Project Hail Mary (2026)

The movie is afraid to confront the enormity of its circumstances without the aid of a quip or needle drop, which is fair because any quiet would have exposed a lack of original thought, turning Spielbergian (Complimentary) to Spielbergian (Derogatory) real quick.

You can tell that the source material is by a guy who likes Star Trek for all of the stupid reasons, and you can also tell which episodes of The Next Generation are his favorite. The assumption that world governments would work together towards this Hail Mary is the kind of thing you can normally waive off for the sake of watching a sci-fi movie but then later on the director of the project is like “these governments absolutely will not work together later” which does make you wonder at how the whole thing got put together before Ryland Grace got involved, and it is, ultimately, the earthbound frame narrative that’s most interesting. But it’s also important that a generation that grew up on Guardians of the Galaxy gets an E.T. that won’t make them cringe as hard as the MCU eventually will, so congrats to Lord & Miller for putting one together out of scrap.