Let’s get this out of the way first—this quick look at LEGO Icons 11389 Project Hail Mary is staying firmly in spoiler-free territory. Nothing here will ruin the story beyond what you’ve probably already seen in trailers or marketing.
I would highly recommend reading Project Hail Mary and seeing the movie, as I do think there are definitely aspects of this set that become much more enjoyable when you have the right context.
From The Martian to the Hail Mary
So I might not be the resident space fan here at BrickNerd, but I am one of them—and also an avid reader. One of my favorite books is The Martian by Andy Weir. He’s also the author of Project Hail Mary, the book on which the movie—and this set—is based.
Well… actually, I’m not really a reader. I’m more of a listener. I consume almost all my books in audiobook format, and I would absolutely recommend listening to Project Hail Mary rather than reading it. Why listen to a book? Because it allows me to multitask (AKA play with LEGO while still feeling like a productive, smarty-pants adult while listening to a book).
Audiobooks are also great on road trips—say, traveling to a LEGO convention. In fact, we actually listened to The Martian and Project Hail Mary during our Neuschwanstein Castle review trip, which felt oddly appropriate given the mix of grand scale and storytelling.
Display Meets Function
So let’s talk about set 11389 Project Hail Mary, and I’ll skip the story of the hoops I had to jump through to get it after it was accidentally delivered to the wrong address… The set is 830 pieces and retails for $100 USD. It might seem a bit low on the usual piece-to-price ratio at first glance, until you realize it’s not your regular type of set.
Typically, a movie tie-in leans toward either a playset or a display piece without much function. This feels like a bit of an odd (and hopefully more common in the future) combination of a display piece with some really, really cool functionality. This set feels and builds more like a Technic set than an Icons set.
I don’t build that many Technic sets, but I did recently have the chance to build the LEGO Technic 421580 NASA Mars Rover Perseverance and both the theme and the build experience here felt very aligned.
While this is not a Technic set, there is some heavy Technic action going on. Even with an engineering degree, I’m still not entirely sure how some of it works. I won’t get into the how—or more importantly, the why—since that’s something I think you’ll appreciate discovering on your own when you read the book or watch the movie.
But it’s cool. So very cool.
And that really becomes the core of this set. While for the price it might not be as big as some might expect, I think the combination of display presence and functionality makes this an easy buy for me.
Enter Febrovery
The Project Hail Mary LEGO set is now available, and the movie has just opened in theaters. But it’s late February at the time of this writing—which means it’s Febrovery! (We waited to publish this article until the movie was out.)
Febrovery is one of the sci-fi-themed months within the LEGO community. We’ve done deep dives about it before here at BrickNerd, but it’s basically a month devoted to building wheeled space rovers. So I couldn’t let the month slip by without building a rover—and why not build one from this set?
It actually turned out to be much harder than I thought. The first thing I figured out was an easy approach for the wheels, but the rest was a bit tougher. The set leans heavily into Technic elements, which isn’t always conducive to building a rover, and that really limited me to working primarily from the micro Hail Mary ship.
Thankfully, there are several rocket parts that double nicely as wheels. My first iteration actually had a working (and slightly funky) steering system, but in the end, stability and connection points won out, and I had to ditch that minor play feature.
In the end, I landed on a zippy little speeder-rover. Those lovely wedge tiles were just too hard to pass up, and the final result ended up giving me a bit of Interstellar Ranger shuttle energy—another classic space movie.
Final Approach
At the end of the day, LEGO Icons 11389 Project Hail Mary is one of those sets that’s more than the sum of its parts. It may not win on size alone, but the combination of clever engineering, satisfying functionality, and the connection to a larger story makes it stand out in a way most movie tie-ins don’t.
It’s not the biggest set, and it’s not the most traditional—but it is one of the more interesting ones I’ve built in a while. And if that’s a direction LEGO continues to explore, I’m very much on board. But finally, go read the book or watch the movie!
LEGO Icons 11389 Project Hail Mary is available for around $100 US | $130 CA | €110 EU | £100 UK | $180 AU.
DISCLAIMER: This set was provided to BrickNerd by LEGO. Any opinions expressed in this article are those of the author.
Do you prefer your LEGO space sets as display pieces, functional builds, or a mix of both? Let us know in the comments below!
Do you want to help BrickNerd continue publishing articles like this one? Become a top patron like Paige Mueller, Rob Klingberg from Brickstuff, John & Joshua Hanlon from Beyond the Brick, Megan Lum, Andy Price, Lukas Kurth from StoneWars, Wayne Tyler, Dan Church, and Roxanne Baxter to show your support, get early access, exclusive swag and more.
Leave a Reply