NYT: Hollywood’s Message to Red States: Our Movies Are for You

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There have been cri de coeur documentaries, most notably “An Inconvenient Truth.” Superheroes have been concerned, with Batman bemoaning mankind’s treatment of the planet in “Justice League.” Nary an award show goes by without a star or several begging viewers to take environment-saving action.

So it was startling when the weather-focused “Twisters” arrived from Universal Pictures this month with no mention of climate change at all. If ever there was a perfect vehicle to carry Hollywood’s progressive climate change messaging — a big-budget movie about people caught in worsening storm patterns — wasn’t this it?

Apparently not. Movies should not be about “preaching a message,” Lee Isaac Chung, who directed “Twisters,” said in a prerelease interview that served as a dog whistle to conservative ticket buyers.

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Trend spotting in cinema is a hazardous pursuit. Sometimes a movie is just a movie. “Twisters,” however, is emblematic of a clear shift in Hollywood: After a period of openly using movies to display progressive values, sometimes with success at the box office (“Barbie”) and often not (“Strange World,” “The Marvels,” “The Color Purple,” “Dark Waters”), studios seem to be heeding a message that many ticket buyers — especially in the center of the country — have been sending for a long time: We just want to be entertained, no homework attached.

Put bluntly, it amounts to an attempt by Hollywood to bend to red state audiences.

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A lot of people in Hollywood only seem able to discuss the middle of the country while holding their nose. But entertainment is a reactive business: chase what worked over the weekend, drop what didn’t. And some moviegoers and theater owners in the vast center of the country have recoiled from films they see as too progressive.

“WARNING,” read a sign taped to the glass door of an Oklahoma movie theater in 2022. “The management of this theater discovered after booking ‘Lightyear’ that there is a same-sex kissing scene within the first 30 minutes of the Pixar movie. We will do all we can to fast-forward through that scene, but it might not be exact.”

There was a line outside that same theater over the weekend to see “Twisters,” which played on two of its three screens.

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