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Remakes are all the rage these days, so there wasn’t much to buzz about when we learned that Eli Roth would be remaking Death Wish with Bruce Willis. When the trailer dropped yesterday, however, the internet began singing an entirely different tune. In a country where gun violence and racism remain hot-button topics, the trailer for the flick – in which Willis becomes a hoodie-wearing vigilante who uses his gun to clean up the streets – comes off as pretty tone-deaf. Twitter was quick to jump on this, noting Roth’s inability to read the room in a post-Trayvon Martin era.
In the last 24 hours or so, Death Wish has been called everything from “racist” to “alt-right fan fiction”, and they’re not done yet. Many noted that the original flick had been set in New York City, and relocating it to Chicago in 2017 just felt plain “irresponsible.” The trailer, which also seems to emulate a pro-gun rights stance, has elicited a series of angry, shocked responses from Twitter users.
Political leanings aside, the movie doesn’t look particularly good, which was also taken into account by many users. The idea of a white man heroically taking matters into his own hand and utilizing lethal violence to take out who he thinks deserves to die seems like something that might have flown back in the 70s, when the original flick was released, but it couldn’t feel more ignorant nowadays. The trailer shows his knack for violence being treated with a sense of humor that totally condones it, and that did not sit well with many:
Many folks, however, did not find the trailer maddening, and instead took to trashing the “SJWs” who were ruining a new Bruce Willis movie for them and ridiculing the logic of being unhappy with the flick:
Death Wish hits theaters November 22. Willis, Roth, and the rest of the team have not addressed the backlash, but it’s safe to say that a fair amount of people have a death wish for this flick.
