Pixar has to offer, and hopefully audiences will agree and help bring Pixar back to the peak of their powers once again.

Rating: 8.5/10