Unfortunate Implications / Live-Action Film

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Keep in mind that Unfortunate Implications are unintentional. An intended offensive message (for example, a piece of Axis propaganda about Jews) does not belong here, nor does natter about the author's true intentions.

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• During the 2000s, it became a trend for black actors to crossdress as women in movies for the sake of comedy. Martin Lawrence, Eddie Murphy, and especially Tyler Perry have all come under fire for their movies where they crossdressed as stereotypical fat black women. They've all been accused of reinforcing Uncle Tomfoolery and Modern Minstrelsy.
• Some biblical films often tend to white-wash the characters despite the stories taking place in the Middle East. For instance, the cast of Noah is entirely white (although the actress portraying Noah's wife is part-Jewish) despite the characters being the ancestors of all races, which wasn't helped by the screenwriter claiming "white people are stand-ins for all people while people-of-color just represent themselves". Also under fire is Ridley Scott's Exodus: Gods and Kings, which casts black people only in the roles of servants and crooks, and makes the Great Sphinx statue look white.
• 300 drew criticism for its portrayal of civilized European-looking Greeks fighting against monstrous and dehumanized Persians, several of whom were played by African actors. Not helping matters is that the movie can be seen as a militaristic analogy to the War on Terror. Sources: the Slate, the Guardian, History news Network.
• 300: Rise of an Empire drew criticism for similar reasons to the first. As once again all the heroes are a group of blue-eyed supermodels speaking in British accents, all the villains dark-skinned Persians speaking in Middle Eastern accents, and this time the only sympathetic or competent Persian so happens to be the only Greek (i.e European) woman within their ranks. Sources: Time
• You can barely mention 365 Days (and the book it was based on) without people bringing up all the issues with the plot's romanticization of kidnapping and sexual aggression. Massimo abducts Laura specifically to pursue a relationship with her, tries to pressure her into being with him, and gropes her without her permission, but Laura still falls in love with him and the whole thing is portrayed as a kinky sex fantasy. More than a few people have noted that Massimo's actions are seemingly glossed over because he's handsome, rich and his end goal is a romantic relationship with Laura, for which Fifty Shades of Grey (the inspiration for 365 Days) was similarly criticized.
• Ace Ventura: Pet Detective has a major plot point where the main villain turns out to be a Creepy Crossdresser (who's possibly also transgender), and is subsequently slut-shamed and mocked for it. This review provides an Alternate Character Interpretation that points out how cruel the narrative treats said villain, while this one points out that the narrative not only punishes Einhorn for kidnapping and murder, but also for being mentally unstable, "sexually deviant", and presenting as female. Even in 1994, the film was derided for its homophobic implications.
• The 1966 mondo film Africa Addio has widely been accused of being a justification and defense of colonialism and the idea of White Man's Burden, depicting Africans as being unable to live their lives without oversight by white people. While director Gualtiero Jacopetti claimed that the film was meant to call out the European colonial powers for failing to care about the fate of decolonizing nations and leaving the area in a plundered and weakened state, it was nevertheless condemned by American U.N. ambassador Arthur Goldberg, calling it "grossly distorted" and "socially irresponsible". Roger Ebert also condemned the film for what he perceived as a racist and pro-colonialist agenda, singling out the opening narration for particular criticism in that regard.
• American Sniper:
  • There are a number of controversies regarding the film's depiction of the Iraqi War, with plenty of accusations of racism directed at the depiction of Iraqis and further accusations of washing over Chris Kyle's glorification of war, racism, and moral absolutism, being utterly dismissive of those who didn't serve and being extremely proud of his deeds.
  • Other critics attacked it for perpetuating misconceptions, false pretenses and propaganda about the war. Specifically, the film shows Kyle and his unit being deployed to Iraq immediately after 9/11, and also shows the US Army fighting Al Qaeda right from the start, implying that Iraq was responsible for 9/11, the War in Iraq was a war against Al Qaeda and the invasion was a justified and appropriate response to 9/11.
  • One commentary by an Iraq combat veteran claimed that the film's depiction of Kyle as a One-Man Army, and relegating ordinary soldiers and Marines to background players to be saved or simply be in awe of Kyle gave the impression that elite operatives like Navy SEALS were the only components of the US Armed Forces who were effective and useful.
• Antebellum:
  • Accusations have been levelled that the film is an example of black misery porn, as much focused on exploiting the horrors of slavery as condemning them, without really saying much about the mindset of the white characters whose obsession with imaginary past glories and hollow racial ideology create the situation.
  • Other reviewers have commented on the seeming Plot Hole of all the other plantation slaves actually being modern-day kidnapping victims but acting like they've been broken over the course of generations, and only the well-educated and wealthy Veronica being able to ultimately resist, even using her high-class hobbies to aid in the escape, suggesting an ugly classist reading that was probably unintentional.
• Apocalypto has been criticized for its portrayal of the Mayan people as savages; some scholars have said that the final scene of the Spanish conquistadors arriving sends the colonialist message that the Mayans were so vile and barbaric that they deserved to be "saved" by the white Europeans.
• Atomic Blonde picked up a significant LGBT Fanbase before it was even out thanks to the promises of the main character being bisexual and her primary love interest being a woman. Many of them were disappointed to discover that the love interest character is brutally murdered by the villain toward the end.
• Avatar is often criticized for using Mighty Whitey/White Man's Burden plot devices in a high-budget science fiction movie. The main character is a human who becomes the hero of the alien tribe (based on Native Americans) and gets The Chief's Daughter in the end. This video illustrates using clips of other movies with similar themes how exactly it can be seen as a colonial view of "natives". These articles go into further detail about the controversy.
• In Bird Box, seeing the creatures makes people go crazy and suicidal; but somehow people with mental disorders are not affected by it and instead force everyone they encounter to see the creatures. Jeremy on CinemaSins pointed out how this helps to perpetuate the stigma of mental illnesses and the people who suffer from them.
• The Birth of a Nation (2016) was lambasted for its inclusion of a rape scene that didn't happen in real life and its use as a plot device with which to motivate the hero's rebellion, which would have been messy by itself, but that allegations of rape in real life against its director and writer Parker and Celestin only made it worse.
• Blonde:
  • A recurring criticism is that it takes the story of a real person who struggled with many complex issues and turns it into what some have called emotional torture porn. It's been argued the film's portrayal of Marilyn Monroe reduces her to a perpetual victim with no agency, who is both overly-sexualized and infantalized, is mostly defined by her relationships with men and has the root of all her problems chalked up as "daddy issues"; the movie also either exaggerates or invents traumas to inflict on Monroe. Detractors find that even removed from the fact it's about a real person, the movie comes off as insensitive and even misogynistic in its depiction of a woman's experiences with mental illness and abuse, focusing more on exploiting the horrible things that happen to her than showing her empathy.
  • Many people, including Planned Parenthood, accused the film of promoting a problematic anti-abortion message, due to featuring Marilyn Monroe graphically undergoing abortions and deeply regretting them, as well as scenes where she imagines the fetus from a pregnancy she intends to keep saying things like "You won't hurt me this time, will you?"; she later suffers a miscarriage. Some viewers feel this reinforces the idea that abortions are always traumatic, will ruin a person's life and can lead to future infertility and/or pregnancy loss, which detractors have stated is medically-inaccurate and stigmatizing. It's also been noted there's little evidence Marilyn Monroe ever had an abortion in real life, let alone regretted it; she did experience infertility and miscarriages, though this was likely due to endometriosis and an ectopic pregnancy, which the film doesn't mention (some viewers have pointed out the film instead appears to suggest Monroe herself caused her miscarriage). Considering this, it's argued that the abortion plotline comes off as the filmmakers co-opting the story of a real person who struggled with fertility to insert an anti-abortion message. The director stated his intention was only to present the matter from the character's point-of-view rather than taking a hard stance on the subject, although as he himself acknowledged, the timing was particularly unfortunate considering the movie was released the same year Roe v. Wade was overturned in the US, making it much more difficult for people to safely get abortions and related healthcare.
