As you may have heard by now, Universal scrapped all plans to release their highly controversial film ‘The Hunt’ after President Trump tweeted about the divisive narrative of the movie.
The plot is about a group of wealthy thrill-seeking liberals who hunt a dozen MAGA-like deplorables for sport – based on the famous 1924 short story “The Most Dangerous Game” by Richard Connell.
And the director of the controversial movie had this silly thing to say about it.
“The Hunt” was full steam ahead aimed for a late September release, which is the perfect time to release thrillers and horror films.
When the trailer was released, it didn’t seem like it would be highly controversial at all, but that was before Kim Masters and Tatiana Siegel of The Hollywood Reporter saw a screening and reported on it.
The two writers wrote, “The violent, R-rated film from producer Jason Blum’s Blumhouse follows a dozen MAGA types who wake up in a clearing and realize they are being stalked for sport by elite liberals. It features guns blazing along with other ultra-violent killings as the elites pick off their prey.”
According to the Hollywood trade publication, characters in the film refer to the victims as “deplorables,” which is what Hillary Clinton famously dubbed Trump supporters during the 2016 election. The report noted that a character asks, “Did anyone see what our ratf–ker-in-chief just did?”
A character responds, “At least The Hunt’s coming up. Nothing better than going out to the Manor and slaughtering a dozen deplorables.”
But the filmmakers tried to spin it into a social satire, kind of like what they did with Jordan Peele’s “Get Out.”
Also, following the tragic mass shootings in El Paso, Texas, Dayton, Ohio, and Gilroy, California, it was a little tone-deaf to promote such violent content that could’ve had the potential to divide this country even further.
Still, that wasn’t enough. Now, the director of the film, Craig Zobel, is hoping the film will see the light of day eventually and firmly believed he wasn’t aware it would have this kind of backlash.
Zobel told Variety, “If I believed this film could incite violence, I wouldn’t have made it. Our ambition was to poke at both sides of the aisle equally. We seek to entertain and unify, not enrage and divide. It is up to the viewers to decide what their takeaway will be.”
Who wants to take a guess whether the depiction of these “deplorables” was written in a positive light?
Yes, it’s obvious even in the trailer that the protagonist, played by Betty Gilpin, was likely going to win the day because these liberals didn’t foresee they kidnapped the wrong capable person. She’s a warrior, trained in all sorts of combat and will likely win in the end.
But at what cost?
Zobel concluded, “I wanted to make a fun, action thriller that satirized this moment in our culture — where we jump to assume we know someone’s beliefs because of which ‘team’ we think they’re on… and then start shouting at them. This rush to judgment is one of the most relevant problems of our time.”
Sure, that may be the case but they shouldn’t have been tone-deaf in how it looks, right? Why would any “deplorable” want to go see a movie about liberals killing a representation of themselves on the screen because of their ideology? How insulting and tone-deaf is that?