5. "Yellowface" Make-Up Effects - Cloud Atlas
Tom Tywker and the Wachowskis crafted an unbelievably ambitious adaptation of David Mitchell's novel Cloud Atlas, brimming with stunning visual effects, a complex narrative, and also some of the best make-up effects that cinema has ever seen. However, much attention was raised over the so-called "yellow-face" make-up effects, used to turn a number of the film's Caucasian cast members (such as Jim Sturgess, pictured almost unrecognisably above) into Asian people. Soon enough advocacy groups began to pipe up, criticising the film for its "poorly done" Asian make-up, while implying racism on the part of the filmmakers, who they assert should have given the acting opportunities to Asian actors instead. Of course, none of the people complaining about the make-up had evidently seen the film, given that the narrative is clearly about past lives, a notion you completely throw down the toilet if you have actors being played by different people just to be politically correct. Nevertheless, it kicked up a sufficient fuss even it was, in fact, completely idiotic and unfounded.