Though it may seem we live in a woke dystopia – and we do – just be aware that it could always be a lot worse. We almost had a woke sequel to the classic 90s disaster movie Twister come out last year. According to one disappointed Helen Hunt – who pitched the unsuccessful idea – we were spared the torture.
In the latest display of gratuitous celebrity self-righteousness, Hollywood actress Helen Hunt told celebrity host Andy Cohen all about her super wonderful and virtuous idea for a woke Twister sequel that didn’t get the green light. Talking to the Watch What Happens Live! host, Hunt expressed her disappointment that the film didn’t get made and lamented that it was denied in such a woke era.
Hunt explained that in June 2020, during the height of the George Floyd-inspired rioting – err, peace and love hootenanying – she pitched a Twister sequel that featured a radically diverse cast. “I tried to get it made,” Hunt stated, adding, “With Daveed [Diggs] and Rafael [Casal] and me writing it, and all Black and brown storm chasers.”
Oh wow, only “Black and brown” storm chasers getting in the way of tornadoes in the midwest?
To the Oscar winner’s dismay however, Universal Pictures wasn’t compelled by the idea. She added, “And they wouldn’t do it. I was going to direct it.” Man, that's a shame. They really could have capitalized on the BLM moment with a schlocky B-movie hampered (ahem, enhanced) by diversity quotas. We guess at a certain point even Hollywood gets tired of retrofitting classic movies with their political agendas.
Though even we were shocked. Hollywood woke-ified Ghostbusters, a good argument can be made that they did the same to Star Wars. They’ve been talking about making a less masculine James Bond, maybe even making him female, and they even cast a black woman as Anne Boleyn in a recent British miniseries about Henry VIII and his mistress.
So yeah, why not make the diverse Twister?
Hunt, who starred in the original Twister in 1996 – which was a box office smash – continued complaining to Cohen about how the studio didn’t like it, and in a time of such racial reckoning. “We could barely get a meeting, and this is in June of 2020 when it was all about diversity,” she said, adding, “It would have been so cool.”
Well sorry, Helen. But when even your lefty industry thinks an idea is too woke, or just flat out stupid, then you’re really off the deep end. There is still a Twister reboot reportedly in the works. Hopefully it’s less woke than Hunt’s idea, probably with your standard trans teenage character or maybe only half the cast being played by people in wheelchairs.
