Spoilers ahead for “Project Hail Mary.”
The voyage of protagonist Dr. Ryland Grace (Ryan Gosling) in Phil Lord and Christopher Miller’s 2026 film “Project Hail Mary” is a hopeful tale that portrays contemporary humanity as redeemable — if not likeable. However, upon closer inspection, the film reflects a beautiful and horrific internal conflict that, when analyzed with Lacanian psychoanalytic theory, suggests Dr. Grace’s voyage may not have actually occurred.
Jacques Lacan was a French psychoanalyst from the Freudian school of thought who — in his vast and obscure writings — developed three orders: the Imaginary, the Symbolic, and the Real. The three orders intertwine to manufacture our human subjectivity. The Imaginary functions as the order of images or particularly, in the language of Lacan, “imago” — an idealized external image that one identifies with. The Symbolic manifests itself within our laws and language, fundamentally representing the order of society. The Real acts as a trauma that one cannot quite grasp.
The three orders notably present themselves during and after the mirror stage, which occurs in infancy roughly between six and eighteen months of age, according to Lacan, and manufactures the ego of the infant. In essence, an infant — whose functional operation depends on another and therefore has a real sense of confusion — witnesses itself in a mirror as a holistic being. Through witnessing a holistic imago of itself (or an Other), the infant identifies with that idealized external image. However, that idealized identification manifests an illusion that ignores the true internal fragmentation of the subject, thus embarking a life of misrecognition.
Dr. Grace has a fantastical sense of self. He has been outcasted from the scientific network due to his radical ideas about life, namely that water is not a requirement for life. However, he systematically fails to accept his own rejection from the scientific network and claims that his ideas are not unreasonable — clinging to the objective truth that his ideas haven’t been proven wrong — and therefore he maintains his sense of self in fantasy. However, with the appearance of Eva Stratt (Sandra Hüller) and subsequent discovery of an alien life form, astrophage, Dr. Grace is presented with undisputed authority of his being wrong; that event evaporates Dr. Grace’s fantasy of self. A “fertile moment of delusion” — a Lacanian term for sudden bursts of delusion in response to an emotional crisis — occurs, hurling Dr. Grace into a hallucination.
Dr. Grace struggles with feelings of insignificance. Throughout the film one notices his ubiquitous references to his own cowardice. For instance, he tells an astronaut in one of his analepses that he “does not have the brave gene.” However, at the end of the film, Dr. Grace “returns” to being a teacher as a hero and genius. The voyage with Rocky (James Ortiz) seemingly cures his sense of insignificance that was propelled from the undeniable realization of his own lack.
The inception of the film portrays Dr. Grace as an infant with no sense of self. Dr. Grace stumbles about the ship replicating the tantrum of a confused infant that, when considered chronologically, reflects his evaporation of self. Dr. Grace then explores his ship and unravels the mystery of what he was — i.e., human. The realization of who he was manifests itself slower through his analepses.
The first of Dr. Grace’s analepses present him as a fun teacher. Even here, though, a clue to hallucination presents itself. Dr. Grace distracts his students from the fear of the prospect of doom with nothing but a delusion — a rather innocent one, but a delusion nonetheless: “the bean bag is lava,” a game in which students must answer questions rapidly as if the bean bag they are holding is lava. Perhaps the analepses are augmented glimpses into reality, functioning as a reconciliation between reality and his delusion. The teaching analepsis portrays a clue to his delusion and future analepses portray his internal insignificance and cowardice.
An integral aspect of identification, however, still evades us. Dr. Grace, in his first interactions with Rocky, mimics the mirror stage and an idealized Other. Dr. Grace first interacts with Rocky through a glass mirror-like structure. In an early interaction, Rocky presents Dr. Grace with a small figurine in human form, to which Dr. Grace asks, “Is that me?” Dr. Grace proceeds to dance in front of the “mirror” replicating precisely what Lacan illustrates in “Écrits”: “...in eventually acquired control over the uselessness of the the image, immediately gives rise in a child to a series of gestures in which he playfully experiences the relationship between the movements made in the image and the reflected environment.” In colloquial language, the child, like Dr. Grace, dances in front of the mirror in joy at its holistic image. Through that process Dr. Grace identifies with the external idealized image of the figurine Rocky made of Dr. Grace and Rocky that does not reflect his fragmented sense of physical and psychological self.
Dr. Grace and Rocky then manufacture their own process of language — in essence constructing a new Symbolic between the two. Through the medium of language, Dr. Grace bonds with Rocky and further identifies with Rocky’s relationship to his partner and his apparent bravery. Throughout the voyage Dr. Grace slowly transforms in a way that perfectly reacts to his feelings of insignificance.
At the conclusion of the film, Dr. Grace “returns” to being a teacher but on Erid in his imagination. However, in our interpretation, Dr. Grace simply resumes his life as a teacher on Earth, but instead of reconciling himself with the Symbolic he remains trapped in the hallucination, in the Imaginary with the idealized image of Rocky.
Although the question of whether Dr. Grace’s voyage was real or not is interpretive, “Project Hail Mary” meticulously replicates Lacan’s mirror stage and the development of one’s ego.
