Movies: Without A Hot-Buttered Tub Of Woke, Please

A steady diet of politics, current events and pop culture can be exhausting.

From time to time everyone needs to unplug and hit “refresh.”

In an attempt to do that, I went to the movies last week. Something many of us rarely do anymore. In fact, so far this year nationwide ticket sales are down 24% over last year. Covid lockdowns killed the movie industry and many folks never went back.

Still, I  paid nine bucks to sit in a not-full theater for 122 minutes of desperately needed escapism.

I saw “Twisters,” the 2024 remake of the classic 1996 thriller “Twister,” about two storm chasers who find love amidst EF5 furies.

There was only one thing that could ruin this action movie for me: A tedious lecture about “climate change.”

If that happens, I promised myself, I’m going to toss my popcorn in the air and walk out.

To my delight this fast-paced movie contained no lectures and no left-wing screeds, just stunning special effects, a plot, a love story, buildings reduced to splinters, airborne pick-up trucks and the occasional unlucky person being sucked up into a vortex of swirling debris.

More than two hours after I entered the theater, I left feeling exhilarated.

I hadn’t thought about politics, terrorism or illegal immigration in two hours.

I told everyone I knew to see the film. No politics! I told them. Just heart-stopping action.

Then, I happened across an idiotic take on the movie in The New York Times. In a piece headlined “‘Twisters’ Was a Spectacle That Missed a Huge Opportunity” opinion writer Margaret Renal, actually griped about the LACK of sermonizing in the film. Apparently this dour activist believes that an in-your-face dose of wokeism is what moviegoers seek when they splurge on tickets.

“…in more than two hours of extreme-weather depiction, the makers of “Twisters” opted to exclude even the tiniest nod to the chief driver of extreme weather. And they are sticking by that decision amid one of the most active tornado seasons in history. In an interview with CNN’s Thomas Page, the movie’s director, Lee Isaac Chung, said, “I just don’t feel like films are meant to be message-oriented.”

Thank you, Mr. Chung. You get it.

Ms. Renal, you’re all wet.

Audiences go to the movies to be entertained. Period. Not to be scolded, preached at, lectured or brainwashed.

Give us pure, unadulterated entertainment and we may actually start buying movie tickets again.