• Although hardly the only flaw in Uwe Boll's series of BloodRayne movies, this article points out how Boll seemingly has "nothing but contempt" for the aggressive, sexually charged female lead character. The review points out how Rayne herself is trumped at every turn in the fight scenes by original characters, and how she is the more submissive partner in the inevitable sex scene.
• Bone Tomahawk has been criticized by some as being little more than an excuse to indulge in racist stereotypes of Native Americans, with the film's villains being a tribe of brutal, inbred, cannibalistic cave-dwellers who kidnap and plan to mutilate a white woman to use her as breeding stock, while simultaneously trying to distance itself from said stereotypes by portraying the cave-dwellers as being shunned and avoided by the local Native American tribes. Piers Marchant of the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette was especially critical of the film's portrayal of the cave-dwellers, calling it "the equivalent of having as villains a sect of Orthodox Jews."
• Bright: In her video essay, Lindsay Ellis points out that along with the film's many other tone-deaf ideas, the film tries to tie the in-universe racism, both fantastic and mundane, to real-life historical events where the persecuted people were the aggressors. She notes that this insinuates that racism can be based in logical and rational reasons when in truth, that isn't always the case and, more troublingly, notions like that can fuel and enable bigots.
• The Last Bronycon: a fandom autopsy pointed out a couple in Bronies: The Extremely Unexpected Adult Fans of My Little Pony.
  • The documentary attempting to examine why many neurodivergent people enjoyed the show just ended up implying that people with autism are otherwise too infantile or stupid to understand life without a cartoon explaining it to them.
  • The unintentional homophobia and sexism present in a bunch of guys worried that they were Mistaken for Gay for liking the show.
• YouTuber Ethel Thurston from Essence Of Thought was extremely critical of Netflix's ostensibly feminist film Bulbbul's portrayal of mental disability/mental illness and, to a lesser extent, its gender politics. She became tearful when pointing out how the sole mentally disabled character in the film's main purpose in the plot is to rape the female protagonist (explicitly because of his mental deficiency), then be brutally murdered by his victim's vengeful spirit, despite clearly not having understood what he was doing and the implication he himself had been raped earlier. Thurston further points out that Bulbbul's husband has been sexually assaulting her for years, given they're married when she's five and he is shown calling her to his room at night while she's still a child, yet this is not given anywhere near as much focus—he's violently jealous to the point of horrific physical abuse and is eventually also killed by the spirit, but the main sexual threat is still the disabled man. The film also supposedly undermines its attempts to be a feminist period piece by effectively placing all the responsibility for fighting for women's rights in 1880s India on a supernatural (i.e. not real) spirit that kills rapists and making the male protagonist's entire arc about learning to respect women culminating in him respectfully severing ties with the family patriarch, despite all that living men can, and have, done for feminism in India.
• Chip 'n Dale: Rescue Rangers (2022) makes a villain out of Peter Pan, making him a Former Child Star who after losing job opportunities due to growing old turned to a life of crime. While it's not clear if it was intentional or not, a not insignificant amount of people are disgusted at how this unfortunately has some resonance with the life of Peter's voice actor Bobby Driscoll, who indeed saw puberty end his child actor career working for Disney (and it kicked in right after Peter Pan, no less), leading the poor actor into a downward spiral until his unfortunate death in 1968 at the age of 31, due to a drug overdose.
• Christmas with the Kranks has the protagonists decide not to celebrate Christmas. The reaction this gets is pretty insane, to say the least, with the neighbors harassing the Kranks endlessly to celebrate it and put up decorations like the rest of the neighborhood. They finally give in when their young adult daughter decides to come home to visit. The very fact that not celebrating Christmas is seen to be some kind of unforgivable sin is bad enough, but then the film hammers home the idea that fighting against the established conformity — no matter how much you disagree with it — will get you nowhere and you should never do otherwise. Roger Ebert noticed. (Ebert also notes that the film is careful to stick largely to the secular aspects of the holiday—lights, snowmen, etc—because, he argues, it knows that if it acknowledged the fact Christmas is a religious holiday, the implications of the neighbors being correct to bully the Kranks into celebrating would be even worse.)
• Daredevil: In his The Nostalgia Critic review of the film, Doug Walker took issue with Matt and Elektra's first meeting, which involves them fighting in an open playground when he won't stop trying to get her name.
  NC: Okay, so...where do I begin with this? First of all, I think she's making it pretty clear she's not interested in your stalker ass. If she wanted, she could call the cops on you for being a creeper and grabbing her. But, nah, it makes much more sense to fight him, which leads to the second and most obvious problem: she's fighting a blind guy! She doesn't know he has super senses and neither does anyone else, so, really, what is there to gain? If you lose, you got beaten by a blind guy. Pretty pathetic. But if you win, congrats, you beat the shit out of a fucking blind guy. How does anyone come out looking good in this scenario?
• DC Extended Universe:
  • Birds of Prey (2020):
    • Despite being better received than Suicide Squad, one criticism of that movie that appears to be mutual with this film is its portrayal of Harley Quinn's mental issues and how it pins a mentally unstable criminal up to be a badass action hero role model. Chris Stuckmann in particular went so far as to not only make a point about this, but also call critics out for slamming Joker for its allegedly irresponsible depiction of a man's environment exacerbating his mental issues, and then praising this movie for doing the same thing, except showing it in a more light-hearted fashion.
    • Even positive reviews have accused the movie of disability erasure for replacing wheelchair-bound Oracle with Harley Quinn and completely ignoring Cassandra's learning difficulties and speech impediment from the comics. In general some reviewers have pointed out that the feminist message of the movie comes across as rather hypocritical for its exclusion of two of the most well-known disabled female characters in fiction.
  • Justice League: The theatrical cut of the film came under heavy fire, especially when accusations by Ray Fisher came to light, for cutting several characters of color out of the film (including Iris West, Calvin Swanwick/Martian Manhunter, Dr. Ryan Choi, and Elinore Stone), yet adding in white characters such as the burglar and the Russian family, as well as cutting a large part of Cyborg's (Fisher's character) backstory and motivations. It speaks volumes that when Zack Snyder was allowed to finish his cut of the film, all of those roles were restored as originally filmed. This article covers some of the mistreatment Joss Whedon had undertaken, not just on this film, but on the Buffyverse as well, showcasing that some of the director's behavior may have played a part in this.
  • Wonder Woman 1984:
    • Diana consummating her relationship with Steve Trevor while his soul is possessing another man's body is treated as a sweet, romantic moment despite it being sexual assault and/or rape since the guy that's been possessed cannot consent, as a number of viewers have pointed out. Patty Jenkins' response to the criticism was that because the wish was undone, the event never happened, as well as stating that it was a homage to the "Freaky Friday" Flip style of comedy of the 1980s, further drew accusations about this due to it coming across as attempts to justify what comes across as sexual assault and/or rape in a time where such jokes aren't considered acceptable anymore. Worse (in terms of the decision to do this and to defend it, that is) is the fact that it's totally unnecessary since the possession element is irrelevant to the overall plot, and Steve was brought back by vague magic which could just as easily given him his own body instead of stealing someone else's.
    • The film has also come under fire for its regressive, orientalist, and even racist depictions of Arabs and the Middle East, as seen here, here and here. The film's Egyptian characters are a mishmash of Middle Eastern traits, and the film depicts the region as poor and wartorn. Even one of the directors of Moon Knight (2022) explicitly called out this movie for its depictions, stating he used it as an example of what to avoid when creating the series.
• Sacha Baron Cohen‘s film The Dictator was criticized many times for portraying negative stereotypes of Arabs as many people felt that Sacha Baron Cohen’s character as the Dictator was highlighting the stereotypes against the Arab community while comparing the performance to modern-day Minstrel Shows.
• The film adaptation of Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood has received some negative reviews that argue that its central storyline of the protagonist reconciling with her abusive mother after being told about the latter's own Dark and Troubled Past sends the message that abusive parents should not be held accountable for what they do to their children as long as their own past is sufficiently tragic.
