Award-winning The Handmaid's Tale author', Margaret Atwood, says 9/11 terrorists 'got the idea' from Star Wars
Margaret Atwood is as celebrated an author as they come. The Canadian poet, novelist, and literary critic has published seventeen books of poetry, sixteen novels, and numerous other works that have seen her win a large number of accolades, including the Man Booker Prize for 'The Blind Assassin' in 2000.
However, a recent interview with Variety gives the impression that the 78-year-old believes that the 9/11 Twin Tower attacks that claimed over 2,000 lives was inspired by a sequence from the enormously popular Star Wars trilogy.
As one of the five honorees of Variety's Power of Women luncheon to be held on April 13, the author gave a wide-ranging interview to the magazine's Ramin Setoodeh about her career and thoughts on the current socio-political climate of the world but seemed to go off the mark with an odd-quip about the 9/11 attacks.
She was quoted saying: "Just to give you a very creepy feeling, there was an opera of 'The Handmaid’s Tale' that premiered in Denmark in 2000. It started with a film reel going across the top of the stage and showing various things blowing up."
"And one of the things that blew up was the Twin Towers. But it hadn’t blown up yet. They did the opera again, and they had to take it out because it was no longer in the future. Does that give you a creepy feeling?" she probed.
When Setoodeh replied in the affirmative, she said that they had not gotten the idea from her opera but 'Star Wars'. She referenced the scene where Luke Skywalker and the Rebels attack and blow up the death to justify her bizarre argument.
She said: "Remember the first one? Two guys fly a plane in the middle of something and blow that up? The only difference is, in Star Wars, they get away. Right after 9/11, they hired a bunch of Hollywood screenwriters to tell them how the story might go next. Sci-fi writers are very good at this stuff, anticipating future events. They don’t all come true, but there are interesting ‘what if’ scenarios."
Homeland Security did indeed consult a team of science-fiction writers to help them predict the different ways in which terrorists could harm America, but nonetheless, her comments left a legion of Star Wars fans with a sour taste in their mouths and shaking their heads in disbelief.