10 Ridiculous Movie Controversies That Went Nowhere

Proof that the Internet will find anything to complain about.

By Jack Pooley /

The beauty and the curse of social media is that it's given everyone on the Internet a voice to have their story heard and... complain about movies like their life depends on it.

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So many major movies these days end up embroiled in apparent online dramas after somebody calls something out and it snowballs per the algorithm-fed nature of platforms like Twitter.

This isn't to discount genuine grievances that groups or individuals might have with films, but it's far more common for supposed controversies to have their moment in the spotlight and then quickly fizzle out.

All the online complaining is soon enough quickly forgotten or just flat-out ignored by those who aren't chronically online, and the movie's box office isn't affect even one little bit.

That's absolutely true of these 10 recent films, which weathered some rather silly controversies which some estimated could dent their general perception by audiences.

But as it turned out, cooler heads prevailed, the potential PR headache quickly evaporated, the movie came out, and the world kept on turning. Again, there are many genuine things to be upset about in Hollywood, but these ones just weren't it...

10. It's Barely Based On A True Story - Cocaine Bear

Any movie that purports to be "based on true events" will naturally be scrutinised to death, though in the case of Cocaine Bear audiences should've probably been wise enough to cut the filmmakers some slack.

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Indeed, it shouldn't surprise many that Elizabeth Banks' new dark comedy is an extremely loose interpretation of true events - a revelation which evidently still shocked and even disappointed some.

While it's true that an American black bear ingested cocaine dropped by drug smugglers in Tennessee in 1985, the rest of the tale is totally fabricated. In reality, the bear overdosed on the estimated 75g of coke it consumed and soon enough died.

There's no evidence to suggest that the bear killed anyone before it perished, and so from the moment the bear gets high onwards, the movie is a result of pure creative license.

And there's nothing wrong with that at all - if Banks had simply stuck to the facts, it wouldn't be much of a film at all, and certainly not one that remotely lived up to the deranged implications of its title.

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