Project Hail Mary and Artemis II’s launch reflect a long parallel between NASA and Hollywood

Longtime friends and near-equally longtime collaborators Phil Lord and Chris Miller brought the same ethos to Project Hail Mary that has shaped so many of their other films, from 21 Jump Street and The Lego Movie to the more recent Spider-Verse series. 

“We often say we want this movie to help people imagine goodness,” Lord said in a recent interview with CBC’s Q about their film adaptation of Andy Weir’s sci-fi novel.

“Because it’s not hard to imagine all of the crummy things in the world, you know? And sometimes we need a reminder.”

For a film about a lone astronaut sent into deep space to solve a mystery and save the planet, that theme of goodness and hope was not hard to find. It also reflects a long tradition of films about space — movies also released alongside real-life space-exploration efforts or periods of heightened public fascination with the subject.

Those films have often succeeded for their unique ability to infuse people with a sense of optimism about a hopeful future, especially when that optimism did not come easily. 

“That was the experience making the film also, which is a bunch of people coming together to do a difficult task,” Miller said of the experience of making Project Hail Mary.

“Which was also a subplot of this movie, with people on Earth, from all over the world, having to work together to do a seemingly impossible task. And I think that’s what we kept feeling.”

That strategy appears to have worked. After a strong box-office debut last month, the film has gone on to do what felt impossible for a film not based on a sprawling franchise or decades-old source material with hundreds of millions of built-in fans. 

It has operated as a true “four-quadrant” movie — one that satisfies all major demographics, unites them in a shared feeling of excitement, camaraderie and joy — and makes them actually want to go to the movies. 

“It’s not all doom and gloom, which I think is a very big plus at the moment with everything else going on in the world,” film critic Rachel Ho said.

“This was something that audiences needed — clearly wanted and needed, because they have been coming out in droves.”

Optimism and space exploration

It is also far from the first thing to evoke that sense of hope. Only weeks after Project Hail Mary took off in theatres, the real-life Artemis II mission to the moon launched from Cape Canaveral.

Robert Thirsk, a former Canadian astronaut who holds the national record for most days spent in space, was there for the launch — part of a group of roughly 200 invited guests celebrating an early step in the first crewed return to the moon in more than 50 years. 

He described the gathering as inherently optimistic and positive: a triumphant endeavour that brought people together by showing what humankind can do when it takes on difficult things together.

But as a committed fan of Andy Weir, Thirsk said he was also thinking about something else. 

“My first love as an astronaut is of course space flight. But my second love is going to all these space movies,” he said. 

He, like many there and at home, could not help comparing the excitement surrounding the real-life launch with the feeling they’d felt watching Project Hail Mary. Having already read the novel and seen the film the week before, the connection was easy to make. 

But the parallels run deeper than spacecraft alone. Other blockbuster space-exploration films have also seemed to align with NASA milestones. First Man, released in 2018, came out just months before the 50th anniversary of the moon landing it depicts.

Weir’s earlier film adaptation, The Martian, was released shortly after NASA announced findings about liquid water on Mars. Another Weir adaptation, Artemis, came out before NASA announced its current Artemis project, though the two are unrelated. And Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey depicted astronauts walking on the moon roughly a year before it really happened. 

That is not always accidental. NASA often works with Hollywood and filmmakers more broadly to help frame the agency’s goals and public image. While it works mostly with documentarians — advising on about 100 projects a year, on average — Hollywood has become an increasingly important part of that outreach.

In the year First Man was being made, for example, the agency collaborated on 143 documentaries, 25 films and 41 TV shows.

Usually, productions approach NASA for help on their own. But the agency also reaches out when it learns of projects involving space. Not every film involving space gets that level of support: Christopher Nolan’s Interstellar and Alfonso Cuarón’s Gravity, for example, largely went without NASA’s help during production.

Not entirely unlike the U.S. military — which allows Hollywood productions to use Pentagon equipment only if scripts meet its approval — NASA offers support based on its view of the filmmaker and whether the fictional depiction of science and exploration — and NASA itself — broadly aligns with its own self-perception. 

According to NASA multimedia liaison Bert Ulrich, the alien disaster film Life was denied use of the agency’s logo, as they didn’t want it used for a horror. They backed away from initial involvement with found-footage mockumentary Apollo 18 over concerns it could confuse the public. And for Cuarón’s Gravity, the agency withdrew its support after seeing that the film depicted a major catastrophe in space, which ran counter to NASA policy, according to Cuarón.

“If we actually have our brand on something, it means that we’re really involved,” Ulrich said in a NASA podcast from 2018.

“Something like The Martian or Hidden Figures and First Man, of course, we were very much involved with. We did allow our logos to be used.”

Project Hail Mary and NASA

That involvement extended to Project Hail Mary as well.

“Space exploration captures the public’s imagination, and collaboration between science and storytelling brings that sense of discovery to a wider audience,” a NASA communications officer said at a recent panel celebrating the aid NASA offered Project Hail Mary.

“Inspiring the next generation, whether through rocket launches or sci-fi movies, helps build the talent and support that underpin American leadership in space.”

NASA’s use of public enthusiasm to advance parallel projects is not new either. When The Martian was released in 2015, the agency banked on the increased attention — and affection for — interplanetary travel to champion its own efforts to reach Mars.

That long arc has now culminated in the Artemis program, which aims to return humans to the moon and eventually support missions to Mars as early as the 2030s.

WATCH | Former astronaut Robert Thirsk on the benefits — and risks — of space travel:

Benefits of space travel far outweigh the risks, former Canadian astronaut says

Robert Thirsk, who holds the Canadian record for most time spent in space at nearly 205 days, says there will always be risks in space travel, but the personal, professional and scientific benefits of serving as an astronaut and representing Canada on an international mission will always outweigh those risks.

But according to Thirsk, what these films really do is deepen people’s sense of wonder about space exploration — the same feeling that launches like Artemis II can also help spread.

And when it comes to that kind of inspiration, he said he is a prime example.  

“All these movies, they played a major role in inspiring me to pursue my educational path and my career path,” he said. He then spoke about the parallel inspiration that Artemis could spread. 

“I hope that the Artemis program … encourage[s] Canadians and our country to take on audacious challenges. We need things that take us out of our routine, and inspire us to do things that are bigger than ourselves.”