It’s no secret that the Academy Awards are biased towards films that push a certain agenda or message. So-called “Oscar bait” films are usually boring, serious, artsy-fartsy affairs with little room for humor or entertainment (that’s not to say every Best Picture winner fits that bill, however). In recent years the golden idol awards had been shining a blinding light on wokeness in the form of overt political and social justice themes and messaging.
GWU! was initially under the assumption that wokeness in movies was a recent trend, but it turns out that couldn’t be further from the truth! (We even asked Doreen who agreed!-ed) GWU! found out just how wrong about woke we were in a secret reel of deleted scenes leaked to us. These choice cuts of hammy woke are cut from notable Best Picture winning movies – that’s right, they were too woke for even Hollywood! Perhaps in a couple years these films will be “updated for modern audiences” with these scenes spliced back in! Until you’re able to feast your eyes on that however, GWU! is serving up the following film feast for you to whet your woke appetite. :
Million Dollar Baby’s Inspirational Alternate Ending
The theatrical cut of Clint Eastwood’s depressing film about an aspiring female boxer ends on a sour note, with our plucky heroine paralyzed from the neck down and asking for her manager turned father figure to give her some world famous Canadian healthcare (Euthenasia-ed). This dark ending came about in reshoots, as the original ending didn’t sit well with ableists, misogynists and religious rights activists in the test audience who saw it.
In the director’s cut ending, our strong female protagonist overcomes her career ending disability through sheer force of will, a positive mental attitude, and a shit load of stem cells. Though still confined to a wheelchair, our stunning and brave disabled heroine gets back in the ring and becomes a Paralympic boxing champion.
Spotlight Casts A Positive Light On “Minor Attracted Persons”
For those that haven’t seen it, 2015’s Spotlight is a film about the investigative journalist team that uncovered widespread child abuse by Catholic Priests in Boston. The film as it stands pulls no punches in its condemnation of the abusers, but some scenes left on the cutting room floor tried to introduce various ill-advised and dubious nuances to the subject of child molestation. Yikes!
In a cut subplot, Mark Ruffalo (himself no stranger to championing pedophiles-ed) investigates a commune of Minor Attracted Persons (MAPs), believing them to be connected to the child abuse cases plagueing the area, only to discover they are innocent and “non-offending” admirers of children. Over the course of his interaction with the MAPs, Ruffalo’s character grows to accept and even embrace the group as a quirky and harmless offshoot of the LGBTQ+ community.
Some members of the Academy fought tooth and nail to keep these scenes in the film, but in the end it was decided the world wasn’t quite ready to accept pedophiles as allies, yet. A few years later they were vindicated when Epstein’s crimes came to light. By the way, don’t hold your breath on a film about him getting made, let alone getting nominated for Best Picture.
Driving Miss Daisy Makes Reparations For Her White Privilege
This film notoriously takes a somewhat softer approach to race relations, giving what some – especially modern “progressives” – would consider an idealized or even saccharine story about a budding friendship between an old white Jewish lady and her black driver against the backdrop of the Civil Rights Movement of the 1940s and 50s. Through her friendship with Morgan Freeman’s character Hoke and her own experiences with prejudice, Miss Daisy as played by Jessica Tandy becomes a better, more tolerant person before sadly succumbing to dementia.
This wasn’t always the case, however. Another alternate cut of the film exists where Hoke takes center stage as the focal protagonist, wherein he single handedly ends racism and successfully squeezes reparations out of ailing Miss Daisy, curing her of her bigotry by making her take the knee and learn to rap. In the end, a cataract-riddled, dementia-addled Miss Daisy ends up driving Hoke around as atonement for her white privilege.
One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest’s Crazy Cut Scene
An absolute classic, One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest is a psychological comedy drama set in a mental asylum. (Sounds like the GWU! Bullpen! -ed) The film deftly tackles its themes of mental illness and authoritarianism, with stand out performances by Jack Nicholson and Louise Fletcher. A lot of the comedy stems from Nicholson’s rebellious Randle McMurphy and his interactions with the asylum’s patients, with Fletcher’s tyrannical Nurse Ratched and her authoritative approach to running the asylum and its patients providing much of the drama.
Obviously none of this would fly today.
A scene that would resonate well with modern audiences actually almost made it into the film. In the deleted scene GWU! watched, Nurse Ratched patiently explains to McMurphy why she runs the asylum with an iron fist. It’s for their health and safety, you see. The higher ups at the asylum and mental health experts advised her to keep the patients in a constant state of terror and subjugation for their own good. Ratched repeats daily mantras to McMurphy and all the inmates such as ‘We’re all in this together’ and ‘You’d have to be crazy to not get vaccinated!’
The scene ends with a girl-boss moment as Nurse Ratched personally leads McMurphy by the ear down to the electric shock therapy room to cure him of his toxic masculinity.
Braveheart Stops To Clarify What He Means By “Freedumb”
In a shockingly suspicious display of precognition, an executive producer pushed for the 1995 film to include a scene where Sir William Wallace stops on the cusp of battle to lecture his troops on the true meaning of freedom, decrying those who would pursue freedom at the cost of others’ safety. After this exhaustively lengthy clarification, Wallace leads his troops into certain death.
Unhappy with the executive producers so-called right wing adjacent politics, the film’s left wing director quashed any and all attempts for the controversial scene to be included. Though the scene was scripted and even storyboarded, it was never filmed despite star Mel Gibson’s support for it.
Another scene that was scripted but never filmed due to a level headed call by Gibson involved Sir William Wallace fighting alongside trans rapists for their freedom to go to prisons based on their chosen gender. Decades later, Woke Warlord Nicola Sturgeon made that scene into a reality, killing any chance of Scotland ever deserving independence.
