10 Times They Were Worried What Movies Would Do To You
Will somebody PLEASE think of the children!
The movie business has long been one surrounded by controversy, with many a picture causing uproar and unrest amongst certain sections upon its release.
Of course, there are some films that warrant such uproar due to pushing the envelope a little too far or just outright being done in tone-deaf bad taste. Then there are those on the other side of the fence; the movies that had people, organisations or even entire countries going into full scaremonger mode over, well, not much at all, really.
It's on those such offerings that the focus is on here, with the spotlight shining on those films which had 'them' - be that parents, censorship boards, billionaire corporations, or even religious institutions - fearing the impact said feature would have on the innocent masses and broader society. At times, some of these concerns may be justifiable, but there are several other instances featured here that such fears are outright laughable in just how bizarre and unfounded they were.
Here, then, are ten such examples of times when there was genuine concern over what a movie would do to a person.
10. Would-Be Criminals Would Learn From T2's Escape Sequence
The British Board of Film Classification has infamously been a tough nut to crack for certain filmmakers and movies over the decades. Back in 1991, it was director James Cameron who found himself butting heads with the organisation over a particular early sequence in Terminator 2: Judgment Day.
When T2 opens, audiences find Linda Hamilton's Sarah Connor holed up in Pescadero State Hospital following the events of the prior movie. As far as the government was concerned, Connor is a dangerous lunatic who spouted nonsensical claims about Judgment Day and Skynet.
After Arnold Schwarzenegger's T-800 travels back in time to help protect Sarah's son John (Ed Furlong), the duo immediately set about breaking Hamilton's character out of her enforced institutional confines. The thing is, when John and the T-800 arrive on the scene, Sarah has already used a hairclip to unlock her restraints and the cell door that's been keeping her locked up.
It was with this escape that the BBFC had their major gripe, with the close-up nature of how Cameron showed Sarah's lock-picking escape deemed irresponsible in how would-be criminals could play the scene back and learn how to pull off such a trick. Added to this, Linda Hamilton legitimately mastered lock-picking in order to bring a sense of authenticity to this sequence.