Carrying an entire movie by yourself is a daunting task for an actor. When you’re the only human being onscreen for the majority of the film, everything hinges on your performance. The acting has to be up to snuff, of course, but it’s more than that: People have to like you. If audiences are going to spend over two hours watching you and only you, you’ve got to be charming and engaging enough to be worth the investment.
It’s why Tom Hanks was nominated for an Oscar for acting opposite a volleyball in Castaway. And it’s why Ryan Gosling — the Tom Hanks of his generation — was the perfect choice for Project Hail Mary.
The movie adaptation of Andy Weir’s sci-fi novel, which debuted on Friday, is sort of a cross between Castaway and Apollo 13, another Hanks classic. Gosling plays Dr. Ryland Grace, a science teacher who wakes up alone on a spaceship after a 12-year coma and eventually recalls he’s been tasked with saving the sun from dying. Along the way, he meets and befriends a rock-shaped alien he calls “Rocky” who’s there trying to do same thing for his planet.
Project Hail Mary is funny, moving and visually stunning — the kind of blockbuster that should remind folks why seeing a movie in a theater, where you can laugh along with strangers in the dark and “ooh” and “ahh” together at its mesmerizing effects, beats streaming it at home. It’s got some excellent needle drops, including a (presumably incredibly expensive) use of the Beatles’ “Two of Us” that will absolutely make you cry. But none of it works without Gosling.
As Grace, he’s exactly the kind of affable everyman that Hanks made his calling card decades ago. Grace is not some heroic adventurer; he’s a goofy middle-school science teacher who was thrust into all of this against his will. Gosling does a phenomenal job of reminding us that his character is just a normal guy — a very intelligent guy who manages to teach himself how to pilot a spacecraft, sure, but a normal guy nonetheless. The tone of the movie vacillates between quip-driven comedy and heartbreaking tragedy. (Both Grace and Rocky had to witness a lot of death on their journeys, and they both must come to terms with the possibility that they too won’t make it home.) Gosling manages to thread that needle perfectly, delivering the jokes with the same comedic prowess that served him so well in Barbie while rising to the occasion during the movie’s more dramatic moments.
Gosling has been getting a lot of Oscar buzz for this performance, and rightly so. But despite already having three Best Actor nominations under his belt (for Half Nelson, La La Land and Barbie), the 45-year-old actor feels weirdly underrated. That’s the danger of being such an effective everyman. Like Hanks, Gosling’s performances feel easy — not because they actually are, but because he delivers them so effortlessly. He’s never one to go big, unless he’s doing so for comedic effect in Barbie or that “Papyrus” sketch on SNL. That kind of acting can be easy to take for granted because it’s less visible than, say, anything Daniel Day-Lewis or Sean Penn is doing.
How Ryan Gosling’s Out-of-This-World Cardigan Stole the Show in “Project Hail Mary”
The key to nailing a sci-fi wardrobe? A rugged Canadian knit yanked straight out of the 1950s.There’s an argument to be made that what Gosling and Hanks (and Jimmy Stewart before them) are able to deliver onscreen is actually more impressive than what the scenery-chewers who are primarily known as dramatic leading men are capable of. Gosling could certainly handle a role like László Tóth in The Brutalist, but Adrien Brody could never do “I’m Just Ken.” There’s an impressive versatility that both Hanks and Gosling’s filmographies possess: Both have successfully pulled off a rom-com (Gosling in Crazy, Stupid, Love and Hanks in You’ve Got Mail and Sleepless in Seattle), tackled devastating drama (Blue Valentine, Philadelphia) and dipped their toes in the action-adventure realm (The Fall Guy, The DaVinci Code). They’ve both played heroes (Drive, Sully) and criminals (The Place Beyond the Pines, Road to Perdition). And yes, they’ve both portrayed real-life astronauts (Gosling as Neil Armstrong in First Man and Hanks as Jim Lovell in Apollo 13).
It could have very easily gone differently for Gosling. In the early 2000s when he was primarily known for The Notebook, he gained notoriety as “the internet’s boyfriend.” (Remember all those “Hey Girl” memes?) He could have coasted on his looks, or gone the more traditional leading-man route. Instead, he chose a far more interesting path, putting together an incredibly diverse résumé that includes everything from weird indies like Lars and the Real Girl to four memorable hosting stints on Saturday Night Live. And despite how inexplicably jacked he is in Project Hail Mary — pretty sure that 12-year coma would’ve made those muscles atrophy at least a little bit — he’s deeply relatable as Grace. He’s a regular guy; a loveable, lonely teacher who just needs a friend. He could be any of us.
Tom Hanks has managed to snag himself two Oscars thus far. Maybe Project Hail Mary will finally get the Academy to pick up on Gosling’s Hanksian talent and get him his first statuette.
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