Why Project Hail Mary Feels So Christian (Even If It Isn't)

“No one has greater love than this: to lay down his life for his friends.”

–John 15:13

🚨 Spoiler Alert

This review contains some minor spoilers for Project Hail Mary, including the premise of the mission, some of the protagonist's character arc, and his encounter with R****

Last year, during a Good Friday event outside a local church, after seeing a presentation of the brutal death Christ endured and listening to a melancholic dirge memorializing His sacrifice, a friend of mine asked my wife and I “So, why did Jesus die? I know he was innocent and He was killed but I don’t know why.” The Why is so important and happens to be the Greatest Story Ever Told. I would contend that this is why movies like Project Hail Mary are so well received and popular.

Why the Hero Story Never Gets Old

There’s nothing quite like a story about a man who–against all the odds–sets out to accomplish a mission to save the world and does so at great personal cost. Something deep inside of us is attracted to this kind of story; it resonates deep within us so much that it has been told and retold a dozen times over and we don’t tire of hearing it. From William Wallace and Dietrich Bonhoeffer to fictional heroes like Iron Man and our new hero, Dr. Ryland Grace, we never tire of this motif because deep down we all sense our need for a Hero and in some sense long to be one for others. Ultimately, we want to matter and to be significant both in the sense of being worthy of a sacrifice and in giving our lives to a mission that truly matters.

An Every Man Called “Grace”

What makes Dr. Ryland Grace such an incredibly compelling hero is his status as an Every Man. He’s a middle school teacher (albeit a very smart one) and although he takes a lot of pride in bringing up the next generation and seems to genuinely care for his students, he doesn’t seem to have much of a life or anything meaningful in front of him. He even says early in the movie “I take a bike to work and it’s not because I enjoy the exercise”. That is until one day, an interstellar menace arrives in his solar system and within several short years, human life on earth will be threatened with certain extinction. Grace–for reasons initially unknown to us–finds himself as the beating heart of the mission. He faces the challenges of his own fears and cowardice which threaten to upend everything that he thought he was. A very endearing yet gut-wrenching part of the story is Grace wrestling with all of these glaring (and painfully relatable) inadequacies, his eventual acceptance of them, and how he overcomes them.

Enter Project Hail Mary (aptly named Project Salvation in Spanish), a mission that will send three volunteers on a suicide mission to save the world (sound familiar?). It’s a one way ticket to another Sun where they hope to rescue all of humanity from its inevitable doom. Along the way, our hero Grace makes an intergalactic friend, “Rocky”, and they set out to save their worlds together. This is where the main themes of the story shine: friendship and self-sacrifice.

For us Christians, “Grace” means “gift”. Certainly, this is not a coincidence on the part of the author, Andy Weir. Ultimately though, his hero’s journey is much more complicated and messy than the Grace that sought us out in Christ. But we can still see a clear giving of himself to his world (maybe even all of the sentient cosmos). And we also see a real friendship develop through the protagonists’ connection to the mission at hand, shared loss, and connection in the midst of isolation. It serves as a kind of parable for what I believe many people (especially men) in our churches today crave: mission and connection that supersede the pleasant routines of humdrum life. It strikes at our deep longing for significance as small moral beings in a vast and seemingly indifferent universe. Our souls yearn to make an impact and leave a life-giving legacy for those who come after us. It puts the beating heart of Christianity on full display and juxtaposes it (unbeknownst to even its author) with the meaninglessness of all of this if we aren’t made in the image of God. It does all of this while deeply humanizing our hero Grace and showing how much he wrestles with his own insignificance, complacency, and cowardice.

“Mission and connection supersede the pleasant routines of humdrum life. It strikes at our deep longing for significance as small moral beings in a vast and seemingly indifferent universe. Our souls yearn to make an impact and leave a life-giving legacy for those who come after us.”