• Everything, Everything: Several reviewers pointed out that the ending, wherein Madeline learns that she doesn't have SCID and was healthy her whole life, letting her be free to romance Olly is offensive to people who do have compromised immune systems or are otherwise disabled by implying disabled people can't live full lives as well as people who have dealt with Munchausen syndrome by proxy.
• The Reveal at the end of the already-controversial Ghost in the Shell (2017) that Scarlett Johansson's character was originally a Japanese girl before being turned into a Caucasian cyborg has been criticized for unintentionally reinforcing the idea that European beauty is superior to all others.
  Jen Yamato: “Ghost in the Shell” sent a clear, cold message to me as an Asian woman that I am not as worthy of owning my own identity. It’s a dehumanizing concept to sell so cheerily to mass audiences.
• Ghostbusters (2016):
  • Accusations of racism have been leveled surrounding the character of Patty, the only major non-white character in the film, who is portrayed as a Street Smart Sassy Black Woman. She's the only Ghostbuster that lacks a postgraduate education (she works for the MTA, and "only" has a bachelor's degree in history) while her white teammates all have PhDs in their respective fields.
• Youtuber Atun-Shei Films made a video criticizing Gods and Generals's handling of the Confederacy. At best, the film leans heavily into the narrative of the civil war as a "tragic misunderstanding." ^note Roger Ebert, who reviewed the film, remarked, "If World War II were handled this way, there'd be hell to pay." At worst, it's Neo-Confederate propaganda. Among other issues raised:
  • Only two major black characters are featured in the story and both support the Confederacy, making it seem like most of the slaves supported the cause of the Confederacy (they did not).
  • There's a lot of whitewashing involving Jackson's views on slavery, making it seem like he opposed it, when most records said he supported it, or at the very least thought of it as a necessary evil, though it's just as likely he thought of it as a right sanctioned by God like many of his peers.
  • Talk of Confederates freeing their slaves to join the Confederate army is suggested in the film, which takes place in the early to middle part of the war, when in reality the Confederacy only started taking the idea seriously in the final months of the war when they were truly desperate, and only with the proviso that armed black slaves would not be freed but would remain slaves. Even then many opposed the idea as madness.
• Guess Who's Coming to Dinner is about a black doctor marrying a young white woman, and their efforts to get her parents' approval. The filmmakers deliberately made Sidney Poitier's character into a virtual demigod of perfection, to eliminate audience objections to their marriage other than those based on race. But this created other unfortunate implications. To quote Melvin Van Peebles in the documentary Classified X: "Equality. Never mind that the black guy was a scientist, a Nobel Prize candidate, a Pulitzer Prize-winning, butter wouldn't melt in his mouth type who could practically walk on water, and that she was only a pimply-faced nobody. They were equally matched because she was white. Right?"
• Harry Potter film series:
  • The films received some criticism for the racist running gag of the only canonically Irish character, Seamus Finnegan routinely causing explosions to the point that he's tasked with demolishing a wooden bridge in Deathly Hallows and he has been described as having a "particular proclivity for pyrotechnics" (A deleted scene shows him rigging the bridge with explosive charges).
  • Fantastic Beasts recieved backlash for its decision to cast Korean actress Claudia Kim as Nagini's human form for its use of the racist and misogynistic Dragon Lady stereotype. There's also the "submissive Asian woman" stereotype in play when she later becomes Voldemort's pet after permanently getting stuck as a snake.
• Hidden Figures: Al Harrison demands that NASA's restrooms be made race-neutral after learning that Katherine Johnson had to travel all the way across campus to use the black women's restroom. In reality, Johnson just started using the white women's restroom without permission. The film has been criticized for taking a black woman's act of defiance and giving it to a "white savior."
• Both RebelTaxi's review and Schaffrillas Productions' review of Hop point out how the film plays its Fantastic Racism a little too straight. In addition to chicks being depicted as good for nothing but slave labor, Carlos is framed as being in the wrong for wanting to be the next Easter Bunny, despite being not only more competent but also more passionate than EB. The fact that Fred, a human, is ultimately given the job despite EB's father insisting that the title can only be passed down through blood and to other rabbits, not to mention Carlos would be turned into a bunny just by holding the Egg of Destiny, suggests that he's simply prejudiced towards chickens. It doesn't help that the bunnies all have British accents and the chickens are coded to be Hispanic. What sours these intentions even more is that Carlos does have an evil agenda, making it seem like someone with racist conspiracy theories is Properly Paranoid. Rebel Taxi's review also notes that it breaks the Be Yourself aesop and becomes "Be yourself, but only if it doesn't challenge societal standards too much."
• Idiocracy: While director and writer Mike Judge swears up and down that this wasn't his intention, as more than a few critics point out, it's way too easy to interpret the opening sequence of the movie as an endorsement for eugenics, as "stupid people were having more kids than smart people" is what leads to the future being a Crapsack World. Not only that, but the way the film explicitly blames poor people for their own lack of birth control and low levels of education, all the while conflating class and wealth with intelligence, and that these lower class louts are to blame for the degrading state of society (despite them generally having little to no control over the circumstances of their lives) and that success comes from "common sense" (rather than the chance circumstances of health and education a person is born into), reeks of classism as well. This is remarkably mean-spirited for a film that allegedly wants to aspire to a better world.
• The Invention of Lying has been criticized by the Bad Romance podcast in this episode, where Jourdain and Kyle address the problematic insinuations of how the film handles its premise of a man learning to lie in a world where no one has before, such as equating honesty on what you desire in a romantic partner to being pro-eugenics and appearing to imply that convincing a suicidal person that life is worth living qualifies as lying to them.
• Irréversible has come under fire for having potential homophobic and misogynistic implications, what with the choice to turn what could've been a non-gay-specific club or regular Bad Guy Bar into a full-blown BDSM club and the rape scene being shot in such a way as to titillate rather than horrify.
• Iska has been criticized for what is essentially using the story of a real-life woman, who was actually the director's house cleaner, struggling with a special needs dependent herself as the basis for the director's social commentary laden film. Even without that in the equation, it's also been accused of "poverty porn".
• It (2017):
  • Some writers criticized the film for having IT kidnap Beverly, thus turning a character who was never in need of rescuing in the book into a Damsel in Distress.
  • Some viewers have pointed out that Mike, the black kid of the Loser Group, was really underdeveloped compared to the rest of the Losers. It doesn't help that his role as the kid who knew about the town's history was given to Ben. This prompted the director to reveal just a week after its release that in the second film, Mike is planned to have an even deeper characterization than in the book, as staying in Derry has really screwed with his head.
• One of the reasons why Adam Sandler’s Jack and Jill was so heavily panned by the critics was due to how Mexican Americans were being portrayed in this film. One of the biggest criticisms regarding this was how Felipe, the family’s gardener, was making self-deprecating jokes about Mexican Americans throughout the film, which includes jokes about immigration.
• Much of the controversy surrounding Joker (2019) revolves around the fact that the Joker, a homicidal maniac, is portrayed as a character who was driven to madness by the Crapsack World he lives in. Although the intention was meant to be a cautionary tale of how an unpleasant society can create people like the Joker, some people accused the film of trying to justify the actions of mass-murderers.^note It wasn't, but because there is often a fine line between explaining how things happen, and justifying said things, misunderstandings like this are hard to avoid It also doesn't help that there were concerns over the Joker's sympathetic portrayal potentially inspiring a real-life shooting^note Note that nothing of the sort ever actually happened in relation to the film despite the paranoia about it; in fact, at the time, there was more real-life violence associated with screenings of Disney's Frozen II.
• Many Costa Ricans have a love-hate relationship with Jurassic Park. Many people felt offended because the movie depicts San Jose City as a backwards coastal town with Mexican motifs, chickens, and... well, a generic Banana Republic, while in reality San Jose is located in the center of a valley and is a pretty cosmopolitan big city.
• Jurassic World has been criticized by some for its characterization of Claire, making her look like a frigid woman who is in the wrong for not having any children as explained here. This actually gets Invoked at one point. Hoskins is discussing how to control the Velociraptors and brings up not allowing the disloyal ones to breed. Barry, a French-African paddock employee who is present when he says this, gives a bitter Never Heard That One Before laugh. Hoskins doesn't get that he just unwittingly referred to one of the historic strategies of African slave owners.
