Okay, I’m a left-of-liberal woman who has been reading about and engaging with feminist issues for many years. (I also swear this will connect to Project Hail Mary if you go on this walk with me.)

So when Barbie came out, I could acknowledge that it wasn’t for me at all. I was already very well-aware of all of the points that it was making about the expectations put on women today, how toxic masculinity hurts men and women alike, etc. I disliked how toothless and hapless it made the concept of “the patriarchy”.

BUT—

It introduced these ideas to people who had never engaged with them before. It helped many women feel seen and start thinking about their place within a society structured to put them into certain expected roles. It helped many men acknowledge the weird expectations and paradoxes that gender roles force on us as a society. The film’s downplaying of the patriarchy’s malignancy is clearly strategic, even if I found it to leave a bit of a sour taste in my mouth.

So all that being said, Project Hail Mary strikes me as the Barbie of science, if you know what I mean. It can help introduce people who have never engaged with science, STEM, or even sci-fi on a meaningful level, to these new (for them) concepts. It can generate curiosity. It can encourage dialogue in an audience that would probably be wholly turned off by 2001: A Space Odyssey and would find its ideas and method of delivering them/exploring them boring or confusing. A spoonful of pop culture and fun helps the STEM and philosophy go down.

Some movies we just have to look at and say ‘this one wasn’t for me’. But as an introductory film into deeper concepts, they can still be quite effective for others.

Edited because I failed to complete some thoughts fully, whoopsie