8 Movies That Had No Regard For The Environment

The Beach was made in the year 2000, so you might think that standards had improved to a point where mindless environmental destruction wouldn't really happen on movie sets anymore. You might think that, but you'd be wrong.

Danny Boyle's film starring Leonardo DiCaprio involved a beautiful Thai beach being bulldozed and destroyed, all in the name of making it look prettier. Yes, the production actually justified cutting down native vegetation and pushing sand dunes around by saying it simply wanted to make the beach look more like a 'paradise'. Not only that, they also planted a bunch of non-native trees in the area, carelessly forcing a foreign species into a delicately-balanced ecosystem and transforming the whole area forever more.

After filming had wrapped, storms hit the area. Due to all the changes the production had made, the sand dunes collapsed, damaging local coral reefs and leading environmentalists to file lawsuits against the studio. The legal issues dragged on for a few years and the production company was ordered to make amends, but their halfhearted efforts couldn't undo the damage that had been done.