• The Kissing Booth was criticized by a lot of the film’s detractors for Noah's behaviour towards Elle coming off as abusive and controlling, which is never really condemned in the movie itself, as well as other content that comes off as outdated and sexist. Such as Elle's relationships being dictated by men, and sexual harassment not being treated as a big deal.
• Knives Out: Marta's storyline, where her rich white employer bequeaths his considerable estate to her, his hardworking immigrant nurse, because she was a good person, has attracted criticism for leaning into the "good immigrant" myth — the notion that immigrants deserve rights and privileges because they are good and hardworking, not necessarily because they are human. Marta is so transparently perfect (to the point she is unable to lie without vomiting) that it can be argued she's less a character and more a collection of "good immigrant" traits. It also been noted for leaning heavily into issues of deportation and immigration in a way that may be offensive to Hispanic immigrants, especially considering that creator Rian Johnson is a white man who was born in America. It could be argued that Marta's mother being in poor health (and Marta wishing to avoid the stress and strain of a long trial or legal battle) could have been just as strong an impetus to cover up the supposed accidental overdose without leaning on tired stereotypes. The linked articles also note that the Running Gag about Harlan's family constantly getting Marta's ethnicity wrong merely draws attention to the fact her ethnicity is never actually identified, reinforcing the idea that all Hispanics are interchangeable.
• La La Land has been criticized for having a White Savior narrative via Sebastian's plotline of his obsession to save jazz.
• The Last Airbender:
  • The film was heavily criticized for giving a Race Lift to the protagonists, making all three of the main heroes (two of whom, Katara and Sokka, were vaguely Inuit-looking) white and the villains Indian (when they were actually among the paler characters in the show). The Ability over Appearance excuse used falls flat considering the very wooden acting of the leads.^note It would come to light years later that the actual reason for the mass Race Lift was that Katara's actress was cast due to nepotism, a decision which both directly and indirectly led to most of the changes.
  • The Agony Booth calls out an apparent sexist tone in the film, pointing out that a number of important moments female characters had in the animated series (Katara's speech to the imprisoned Earthbenders, Yue realizing she can sacrifice herself to restore Waterbending) are given to male characters instead. The writer specifically mentions how the film's climax inverts the outcome of the battle of Katara and Zuko from the cartoon, with Zuko being the winner rather than only getting a second wind after the sun rose.
• The Last Duel: Multiple critics have called out that despite the film attempting to address misogyny, sexual harassment, and toxic masculinity, the film ultimately treats Marguerite as little more than a victim, denying her agency or dimension compared to the male characters of the plot; especially considering we don't get to see her point of view until the last third of the story. Given the charged subject matter, other critics have also stated the film lingers too much on exploitative elements of Marguerite's story, and the casting of Matt Damon and Ben Affleck, who defended Harvey Weinstein after his extensive history of sexual assault was revealed, ultimately undermines the themes.
• Licorice Pizza:
  • The use of Asian Speekee Engrish in the movie has been criticized for taking serious issues of racial prejudice, and playing it for exceedingly uncomfortable laughs in a way that's seen as trivializing anti-Asian racism.
  • The film has received its share of backlash over what many perceive to be romanticizing ephebophilia due to centering around the budding romantic feelings between a fifteen-year-old and a woman a full decade older which ultimately ends with them getting together and is played off as a happy ending.
• The casting and portrayal of Tonto by Johnny Depp in The Lone Ranger has attracted this from critics. From choice of costume, based on a fantasy painting by a white artist (see here) to Depp's claim that he wanted to provide a "warrior" character for Native American youth to look up to (here), many people have stated that the film is a complete embodiment of this trope.
• Loqueesha — a film in which the white male protagonist pretends to be a Sassy Black Woman on the radio and becomes a hit sensation — has been slammed by critics who decried its main premise as both racist and misogynist.
• In one scene in Lucy, the titular Lucy shoots a perfectly innocent Taiwanese taxi driver, for no other reason than because he doesn't speak English... while she's in an Asian country after being kidnapped there. Many people have called the film out on this.
• Maleficent: The film has been criticized as turning one of the most powerful female characters (albeit evil) in the Disney canon into a lesser version whose story arc is mostly centered on Aurora, with the sequel perceived as only making this worse.
• Marvel Cinematic Universe:
  • In The Avengers (2012), Thor's quip about Loki being adopted offended a number of people on the grounds that it was an Adoption Diss.
  • Avengers: Age of Ultron:
    • The toy tie-ins for the film seemingly eliminated Black Widow figures, which became surprisingly rare. Boxed sets that supposedly included all the Avengers would have Iron Man, Cap, Thor, Hulk, Hawkeye, even Ultron...but not Widow. The Quinjet-motorcycle set, which is based on Widow's big action scene speeding through the streets of Seoul, replaced her with different characters like Cap or even Iron Man, who doesn't even need a motorcycle. Mark Ruffalo himself voiced his displeasure with it on Twitter.
    • One scene has the heroes try to lift Thor's hammer, Mjölnir, which would allow them to become the ruler of Asgard if they succeed. Tony claims that when he takes over Asgard he'll "re-instate prima nocta". Detractors state that regardless of whether or not Tony was kidding, casual rape jokes are a serious problem, and Tony is never called out on this by his friends.
    • Although in full context Black Widow was commenting on her Tyke Bomb history and Training from Hell as a whole, the scene in which Black Widow connects with Bruce Banner over their shared inability to have children was criticized due to the implications that women who can't have children are monsters.
  • Doctor Strange (2016): The dispute over Tilda Swinton's casting as the Ancient One drew a lot of criticism after the trailer showed that the character, originally thought to be Race Lifted in order to remove the Magical Asian traits, would still retain them, in effect being similar to Yellowface. It got to the point that co-writer C. Robert Cargill weighed in on this with his personal opinion, saying the Ancient One's casting was "unwinnable" from the beginning, admitting that the whole thing was a Catch-22 Dilemma: keeping him Tibetan was off the table because ongoing political conflict between Tibet and China could have seen the movie Banned in China, while casting an actor or actress from any other Asian ethnic group (specifically citing Michelle Yeoh) opens up a whole other minefield of Unfortunate Implications. Unfortunately this just made things worse in the eyes of many fans including George Takei, who now accuse Marvel of poorly deflecting the criticism rather than owning up and sacrificing values for profits by bowing to such potential pressure from China. As an additional crinkle, the director considered a middle ground changing the character to an Asian woman, but was concerned that would play into another unfortunate trope.
  • Black Panther (2018): Several critics noted that Killmonger, the film's most notable African-American character, whose stated goal is to help oppressed black people, is portrayed as a violent sociopath who lacks a coherent political philosophy and just wants to see everything burn, with one review describing him as "an American stereotype of unparented African-American hate."
  • Despite the franchise's considerable clout, the MCU has been criticized by many for its lackluster depiction of women. Both Gamora and Black Widow were excluded from the merchandise line despite being core members of the Guardians and Avengers lineup. Furthermore, several female characters are treated as little more than generic love interests, bland supporting characters, or the butt of misogynistic humor. Most damningly, Marvel Entertainment CEO Ike Perlmutter refused to green-light a female-led superhero movie, going so far as to defend his rationale with an argument that was seen as a sexist double standard^note Essentially, Catwoman (2004) and Elektra bombed horribly and they had female leads, so movie fans don't want to see female-led superhero movies- ignoring the fact that Wonder Woman (2017) was a runaway success, and that the first two failed because they were just plain bad movies. Even MCU head Kevin Feige agreed with such criticism and, upon gaining full control of the MCU, he promised to have better female representation in subsequent movies, starting by greenlighting Captain Marvel (2019).
  • Captain Marvel (2019): Some criticism has been had towards the way the film gives Monica Rambeau an Adaptation Relationship Overhaul with Carol. The comics portrayed Monica as being her own entity, who was the leader of the Avengers in her own right and had a completely unique origin unrelated to Carol or even Mar-Vell. In this film, her purpose is largely to admire and cheer Carol on.
