This article contains spoilers for the film “Project Hail Mary.”
Project Hail Mary is an incredibly political movie. The knee jerk reaction to wanting to overlook politics in our lives is the equivalent of an ostrich sticking their head in the sand in response to danger.
During the podcast The Critical Drinker, the author of Project Hail Mary, Andy Weir, went on record to say that “I never put any politics or messaging in any of my stories at all. There’s no deeper meaning. There isn’t even any symbolism, even non-political.”
Now this statement has been twisted to mean that Weir credited “avoiding identity politics” as a factor for the movie’s success. While his agreement with Will Jordon’s statement does imply that he would agree with that statement, he did not verbatim claim it.
However, Project Hail Mary is an incredibly political film. Contrary to what Weir claims, the movie is filled with political messaging.
To begin, the main challenge the characters face is an unnatural climate disaster that threatens to end a significant portion of life on earth and bring about untold amounts of human suffering. This alone is nearly one for one with the current climate crisis we face.
Is a climate crisis political? Yes, because our climate crisis demonstrates that corporations and national governments will go to great lengths to deny and delay action on stabilizing a climate if it guarantees profit and votes.
Despite a wide swath of analytical and visible evidence, politicians and corporations have continued to deny climate change. The U.S. government, one of the most powerful governments in the world, is rife with climate change deniers.
To acknowledge that there is a climate-related emergency in the first place is incredibly political. The political claim made by Project Hail Mary in this regard is that governments worldwide should primarily listen to the claims of scientists as opposed to the monetary and electoral desires of corporations and political parties.
How the movie dealt with the climate disaster is also incredibly political. Through the collaboration of multiple nations united in investments that serve to progress and ensure the survival of humanity as opposed to investing in weaponry for war is also incredibly political.
As some of you may know, the multilateral and cooperative era of international politics is over. We live in an era of might-makes-right, where if a “great power” decides it wants to invade you, it most likely will.
The fact that Project Hail Mary presents the nations of the world as working together for the benefit of humanity is another example of the blatant politics of the movie. Movements like Make America Great Again (MAGA) or the various nationalist movements across the globe would make a scenario where nations work together as one global community without trying to grab more than other nations impossible.
The diversity in the film is also incredibly political. In an American context, the presence of women and people of colour in labs and in decision- making rooms has become a rallying cry for the anti-Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) crowd.
In the United States, women and people of colour have been systematically targeted on the false assumption that they are unqualified for their roles because of past DEI initiatives.
NASA, for example, has been forced to scrub its websites to comply with the president’s DEI orders.
Not only is it incredibly political to have a diverse set of people in the decision-making process and in scientific research, but it’s also even more political to be able to see them and not have a state mandated censorship program hampering the existence of people.
Finally, Rocky and Ryland Grace’s dynamic is also political. The fact that Project Hail Mary decided to show a dynamic where two different looking rational beings treated each other with respect is incredibly political. This goes beyond human-to-human relationships and includes human-to-animal and human-to-environment relationships.
During the entire film, not once did Grace try to use Rocky as a means to an end. Grace always treated Rocky as an end in himself even when he didn’t fully understand him.
Rocky lacked the same perspective and capacity for knowledge as Grace, but Grace didn’t assume a position of unique superiority — yet in real life we are surrounded by creatures who are similar to Rocky.
Crows, elephants and dolphins all have different perspectives and capacity for knowledge in relation to humans, but for the most part we treat them and their environments as tools.
Project Hail Mary was incredibly political in portraying Grace viewing Rocky as a rational being and having Grace treat the survival of Rocky and his home of Erid as a matter worth risking his life and sense of familiarity over.
The desire to not see politics is analogous to a desire to run away and, like an ostrich, hide our heads in the sand.
Everything in life is political, however. There’s no avoiding it, and maybe the desire to avoid it is because we feel as if we can no longer influence it in our democratic societies. Well, that simply isn’t true.
Despite Weir’s claim, Project Hail Mary isn’t just cheap entertainment. It is a deeply political movie.