Overshadowed By Controversy Cleanup

Overshadowed by Controversy has several examples, particularly under the Fan Works, Webcomics, and Web Original folders, that don't fit the trope as described. The controversy is supposed to overshadow the work, so if it doesn't do that it shouldn't count as a valid example.

The media folders, such as Anime or Western Animation, could also use a look, as some entries deal with shows, while others deal with actors, fans, or creators. Additionally, some of the entries are not controversial anymore or are not known enough to overshadow the show completely, and others seem closer to Never Live It Down.

Some examples even point out that the controversy was debunked or died down eventually, which doesn't fit the trope, as well as examples saying things like "time will tell if [x] can recover." I originally tried the Real-Life cleanup section, and then a TRS thread, but I hope this is the right section to help us clean up this trope's examples. ^^

Yes, I've noticed too that some people think Overshadowed By Controversy means "any controversy even if it's a very obscure and short-term one".

On YMMV.X Men Apocalypse

• Overshadowed by Controversy:
  • James McAvoy and his wife Anne-Marie Duff had announced that they were getting divorced when he was still promoting Apocalypse. The news was considered to be shocking because the media had touted them as a very "un-Hollywood" couple (i.e. they had never provided fodder for the tabloids throughout their marriage).
  • Brian Singer's multiple sexual assault allegations have also had a harmful effect on the film's reputation, particularly as a year afterwards the #MeToo movement kicked off and a further string of accusations against him arose. As the last film he directed in the franchise, this one tends to be the one most likely to have this brought up, especially given the sexual assault imagery presented between Xavier and Apocalypse.

While the second could be an example, I fail to see how the first one remotely qualifies. By all account, James Mcvoy's divorce was amicable with no scandals associated with and has nothing to do with the movie in question.

Edited by Silverblade2 on Nov 16th 2018 at 10:13:16 AM

Bringing up a couple of examples:

This example from Bohemian Rhapsody was added two days before the film was released in the US:

• Overshadowed by Controversy: A large deal of attention has been brought to the film on account of the notorious Troubled Production and the accusations of sexual misconduct made against director Bryan Singer.

And this was added to Isn't It Romantic, which isn't out til February next year:

• Overshadowed by Controversy: Rebel Wilson proclaimed herself the first ever plus-size romantic comedy star, and responded to everyone reminding her about Queen Latifah and Mo'Nique by saying it's a "gray area" because she doesn't consider them plus-size. And then she started blocking every black person who kept trying to get her to just say she made a mistake, only engaging with the white people doing it. After a couple days the people she blocked actually made it a point of pride with their own hashtag, finally forcing her to realize how bad the whole thing looked and profusely apologize.

So it's been 8 days, any chance I could get a response regarding the examples I brought up.

Tumblr has been added to the page for the recent NSFW content purge, saying it "completely destroyed" the site's reputation... even though the official announcement of said purge was today.

Said purge also isn't going into effect until the 17th.

So it's been 16 days, any chance I could get a response regarding the examples I brought up.

Bohemian Rhapsody: I took a quick look at comments on the movie's Twitter page and saw plenty of people celebrating the movie, but not one mention of the controversy, so it's definitely not overshadowed.

Isn't It Romantic isn't out yet, so it should be removed in case the controversy dies out.

From Detroit: Become Human:

• Overshadowed by Controversy:
  • Following the PWG trailer, the game has become subject to heavy criticism over usage of domestic and child abuse.
  • There's also the fact that the obvious civil rights parallels in the story are most heavily represented by a white (android) woman, something that has garnered quite a bit of negative attention.
  • A few months before the games release, reports of developer Quantic Dreams being a toxic work environment also surfaced, which further damaged the game's reputation.

I've literally never heard anything about any of these complaints, while hearing plenty of praise. It's far from overshadowing.

I don't know much about the game but I remember when the first trailer was announced people complained about Detroit being too white in the game. I wouldn't say it's overshadowed anything, though. The game gets a lot of praise.

Yeah, nothing overshadowing in that game. Some controversy, sure, but that's not really all people are talking about.

Also, Bryan Dechart made a pretty good LP of it.

• Olafs Frozen Adventure became known soon after its release less because of anything related to the film itself and more because of the circumstances behind said release: It was originally meant for a television special before being put as the opener for the Pixar film Coco, and the fact that its length was meant for television and not as an opener for a Pixar film upset many of the moviegoers who went just to see Coco. It went to the point that most Mexican movie theaters outright removed the short from their showings of Coco (as Coco prominently features Mexican culture as its backdrop) before Disney officially pulled it from all future screenings of Coco beginning on December 8, 2017. That's to say nothing about the film itself coming out in the wake of John Lasseter taking a leave of absence from the company due to sexual harassment allegations, which has made headlines as much as the movie itself. It hasn't harmed the critical or box office performance of the film, but it has made it much harder to talk about without mentioning the allegations in light of similar ones in the industry.

One year on, I feel like this doesn't count anymore.

Coco itself is not an example, and in fact I've heard it remarked more than once that it was surprising how little the Lasseter revelations affected it.