  • Avengers: Endgame:
    • A portion of the online community (including magazines and news sites such as Vanity Fair) have called out Endgame for its portrayal of Thor's obesity as fat-shaming cheap humor.
    • Black Widow's death was met with criticism that came with massive baggage based on Natasha's forced sterilization and Hawkeye being a devoted family man. The writers actually felt the need to address this controversy, explaining that it was meant to be interpreted as Natasha finally "wiping the red from her ledger", but her death made the big "girl power" moment feel cheap for a lot of people.
    • The Russos' statement that Endgame introduced the first LGBT character in an MCU movie — a man at Steve Rogers' therapy session, played by Joe Russo himself — has caused backlash not only from members of the LGBT community, who found that an easily-missable line of dialogue from a nameless character with no story significance and a single scene was not exactly something to brag about (not helped by Kevin Feige trying to downplay the moment after the inevitable backlash), but continuity sticklers given that Jeri Hogarth from Jessica Jones was a lesbian, Joey Gutierrez from Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. was gay, and Valkyrie from Thor: Ragnarok is bisexual, the latter especially getting backlash due to Marvel originally refusing to shoot a scene that confirmed it despite both Tessa Thompson and Taika Waititi wanting to.
    • Relatedly, the movie has been criticized by more than a few reviewers for promoting conservative ideologies, particularly regarding the supremacy of heteronormative biological Nuclear Family at the expense of those who do not conform to it, undercutting previous movies' themes of the importance of True Companions and The Power of Friendship. Tony's^note The narrative treats Tony's daughter Morgan as implicitly equivalent enough in value to justify Tony disregarding all of his friendships and efforts to revive the half of the universe killed by the Snap, due to her being his biological daughter. Reconciling with his neglectful biological father is treated as an important moment for his Character Development, while the adoptive father figure responsible for his actual upbringing is ignored. Tony's statements about "living a life" implicitly rank settling down with a spouse and kids as superior fulfillment over other life choices, Steve's^note Previous films depicted Steve as a Fish out of Temporal Water who exemplified modern progressive values and whose greatest virtue was his willingness to fight For Great Justice wherever they were absent. However, in Endgame his ultimate goal is reuniting with his old love interest Peggy Carter in a romanticized version of the 50s (a setting and time period associated with significant systemic inequality, and associated with a rather infamous Audience-Alienating Era for the Captain America comics in real life), severing all ties with his friends in the present as well as his lifelong friend and non-biological family Bucky and (per the writers' interpretation of the ending) completely ceasing his efforts at fighting for political equality. Meanwhile, Peggy, a proactive Action Girl who founded a new family of her own after he disappeared, is depicted in this film as a more passive Lost Lenore who Steve presumes approval from without consulting her beforehand., Clint's, and Natasha's^note Natasha, who was sterilized against her will and thus unable to have biological offspring, is the character most concerned with protecting the friendships shared by the Avengers as a Family of Choice, but sacrifices her life for Clint, specifically citing the existence of his Nuclear Family as the justification for it with the implication that his life is inherently worth more than hers due to having biological family. Her lack of blood relatives (Black Widow (2021) reveals that she has an adoptive non-biological family) is later highlighted in a scene that also implies the Avengers are an improper substitute for such specific subplots are among the most commonly cited examples of this theme when taken as a whole.
  • Eternals:
    • The implication that climate change is caused by Tiamut's awakening, not by greenhouse gases, has garnered some criticism for downplaying the role that manmade activity has on the problem.
    • A lot of the criticism about the use of Hiroshima has been down to this, as it's felt to be in very poor taste to use real-life tragedies, particularly ones that are still being felt today, just to add some artificial pathos to big superhero movies. There is also criticism about how it's presented as the consequences of Phastos's actions (a character who is a double minority) which, even if Phastos isn't directly responsible for it, seems like a way to rainbow-wash it and tone it down to an unforeseeable consequence of good people trying to do a good thing, and not something that was researched for deliberate military use.
  • Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness: Various critics have lambasted the film for turning Wanda into a stock villainous Unstable Powered Woman stereotype, especially after she'd already undergone Character Development in WandaVision. It doesn't help that her main reason for doing so (wanting her kids back) was based on Avengers Disassembled, which received similar criticism.
• Disability advocates are criticizing the movie adaptation of JoJo Moyes' Me Before You because of its ending suggesting that quadriplegics' lives are not worth living and that committing assisted suicide is, for them, a Heroic Sacrifice that can only benefit their abled loved ones. It doesn't help that the story the movie and book follow is the able-bodied female lead's and not the quadriplegic character's, who ends up as an underdeveloped Tragically Disabled Love Interest, or that at the end the female lead, Lou, actually is rewarded by Will with a congruous inheritance that makes her able to finally follow her dreams, making Will nothing more than a plot point Lost Lenore.
• As pointed out by Kyle Kallgren, Melancholia romanticizes depression, a serious mental disorder, and tries to depict it as something beautiful and poignant. In treatment terms, the idea that depressed people are actually enlightened, or just being realistic and seeing the world as it really is, while non-depressed people are ignorant and clinging to delusional fantasies is a legitimate problem that therapists have trouble getting out of depressed peoples' heads.
• Million Dollar Baby caught a lot of flak from advocacy groups for the disabled, who claimed that it condones euthanizing paralyzed people, and that its ultimate message is "life with a physical disability isn't worth living". A few reviewers claimed that it would have been a better movie if it had ended with Maggie learning to cope with her disability and getting an education.
• Monster Hunter (2020) drew controversy for a joke made at the beginning of the film, where an Asian soldier asks a white soldier to look at his knees and the white soldier asks the Asian soldier what kind of knees he has and he responded Chinese, alluding to a racist schoolyard rhyme used against East Asian people. The film was immediately pulled from the Chinese screenings afterwards to have the offending scene edited out of all subsequent releases, and the actor who made the joke apologized on his social media feeds.
• The 1997 live-action adaptation of Mr. Magoo was savaged by blindness advocates, saying that Mr. Magoo's characterization was highly insensitive to those with visual impairments. Roger Ebert also felt that the movie was one long blind joke in running time. The movie was pulled within weeks of its release, and it sent the franchise into remission for quite some time.
• Mulan (2020):
  • After its release the film was criticized for its portrayal of the Rouran Khaganate which many felt utilized Islamophobic and xenophobic stereotypes (Despite the fact that the Rourans were never Islamic), particularly since the film's credits thank a Chinese government agency that has been known to promote such views and is reported by numerous human rights groups to be committing outright genocide of Muslims in real life.
  • The film has also been criticized for promoting a message of upholding the often-repressive status quo and traditional gender roles, thus resulting in a Broken Aesop in spite of its feminist leanings. This is doubly ironic when one considers that in the state of Northern Wei (the state which most closely corresponds to Mulan's home state in the original poem), it wasn't unusual for Xianbei women to be soldiers.^note In fact, official Northern Wei policy was that soldiers were to be solely of Xianbei descent.
• Sia's film Music (2021) was met with backlash from the autistic community almost as soon as its trailer was revealed, which did not die down after the film's release:
  • The first major controversy was over the decision to cast Maddie Ziegler, a neurotypical actress, in the role of the titular character, who is a non-verbal autistic girl. Critics argued that an autistic actor should have been cast in the role instead. Sia claimed that she tried to work with a non-verbal autistic actress who found the experience "unpleasant and stressful", a statement which was also criticized by several autistic actors who quickly popped up to question why she only tried working with one autistic actor before picking a neurotypical one. It doesn't help that Sia's response later devolved into swearing and insults aimed at the autistic people criticizing the casting choice, or that contradictory statements suggest that the role had always been written with Ziegler in mind. It's worth noting that during shooting, Ziegler herself was so worried about making fun of autistic people that she broke down crying.
  • Once the film came out, criticism continued as the title character was portrayed as yet another Womanchild whose only purpose is to be seen as a burden by her caretakers, adding more fuel to the fire by contributing to the persistent media stereotypes that have been an albatross around autistics' necks for decades. Her exaggerated, stereotypical behavior and body language drew comparisons to Copycat Mockery from a school bully making fun of a mentally disabled person.