The God Who Sees and His Providential Provision

Sprinkled throughout the movie are a number of “providential coincidences” that happen and–from the Christian perspective–seem to only be explained by a God who sees what is happening and provides for humanity’s inability to save itself. You can see this even in the divine appointment of two strangers finding one another in the vastness of space while their homes are lightyears apart. They end up helping each other in ways that demonstrate that this was always designed to be a co-op mission. Our hero is prepared for the good works that he is to walk in on behalf of all of humanity from the very beginning and even when unexpected outcomes transpire–like a small clerical error that takes two seemingly essential pieces off the playing board–it can be inferred that God uses cold, indifferent, even sinful utilitarianism to launch His mission of salvation to His worlds through Grace. Even a facet of the Hail Mary’s rushed design ends up being the key to rescuing them later from a situation that was quite literally spinning out of control.

“God uses cold, indifferent, even sinful utilitarianism to launch His mission of salvation to His worlds through Grace.”

The Absurdity of Atheism on Full Display

Although the author of the story is a naturalist and is a self-described agnostic, he borrows from the Christian worldview and taps into something truly heroic: laying down your life for your friends. Naturalistic, atheistic evolution relies on entirely utilitarian and cost-benefit analyses. And while there is certainly a lot of this “the ends justifies the means” survival of the fittest thinking in the film (and even more so in the book), one particular choice in the film flies in the face of these kinds of “reasonable” exchanges and we intuitively know it to be a morally good choice. Weir weaves his story from atheistic naturalist fabric and unwittingly creates Christ figures that show the love of God for all of humanity. In fact, eventually the naturalism in the story as it involves alien life becomes really ironic. As our scientist Grace pontificates about how the Eridians (the species of his new alien friend) evolved so similarly to humans over millions of years (and several light years apart), as a Christian reader you find yourself thinking: ‘Or perhaps life was fine-tuned and designed?!’ There is even a stage where Rocky says, “We’re good people,” and one has to wonder how they independently developed such similar moral systems of thought from nothing if atheistic naturalism is true.

“Weir weaves his story from atheistic naturalist fabric and unwittingly creates Christ figures that show the love of God for all of humanity.”

Death and Humanity’s Vicarious Victory

Although the story is often lighthearted, there is an abiding sense of dread throughout the story where death could come at the slightest inconvenience or miscalculation. I think it is this sense of fragility that draws us into space dramas. We know that we as humans are fragile, and we pay money to sit in a cushy seat and be reminded of it. But it’s not just our weakness that we are reminded of—it’s our humanity and our capacity for good and heroic self-sacrifice. Deep down, each of our hearts longs for a Moral Example, someone who is strong and brave and gives his life for the good and salvation of others.

Of course, the most perplexing thing about Christ Himself is that he gives his life for us while we were still sinners. Unlike the protagonists who claim, “We’re good people,” our faith begins with a very different premise. Christianity 101 starts with “there are none good—no, not one.” We are certainly not deserving of Grace, and yet Grace pursues and rescues us anyway.

“For while we were still helpless, at the right time, Christ died for the ungodly. For rarely will someone die for a just person—though for a good person perhaps someone might even dare to die. But God proves his own love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. 

–Romans 5:6-8

“We are certainly not deserving of Grace, and yet Grace pursues and rescues us anyway.”

None of this happens in the form of an astronaut in a space suit bringing his own atmosphere with him, or an alien so unrecognizable that we must be separated by an airlock or we’ll literally be crushed by an environment our Humanity could never endure. But God in Christ became one of us and entered fully into our Humanity. The Epistle to the Hebrews says that he became like us in every respect. Then, again ironically, through the Otherworldly Man we become the aliens on our own world as we follow the Way of the Kingdom not of this world.

Conclusion: The Greater Grace.

Project Hail Mary is fundamentally a Christian movie with Christian themes (even if unintended by its author). The book slathers on a thick layer of naturalistic evolution but it becomes almost absurd in the context of the Hand that is obviously at work behind the scenes and vindicates a God who oversees, prepares, and provides for the mission to save Humanity. And what we ultimately get is a story about friendship where we see the Ultimate Good of laying down our lives for the sake of others. In the movie, we confront our own cowardice and inadequacies vicariously through Grace and hope we’d make the Death-to-Self decision when those choices come. But above it all stands the theme of the Good News that God shows His own love for us that even while we were still sinners Christ gave His life to rescue us from certain death and to give us a New World with Him...forever. ----------- Support the blog by joining our Patreon team.