Project Hail Mary Has Two Jokes That Got Me Giggling As A Gen-Xer
Warning! Warning! Warning! There Are Spoilers Ahead for Project Hail Mary!
There was a clear divide in the theater when I saw Project Hail Mary, the latest blockbuster on the 2026 movie schedule. Some were old enough to have watched 1977’s Close Encounters of the Third Kind and 1978’s Superman on VHS over and over as a kid, and those who weren’t. How do I know that? By how people laughed at a couple of jokes in the Ryan Gosling-led sci-fi flick. That first joke, especially. Here’s why it was obvious.
The Close Encounters Joke
Star Wars may have been the biggest hit in science fiction in 1977 (and of all time), but Close Encounters of the Third Kind, directed by Steven Spielberg, wasn’t all that far behind, finishing, appropriately, third in the year-end box office numbers (Smokey and the Bandit was between the two). It hasn’t been the most enduring of Spielberg’s movies over the years, but that’s what makes the joke in Project Hail Mary so funny–and why the smattering of Gen-Xers around the theater all laughed, while others seemed to have the joke go over their head (and I don’t mean that as an insult).
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The most famous moments in Close Encounters of the Third Kind come when the invading aliens first play a five-note phrase of music (written, of course, by John Williams), and later, when humans figure out that they are trying to communicate with those tones. In Project Hail Mary, Grace (Gosling) attempts to do the same with Rocky, humming those famous notes for him as they learn to communicate with each other through the glass. It’s a fleeting joke, but one that really resonates with anyone who loves Close Encounters.
The Superman Joke
Later in the movie, which fans have been loving, Grace and Rocky build a habitat using panes of glass. As they are building it, Grace picks up a pane and smushes his face against it, and says that he feels like he’s in “the Phantom Zone.” Now, this is a joke that you don’t need to be steeped in Gen X culture to get. 1978’s Superman (and its sequel) is still wildly popular among people of all ages, and while James Gunn and David Corenswet re-invented Big Blue in their excellent version last summer, for many, Christopher Reeve will always be the GOAT.
The joke, of course, refers to the opening scene of Superman when General Zod, Ursa, and Non are condemned to the Phantom Zone. The criminals are confined in a floating glass prison that traverses the universe, with their screaming faces smushed against the glass, until they are freed by a nuclear explosion near Earth at the beginning of Superman II. Grace doesn’t have to dig as deep into late-’70s culture for this one, but it resonates the same way.
Drew Goddard, who wrote the script for the book-to-screen adaptation, was born in 1975, as were directors Phil Lord and Christopher Miller. Andy Weir, who wrote the book Project Hail Mary, was born in ‘72. All from Generation X. It’s easy to see how these two jokes made it into the movie, and why Gen-Xers like me were delighted to see them.
