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2026 has already been a great year for sci-fi movies, even if there are several major sci-fi franchises that need some serious TLC at the moment. Star Trek is in flux, Star Wars‘ box office drawing power is under serious scrutiny, and Doctor Who is a far-too public mess, but Hollywood can still drop truly excellent sci-fi movies. In the first half of this year alone, we’ve had the franchise-starting War Machine on Netflix, Steven Spielberg’s return to the genre with Disclosure Day, and Gore Verbinski’s provocative Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die – all of which could claim to be the best of the year’s sci-fi in any other year. But 2026 belongs to one masterpiece sci-fi that just got a lot easier to watch.
A little over 3 months after it debuted in cinemas – and set a course for an impressive $680 million box office haul – Phil Lord and Christopher Miller’s crowd-pleasing Project Hail Mary has now landed on Amazon’s Prime Video, and unsurprisingly, it’s already a huge streaming hit. After initially coming to MGM+ as part of a first-look streaming deal, the beautiful, creative sci-fi is now on Prime, and according to FlixPatrol it’s the biggest movie on the platform. And it’s hard to argue that it’s an unfair ranking, even with strong competition from fellow 2026 gem The Sheep Detectives.
Stop What You’re Doing and Watch Project Hail Mary
I can’t praise Project Hail Mary enough, and will do so loudly given even half a chance. If it’s not a lot of people’s choice for the best movie of 2026 when December finally ends, I will be very shocked, even with heavyweights like Dune 3, Spider-Man: Brand New Day, and Avengers: Doomsday to come. Any of that trio – or several other contenders – might make a late claim, but none of them will be a platonic love story between a man and a rock monster set against a hard sci-fi backdrop that even the hardest genre shows might have tried to soften. The fact that everyone fell in love with the movie even as we were given such a hardcore lesson in solar parasites is quite remarkable: Star Wars‘ Prequel Trilogy tried to get some trade lore in there, and decades later, it’s still a meme. But Project Hail Mary feels completely accessible and strangely relatable, despite the high concept.
The reason – somewhat perversely, since the best character is a faceless rock alien who speaks in clipped translated English – is that Project Hail Mary is the best human propaganda movie since Andy Weir’s The Martian was adapted by Ridley Scott. Both take ordinary men, with extraordinary intellects, but not the kind of Bond villain aloofness we see from so many prominent tech leaders these days, and put them into unthinkable, desperate situations. And somehow, both are filled with hope, humor, and heart. Part of that comes down to Ryan Gosling’s exceptional “fish-out-of-water” reluctant hero, who is an excellent audience stand-in, even with an IQ higher than several of us added together.
Rocky is one of the best characters in modern cinema and made me cry hopelessly at several points. And again, he doesn’t even have a face. How he manages that isn’t so much a trick of deception as it is the genius of warmth and camaraderie. It’s about the need to find purpose and the value of companionship, and as families come together for the holiday, it’s just the most perfect movie to bask in the glow of what it means to be human. So stop thinking about watching it and watch it.
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