  • On top of its caricature-like depiction of autism, the movie was also criticized for its unironic use of Blackface during the musical number "Oh Body", where Ziegler, who is of mixed European descent, wears skin-darkening makeup and a pair of headphones themed after cornrows (a hairstyle associated with black culture).
  • Scenes portraying the use of restraints were criticized especially harshly for implying that forcibly pinning someone face-down is a good way to stop an autistic meltdown, which it very much is not. In fact, the "prone restraint" used in the film is not only potentially traumatizing to be in, it can suffocate and kill the person being restrained. Although Sia later apologized and promised to remove these scenes and add a warning against their use, the scenes were still present in the US theatrical release.
  • To a lesser extent, some critics of color also drew issue with the character of Ebo, calling him a Magical Negro since while the trailer made it look as though he was possibly Music's support worker or similar, he is Zu's neighbor who seemingly only exists to extoll platitudes about Music and be an eventual love interest for Zu. Ebo's lack of characterization also drew criticism, with critics making note that although Ebo is meant to be from Africa, it's never specified where, simply that he's from "a village" in "Africa."
• Mysterious Skin is a very hard-to-watch movie that faced a lot of controversy from Moral Guardians because of its graphic depiction of the grooming and sexual abuse of a young boy by his baseball coach. There's been some criticism that Neil's life as a prostitute isn't shown to be destructive or dangerous (or even all that abnormal since he cares more about the sex than the money) until he takes his business into the big city, and because the coach is shown through the gaze of a little boy who has a crush on him, it lessens the impact of the coach as a sexual predator. Then we find out that the coach sexually abused Brian and Neil together, and Brian's life has been very obviously ruined by it. The implication ends up being not that All Gays Are Pedophiles, but if a gay man does happen to be a pedophile then it's no big deal as long as he targets gay kids.
• Passengers (2016) has the female lead brought out of suspended animation early in an interstellar voyage and trapped on the ship, alone with the male lead for the rest of her life. It was criticized in multiple reviews for revealing that the male lead inflicted this on her intentionally to avoid going mad from the isolation (and because he thought she was cute) and presenting it as a surmountable relationship hurdle that he can badger her into forgiving — essentially portraying "captivity fantasy and victimization" as romance. It also didn't help that the film had an extremely misleading trailer that implied both characters' awakenings were accidental.
• Grover's characterization in The Lightning Thief was such a nonstop barrage of black stereotypes that it led one person to liken it to a minstrel show.
• Peter Rabbit contained a scene where the eponymous rabbit and his family chuck blackberries at Thomas McGregor knowing that he is allergic to them. One then gets into the poor gardener's mouth and he wheezes while struggling to get an EpiPen. This infamous scene has understandably infuriated parents with kids who have allergies and were then boycotting the film.
• Consider the creepy ephebophilic themes in The Phantom of the Opera talkie version, due to casting younger actors than usual in the roles. Erik poses as Christine's father's ghost, starting when she arrives at the opera house at a very young age — and continues posing as her father's ghost after attempting a romantic relationship with her. The stage version never specifically says when Christine came to the Opera and the Phantom started hanging around her (and it is generally assumed that, as in the original novel, she was a young woman by that point). The massive Electra complex overtones remain, though... As Phantom of the Opera in 15 Minutes says, "Daddy issues ahoy!"
• Sandler's 2015 film Pixels was heavily criticized for being sexist. For instance, Michelle Monaghan's character is a decorated military officer but nevertheless spends most of her screen time moping about her husband leaving her or making moon-eyes at Sandler's character, a down-on-his-luck repairman. Josh Gad's character's love interest is the protagonist of a fictional video game come to life; she never speaks and is explicitly referred to as a "trophy" (i.e. an achievement in a video game) at one point.
• Pokémon Detective Pikachu has received criticism for its handling of the villain with a disability as well as for suggesting that all disabled people want to be cured rather than try to live with their disability.
• One movie poster for Power Rangers (2017) was lambasted by long-time fans for being insensitive to Thuy Trang, the original Yellow Ranger. The poster depicted the Yellow Ranger, now played by Becky Gomez, standing on her Zord accompanied by the text "Driver's Ed not required." Trang was killed in an auto accident in 2001, and the movie's official Twitter account was swamped with tweets pointing this out. The poster was later pulled, with both Lionsgate and Saban Brands apologizing as a result.
• Rambo: Last Blood:
  • The story of an American brutally killing over-the-top Mexican villains has caught a lot of flak from critics, who have criticised the film for "fearmongering" (Rolling Stone), and being a "Trumpian fantasy" (The Guardian).
  • Gabriela being kidnapped, sold into sex slavery, and killed off to provide Rambo with justification for his war against the cartel but without any real social commentary has been criticised for its misogyny.
  • The portrayal of Mexicans in general has come under fire, with IGN condemning the film both for showing Mexico as a Wretched Hive and for the Mexican characters being broad stereotypes with no real depth. The podcast Kill James Bond! criticized it on similar grounds, arguing that it uses Mexican men as one-dimensional thugs and rapists for the white lead to heroically mow down, and portrays any Mexican woman who isn't the very Americanized Gabriela as a hypersexual stereotype or voiceless victim (not that they're complementary about Gabriela's storyline either, criticizing her use as a prop for Rambo's angst).
• Ready Player One (2018) drew criticism on top of what the book got for a virtual Race Lift, of the protagonist's in-game best friend Aech. In the book, the avatar Aech is a white male, but the film makes him an orc-like creature. The book made a significant reveal out of the fact that the person behind the avatar Aech is a black woman, noting that she picked this to avoid sexual and racial harassment on the Internet; essayist Ayo Norman also notes the fact that in-universe the virtual world of Oasis is an escape from a Crapsack World. This reveal loses quite a bit of power in the adaptation.
• Red Sonja: The Encyclopedia of Fantasy accused the movie of being morally dubious as far as the portrayal of homosexuality is concerned. Gedren is portrayed as a lesbian whose rivalry with Sonja is based partly on the fact that Sonja once rejected her sexual advances. It also portrays her sexuality as being one of Gedren's evil aspects (rather than simply not taking "no" for an answer).
• Red Sparrow has been criticized for being exploitative, misogynistic, and in poor taste. There are over a hundred reviews pointing this out, and a few of them can be found here. Director Francis Lawrence and Jennifer Lawrence attempted to defend the film by arguing it is about female empowerment, but the general reception has been the exact opposite of that.
• Before it even began filming, Adam Sandler's Ridiculous Six movie got bad press for racism and sexism, with a Native American cast walking out on him.
• The Freudian Excuse of the villain in Rock of Ages is that she was seduced and then abandoned by a rock star, inspiring her to begin her crusade to lobby the government to ban rock music. The thing is, she is presented as an entirely negative character, while her ex is portrayed relatively positively, even joining the protagonists' band at the end, even though it was he who both made the first move in their relationship and left her. As the Musical Hell review points out, the only reason she's a villain and he isn't is Slut-Shaming.
• The Rocky films have frequently been accused of being racist, as the first three films all depicted a white boxer as the heroic underdog against an African-American one, in an era when white racists were unhappy with the increasing domination of American professional boxing by black men. Even Muhammad Ali (of whom the films' character Apollo Creed is widely seen as a No Celebrities Were Harmed) expressed sympathy for this view. The later Creed series of films was widely praised as centering the franchise on African-American characters and depicting Rocky as the token white character unselfishly supporting his old rival's son.
• Concerning RRR (2022), several commentators have argued that the film is, at least, uncomfortably close to Hindu nationalist ideology.
• In the 2000 film Rules of Engagement, American Marines open fire on unarmed Yemeni civilians at the American embassy in Sana'a (Samuel L. Jackson's character, a Marine colonel, gives the order to "Waste the motherfuckers!"), killing 83 civilians and injuring over 100 more. When Jackson's character is put on trial, the story then turns to find out if his claims are substantial. In the end, though, it turns out that the civilians were no better than terrorists themselves — everyone, even a four-year-old girl, fired on the Marines first. This article has more info.
