15 Most Controversial Movie Moments 2016

Cast your mind back to 2009 when two pilots achieved the seemingly impossible by safely landing a passenger jet in the middle of the Hudson River without one casualty after the plane’s engines failed when a flock of birds flew into its path. Those pilots were heroes Chesley Sullenberger and Jeffrey Skiles and, proving no real-life incident is safe from the clutches of Hollywood dramatization, those events got the silver screen treatment this year in a film directed by Clint Eastwood and starring Tom Hanks.

After the incident, Sullenberger found himself under intense scrutiny during a National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) investigation that questioned whether his actions during the emergency landing were warranted. It seems that Eastwood may have taken a few liberties when it came to transferring this part of events to the big screen because when Sully hit cinemas, NTSB investigators were not too pleased with the way they were portrayed. Feeling that the movie villainised their investigation as prosecutorial, some NTSB officials stated that the movie embellished upon what was a meticulous and mandatory but very normal investigation into an incident and painted the organisation as incompetent. Eastwood has defended the film’s depiction of the NTSB saying, ‘They were kind of railroading him’.