From Us

• Overshadowed by Controversy: The studio pushed back the release date a week so the film could premiere at SXSW. Just one problem: not only had they already been selling advance tickets for the original release date for weeks, but they kept on doing it even after the announcement, potentially making sites like Fandango have to issue thousands of refunds.

Again, this is a very recent scandal about a film that isn't released yet.

Another one from Supergirl (2015)

• Overshadowed by Controversy: The allusion to Chloe Sullivan in "Midvale" should have been a nice Mythology Gag, but it came just near the time her actress on Smallville, Allison Mack, was accused of being involved in a sex cult.

It's a single allusion in ONE episode. I don't think it's close enough to overshadow the entire show.

The Allison Mack example sounds like a "Funny Aneurysm" Moment rather than an Overshadowed by Controversy.

From YMMV.Olafs Frozen Adventure:

• Overshadowed by Controversy: Any merit the film may have had otherwise has since been overshadowed by the controversy that ensued as a result of airing the full 21-minute short right before Coco, which led to plenty of Internet Backdraft.

I added this example to Overshadowed by Controversy:

• Popular Instagrammer Kayla Itsines also fell victim to controversy in 2017, due to people claiming that the Instagram was "fake news", mainly because of the attitude from 2017 onwards towards the media, with some people claiming that it was either astroturfing, and some conspiracy theorists believed it was part of an attempt to distract people from Brexit and Donald Trump. As of November 2018, it still remains controversial.

based on what I'd seen people linking to with comments about Donald Trump on blog sites.

Also, could these examples do with a slight rewrite:

• Atheist YouTube vlogger Thunderf00t is well known for his exposing of creationism and junk science. However, he's even more well known for his extremely caustic attitude and his willingness to go after the social justice movement... in particular, being banned from Free Thought Blogs after one week, then publishing the members' mailing list in retaliation, mostly for refusing to go along with their feminist-positive ideology. His videos about Anita Sarkeesian in particular have brought about the most heat of all of his videos, leading most viewers to label him an unrepentent misogynist because of them.

• Noah Antwiler, also known as The Spoony One, was once a very popular and respected internet personality. He was invited to become a member Channel Awesome, where he became a frequent contributor and popular member. While most producers stuck to a single subject or theme, Noah stood out by being willing to discuss a wide number of topics, including Dungeons & Dragons, movies, video games, and professional wrestling. This continued until he posted a tweet to JesuOtaku which contained an implied rape joke, which was partially responsible for Noah being removed from Channel Awesome. However, due to a combination of reasons ranging from his mental health issues, perfectionist demands, and ever-increasing promises, the flow of content from Noah slowed to a crawl around 2013. Noah has produced very few videos since 2016, mostly consisting of a single vlog for The Last Jedi and the occasional livestream. What angered so many people is that Noah created a Patreon campaign where many of fans provided him with money, at one point reaching five thousand dollars a month, where he promised that he would begin production on a movie. All of these promises would go unfulfilled and his content would become nonexistent, meaning it was hard not to have the impression that Noah was freeloading off his fanbase's money. Not helping is that whenever anyone addressed Noah on any of these concerns, he would only react quite aggressively and with empty promises that content was on the way. Because of this, many of his fans have abandoned him. Noah is now largely seen as a cautionary tale of what not to do as a content creator.

From OvershadowedByControversy.Live-Action Films:

• For some time following the NFL playoffs, people were talking about Pokémon Detective Pikachu on account of a fart joke in a TV spot that debuted during the playoffs. The trailer itself is just as well-known for the fart joke as it is for being the first look at the live-action Snubbull.

This seems too minor to count and I don't think a single fart joke in a trailer is enough to overshadow the movie.

Edited by ADrago on Feb 5th 2019 at 12:57:51 PM

That film isn't even out yet, so I don't think any examples of Overshadowed by Controversy should be added.

Yeah. It means there's nothing yet to overshadow.

While Bohemian Rhapsody was discussed and vetoed earlier, given the expose done on Bryan Singer and the amount of coverage that Bohemian Rhapsody gets mentioning it, is it okay to put it back on the film's YMMV page and possibly add a section for Singer under the Overshadowed by Controversy page?

Personally, I feel it'd be okay to add it back. The recent expose really fired things up again, the BAFTA awards took Singer's name off the film when it was nominated, the GLAAD awards straight-up refused to nominate the film at all because of the allegations, and a Red Sonja film Singer was set to direct was pulled from the production schedule due to controversy. And with the Academy Awards coming up, I feel we might see Singer's contributions to the film being put under tighter scrutiny.

Edited by chasemaddigan on Feb 12th 2019 at 1:29:41 PM

Can we establish a rule that OBC can't apply to upcoming works like Broken Base and Audience-Alienating Premise?

Edited by Silverblade2 on Feb 17th 2019 at 2:07:48 PM

I'd tend to agree with that. Controversy tends to be overblown pre-release, simply because people can't judge the work on its own merits. More often than not, the controversy is forgotten shortly after the work comes out and people have something of substance to talk about.