• Saw:
  • Bright Lights Film Journal author Lillie E. Franks has accused the franchise's general viewpoint of agreeing with the claims of its first Big Bad and later Greater-Scope Villain, John "Jigsaw" Kramer, that the deaths of the people put in his Death Traps are not murder and are up to their choice, with plenty of the victims even being considered to outright deserve their deaths regardless of why they were abducted in the first place. Through this, Franks concluded that the franchise promotes arbitrary, toxic ideas of masculinity and "weakness" as the root of all personal failings and deserving of death.
  • While not as prominent as many of its other criticized points, Saw 3D has been called out for being sexist by having women being most of the people killed in the traps (with little justification and men being the lead victims instead), and turning Jill Tuck, who previously Took a Level in Badass in Saw VI, into a Damsel in Distress (in spite of it being justified by in-universe circumstances).
  • Later reviews of the whole series have also criticized some (if not most or all) of the other films down to the first one as having misogynistic implications too, in particular due to the first film being almost entirely centered on male characters with the female ones having little role in the plot (even though they all survive).
• Seven Pounds concerns Tim Thomas, a man who had accidentally killed seven people in a car accident. At the film's climax, Tim commits suicide and donates his organs to seven people who need them, which is portrayed as a Heroic Sacrifice and a redemptive act for him. Mathew Buck of Bad Movie Beatdown took the film to task for this ending, believing it sends the message that there are situations where committing suicide is justifiable, and moreso the implication that there are people who have screwed up their lives so badly that suicide is the optimal course of action. (This is also Values Dissonance, as certain cultures would actually agree with that message.)
• Roger Ebert was extremely critical of The Siege because of what he believed was a poor attempt at subverting the anti-Arab/Islamophobic attitudes typically found in other movies. Not helping matters was the fact that it came out three years before the 9/11 attacks.
  "I'm not arguing that The Siege is a deliberately offensive movie. It's not that brainy. In its clumsy way, it throws in comments now and then to show it knows the difference between Arab terrorists and American citizens. But the prejudicial attitudes embodied in the film are insidious, like the anti-Semitism that infected fiction and journalism in the 1930s — not just in Germany, but in Britain and America."
• In his review of Shame, Kyle Kallgren of Brows Held High took issue with the depiction of the scene when protagonist Brandon has sex with a gay man. While Brandon's compulsive sex addiction is shown to be destructive in every instance, the gay sex is treated as "rock bottom", as the scene is shot under red lighting and then is followed by another scene where Brandon is beaten up by a man on the street.
• The children's film Show Dogs fell under fire for a bit where the talking dog protagonist has to have his genitalia inspected to be part of the show. Despite showing obvious discomfort, he's simply told to "go to his zen place," at which he imagines himself dancing while he's being groped. Many people were disgusted with the Black Comedy Rape implications, feeling that it essentially normalized sexual grooming. The film's distributors responded by quickly pulling the film and re-releasing it in an edited version that removes two scenes prominently relating to this subplot — the National Center on Sexual Exploitation still took offense at the re-cut because it still retained some genital-inspection scenes.
• A criticism of Sixteen Candles is that the film can be seen as tacitly endorsing sexual assault. Ted relentlessly harasses Sam and is rewarded for it throughout the story. Jake also tells Ted to take the drunk Caroline home, saying "she's so blitzed she won't know the difference". They're implied to have sex (initiated by Caroline) and though both are too drunk to remember, she says next morning that she thinks she enjoyed it.
• Skyfall: Some viewers have called this after watching Bond's seduction of Severine. Given Severine's background, there's a strong possibility that when Bond initiated sex, she may have felt like she had no choice in the matter. Forbes comments on this, and Honest Trailers asks: "Isn't he sort of raping that former child prostitute?"
• Spring Breakers' climax involves two white girls donning masks and shooting down a bunch of black people... in Florida... and the film began production shortly after Trayvon Martin was killed. In fact, of all the gangsters in the film, the one who the protagonists trust is white. Addressed by Kyle Kallgren of Brows Held High, who proceeds to criticize this as well as the rampant Male Gaze in his review. The implications of people being shot down in Florida certainly haven't gotten any better over the next few years.
• Spy is a comedy about a downtrodden woman succeeding in a man's world, specifically espionage. According to the Daily Telegraph, however:
  But the film needs Susan to be a bit useless along the way, or it’s in danger of not being funny. And herein lies a slight problem. It’s hard to upend the sexism of the spy genre while also laughing at the unlikeliness of a female spy – especially one played by the magnificently shambolic McCarthy – filling Bond’s boots. The funnier the film gets, in a way, the more it shrugs and admits this is fundamentally a boy’s-own business.
• Star Trek Into Darkness attracted controversy for Race Lifting, that is, making Khan, an Indian Sikh character originally played by Hispanic actor Ricardo Montalbán, into a white character played by British actor Benedict Cumberbatch. This article goes into detail about the problems with this casting change. It's worth noting that the film's crew actually thought they were avoiding Unfortunate Implications with the casting choice. They thought casting an ethnic actor as a brutal terrorist would have the same outcome. Instead, ironically, their decision to give him a Race Lift was viewed as being even more racist than just sticking to his original ethnicity, as many, especially in the Sikh community who would have liked one of their own to get such a juicy role, complained that it was pointless "whitewashing" of an iconic villain and a lame excuse to cast Benedict Cumberbatch.
• Star Wars examples:
  • The Phantom Menace ran into criticism for various Fantasy Counterpart Cultures which some critics felt were a bit too "counterpart" for their liking — for instance, the Nemiodians all speak like Japanese corporate executives (lampooned by Rifftrax, who had Gunray offer "hot and sour soup while you wait for noodle!" to Darth Sidious), Jar Jar was seen by some as a caricature of Jamaicans, and Watto was seen as a greedy space Jew. His enormous nose and small metal quasi-yarmulka did not help. Lucas denied everything and blamed the internet. StarDestroyer.net also disputes this. Author Mike Wong, a Canadian of Chinese/Taiwanese descent, noted that he had to have it explained to him how the Neimoidians are like East Asians.
  • The Space Western motif of Tatooine makes attitudes to the Sand People in A New Hope and later the underreaction in Attack of the Clones and its sequel to Anakin slaughtering a tribe of Sand People very troubling when thought of in terms of American historical relations to native peoples. Likely as a reaction to this, Expanded Universe creators tend to portray the Sand People much more sympathetically in both Star Wars Legends and the Disney-era Star Wars Expanded Universe.
  • The Force Awakens has been accused of racist undertones in the portrayal of Finn, stating alleged examples to be the character's overall lack of effectiveness, his identity being decided by someone else, him drinking water in the same trough as work animals and his snubbing as a romantic lead. Actor John Boyega himself complained about this in post-trilogy comments.
  • The Last Jedi has garnered some criticism for its handling the characters of color. Some bloggers have noted that the subplot of Poe (played by the Guatemalan/Jewish-American Oscar Isaac) being taught a lesson on respecting authority by Admiral Holdo (played by the white Laura Dern) was seen as an example of White Man's Burden. Likewise, others feel that the underutilization of Rose Tico (played by Vietnamese-American Kelly Marie Tran) and the fridging of her sister Paige Tico (played by Ngo Thanh Van, a Vietnamese actress) were seen as discriminatory towards Asian actresses since neither were consequential to the larger story.
  • Some feminists have expressed anger and disappointment that Solo has Thandiwe Newton's Val getting unceremoniously killed just 20 minutes in and promptly forgotten, which wouldn't have been so offensive had there been more women of color in the film, let alone the franchise.
  • When Rose Tico had less than two minutes of screentime in The Rise of Skywalker, abandoning the plot threads the previous film set up for her, many fans of the character suspected this was a deliberate attempt by the filmmakers to appease sexist and/or racist viewers who resented the character and harassed Tran off of Twitter, carrying the unfortunate implication that bullying behavior will get toxic fans what they want out of creatives. The film's co-writer insisted that Rose would have had more to do had the death of Carrie Fisher (Princess/General Leia) and a lack of stock footage of her not gotten in the way, but this was seen as a weak defense.
