The Midnight Sky

The Aether crew is clearly mixed: black commander Adewole, black engineer Maya, Latino Sanchez, plus white leads. That fits modern “diverse space team” casting and is easy to notice. Roles are competent but not sold as a girl-power or race-quota lecture. Near-future NASA-style setting keeps it from feeling like pure forced rewrite.

Characters talk about survival, home, family, and the ruined Earth more than slogans. The disaster is never spelled out as a party speech. Any “humans did this” message is soft and mostly in mood and interviews, not long activist monologues.

Core story is regret, fatherhood, isolation, and hope for a new world. The man-made global disaster can read as a mild climate warning. Race, gender, and sexuality are not the engine of the plot. An interracial couple and a baby stand for hope, not a lesson on identity.

The film suggests people wrecked their own planet and society, which is a soft “we are the problem” idea. It does not push hard modern attacks on whiteness, patriarchy, Christianity, or classic Western family as the main point. Absent-father regret even fits older moral storytelling.

Almost no organized right-leaning “this is woke propaganda” wave. A few thin user comments mix climate politics and “woke” gripes. Main public fight was quality and pacing, not identity agenda.

Clooney’s liberal politics and climate framing, plus Brooks-Dalton’s climate-fiction background, give mild progressive context. Screenwriter and most producers are low on identity activism. Overall signal is moderate liberal prestige, not hard DEI doctrine.