• Before it was even out, Stonewall, a film about the 1969 Stonewall Inn riot that was one of the founding incidents of the LGBT rights movement, ran into criticism for casting a fictional White Male Lead as its main character despite many of the most important figures in the actual historical events being women, minorities, and transgender people.
• Oppenheimer:
  • Shortly after the film's release, many people (including those of Asian-American descent) critisized the movie for not showing the perspective of the Japanese citizens affected by the nuclear bomb. Ryu Spaeth of the New York Magazine states the following.
    "What kind of enemy were the Japanese anyway? The first third of the movie is propelled by the threat that the Nazis could develop the bomb first — and we know all about them. Oppenheimer, a Jew, takes the threat personally, his very vocation referred to derisively by Hitler as “Jew science” because of the number of Jews, famously including Albert Einstein, who specialized in quantum physics. The final third of the movie is preoccupied with the Soviets, who pose both a mortal threat in their own quest for the bomb and an ideological one in the form of communism. We know all about them, too, and intimately so — the movie’s framing device of a closed-door, McCarthy-inspired interrogation of Oppenheimer echoes the show trials of America’s Cold War nemesis. In the middle come the Japanese, but we get no real sense at all of the adversary who actually bore the brunt of Oppenheimer’s terrible weapon."
  • Many Hindus felt that Oppenheimer quoting the Bhagavad Gita during the sex scene was offensive to their religion and demanded the scene be censored in the film's Indian release.
• Anti-sex trafficking activists have criticized the Taken franchise for distorting the reality of sex trafficking. For instance, in reality, most victims of sex trafficking are destitute women from poor countries being trafficked into richer ones, not the other way around; most traffickers are not violent kidnappers drugging women, but skilled manipulators; and the flashy slave auctions are mostly works of fiction.
• Tyler Perry's Temptation deals with the main character having an extramarital affair, putting her marriage on the line in order to get with a "bad boy." And by the end of the film, she's contracted AIDS from her affair, and this is depicted as her "punishment" for stepping out. Given the history of AIDS being painted as a just punishment for sinners, critics lit up Perry for this one.
• The Test (2012), another comedy film with the same actor and director as Loqueesha, is about a man who is about to marry a beautiful woman, but fearing that she might be a Gold Digger, he puts her through a series of humiliating and abusive Secret Test of Character to prove to him that she truly loves him. Several reviewers have balked at its inherently misogynist premise, and how we are supposed to root for the male lead.
• In his review of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Beginning, Film Brain objected to the torturous death given to the promiscuous Bailey; she is first tied up, then raped, then has her teeth pulled out, and finally has her throat cut with a pair of dull scissors. As the rape was deliberately shot to resemble a scene of her having kinky but consensual, sex earlier in the movie, Film Brain took it to mean the filmmakers felt she deserved this gruesome fate.
• Transformers: Revenge of The Fallen was heavily criticized for the characters of Skids and Mudflap, who many people viewed as racial caricatures of black people. The Twins are depicted as ebonic-spewing, bickering idiots who can't read and only serve to be comic-relief in a film that's already full of comedic side characters. It doesn't help that Skids is depicted as having a gold tooth for no particular reason.
• In-Universe example with Tropic Thunder. Kirk Lazarus, a notoriously extreme method actor, was cast in the role of Sergeant Osiris. Because of this, he had to undergo extensive surgeries and makeup to appear as African American and adopt an accent similar to Ebonics to sell the effect. This leads to the only other major African American character in the film, rapper Alpa Chino, criticizing Lazarus frequently for the action, as well as a news report noting the controversy. What makes this absurd is that Alpa himself is a stereotypical character, and gets slapped by Kirk for taking it for granted that he (Alpa) has N-Word Privileges.
  • Another in-universe example shows up in the form of Tugg Speedman's previous Oscar Bait title Simple Jack. It turned out that while middle America will happily gobble up a Glurge-laden story about an Inspirationally Disadvantaged young man, attempts to realistically portray mental illness or congenital disabilities will turn people off immediately. Kirk claims it to be a well-known fact that "...you never go full retard!"
• Roger Ebert criticized the Twilight movie New Moon for its portrayal of Native Americans as werewolves because it seemed to imply that they were savage animals who don't like to wear clothes.
• The Ultimate Gift is a relatively normal glurge-y film about a man who must improve himself in the hopes of getting a reward. You'd expect that said award to be the improvement itself, but the movie actually awards him 2 billion dollars. DVD Talk points out the glaring flaw in this ending:
  "Um, hey, how about this instead: you make an inspirational movie about healing and growth, and at the end, the gift is something internal, like being nice to people or not being a jackass anymore. That's a message worth hearing. Having your hero wind up a billionaire suggests we should all do good things solely in the hope of landing a monetary reward. Ugh."
• Under the Rainbow, being a 1980s comedy about the 1930s, isn't exactly the most politically correct movie out there. But even by those standards, it has some pretty horrific things to say about non-straight, white, able-bodied males. The Japanese are not only almost all portrayed as photographers who mix up their R's and L's and have a photography club called JAPS, but it also has them all dying horrific deaths that are waved off as hilarious by the movie itself, to the point where when a group of them are shot, a white guy in the elevator's response to it is just "I would've held the door open for you, y'know". At one point, one of the dwarfs in the movie (who are the good guys) gets ready to rape a bunch of distraught women, and it's seen as hilarious in the context of the movie. Worse, the film portrays every character with dwarfism as psychopaths that will ruin any place they go to just for the hell of it. Not only that, but many of them have very childlike personalities because, apparently, just because someone is the size of a child means they are a child. To say some critics weren't exactly amused by the movie's portrayal of little people is putting it mildly.
• The HBO Max version of The Witches (2020) has been criticized by disability advocates for its depiction of the titular witches' deformed limbs (which differ significantly from the book and previous film). HBO Max and Warner Bros. apologized in light of the backlash.
• In World War Z, Israel built a massive wall to keep the zombie horde out, and when the Palestinians are allowed within its confines, everybody cheers as the conflict ends since both peoples celebrate the fact that they are alive. Soon after, all hell breaks loose as the zombies hear the sound, and Zerg Rush the wall, make it over, and Israel is destroyed.To some, this sounds like a justification of the Real Life wall on the edge of the Western Bank, with the implications that if the wall is torn down, and if the Palestinians are allowed to become part of Israeli society, the state and very concept of Israel will be destroyed.
• X-Men Film Series
  • Regarding X-Men: First Class, it's been pointed out a number of times that it is a movie that tries to use the Civil Rights Era as a backdrop for the emerging mutant struggle... and then kills off one of its leads of color (whose superpower is Adaptive Ability) and has the other turn evil, leaving the face of mutant liberation to be nothing but white people.
  • Early billboard advertisements for X-Men: Apocalypse came under fire due to the depiction of Apocalypse strangling Mystique alongside the tagline "only the strong will survive," with many accusing it of misogyny. 20th Century Fox quickly took note of this and apologized.
• The Disney Channel original movie Z-O-M-B-I-E-S (2018) drew harsh criticism for seeming to mangle its moral lesson with a false equivalence between the heroes' and villains' plans against each other. After spending most of the film with zombie-hating humans as villains, the final antagonist ends up being Eliza, a zombie-rights activist who plans to conduct a disruptive but by all appearances completely nonviolent demonstration in support of her cause; even the other zombies chide her for rocking the boat too much. It is even treated as worse than the actions of one of the aforementioned zombie-hating humans, whose behavior actally did put the lives of others in danger. The resulting message is that oppressed minorites are wrong to fight back against those who oppress them, and that the only acceptable action is to do nothing to rock the boat and hope that a more privileged person will take pity on them. This in particular caused Musical Hell and The Happy Spaceman to castigate the film in their respective reviews, with the former displaying a title card reading "Well, fuck that." and the latter pointing out the added Unfortunate Implications of Addison (who is played by a Caucasian actress) telling Eliza (who is played by a POC actress) how she's wrong to fight against the oppression of her race.

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